SpaceGazelle wrote:

Also, the PC version of Still Alive I posted is only the extra levels, not Portal main game.

Ah, my mistake.

Cheers - will pick it up.

Yikes!

Portal 1 & 2 are £10.80 as part of a bundle on Steam.

The Steam way may be better as I'd only get Orange Box for Portal. I'll be waiting until the weekend anyhow - January is a long month.

davyK wrote:

The Steam way may be better

Yes, because of stuff like this.

Also, co-op MP is still huge on PC Portal and you'll miss out.

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?searchtexthidden=&section=items&appid=620&browsesort=toprated&requiredtags[0]=Cooperative&actualsort=toprated&p=1

It's quite amazing what people have done.

Actually I'm not great at twin stick navigation in 3D environments so PC for me.

Aye - I've seen shots of that machine - must be quite something to experience.

I think I saw that at the Santa Monica pier Arcade last week.

I'm not sure I've ever played s Treasure game

acemuzzy wrote:

I'm not sure I've ever played s Treasure game

Then you could have a world of fun ahead of you. I imagine emulation is your best bet though

They really are.

Dug this old abandoned blog post I wrote some time ago. Here it is with a small bit of work applied to it.

Tetris - various

Bobby Fischer was one of the greatest chess players ever - he became world champion in 1972 and could have been champion longer had he been of a more conservative disposition. Fischer was an American and the fact that he became world chess champion is like a beautiful flower growing up through cracks in a pavement. Chess champions tended to come from Russia or the old soviet block countries at that time. Chess players were pro-actively discovered and developed within a system that was part of society - their champions were the inevitable outcome of that system. Fischer came from no such system - he was a maverick genius who came out of nowhere.

Tetris came out of the soviet system in much the same way that Fischer came out of the US. Russia is certainly no hotbed of game development. However one of the greatest games ever came from there - another beautiful flower growing through cracks in concrete.

The thing about Tetris is that it looks like a very simple game - all developers and game designers must look at it and ask why they can't think up such a simple game themselves. The truth of course is that they probably won't because it is NOT a simple game - it is the result of a piece of inspiration that hit Alexey Pajitnov - a Russian academic who had been steeped in puzzle games all of his life. Tetris is derived from a old puzzle game called Pentominoes - in which you must fill a rectangular frame with a set of different shapes leaving no gaps. Pajitnov's inspiration was to take the set of shapes and simplify them (to shapes called tetrads - hence the game name) , introduce the shapes one by one into the box (now sitting up on one end instead of laying flat) falling under simulated gravity, and then the real stroke of genius - removing complete lines - making space for more shapes.

This created a puzzle that couldn't really be made from physical material the way the original pentominoes was and thus the first true video puzzle game was created which up until then had mostly been just recreations of physical puzzles like mazes or board games like chess. A new genre was born.

Tetris has stubbornly refused to be improved upon. There may be a few games in the genre that are considered better by puzzle game enthusiasts (Puyo Puyo and Puzzle Fighter spring to mind - though I'd say they are not as approachable) but there are many Tetris-based variants around that simply are not as good as the original game. Over and above the addition of a battle mode which was introduced in the original Gameboy version, it has proven best when left alone. It feels as if Tetris was discovered rather than invented.

Older versions of Tetris are still highly enjoyable and as playable today as they were when released. Over the years however, small changes have been made; the more successful being those that have improved its implementation (control response, how the pieces rotate etc.) There have been a few examples where changing the rules has delivered an enjoyable game (such as the New Tetris on N64 with bonuses awarded for creating 4x4 squares with 4 of the same type of tetrad) but these haven't been the main reason for purchasing them - the games have more likely been bought to ensure that Tetris is available to the owner of a new console.

Up until recently it has been quite a stagnant game despite the existence of a thriving online community. However the last game I purchased - Tetris Party Deluxe by Hudson has restored Tetris as a great modern puzzle game. It offers several enjoyable modes on top of a great classic version of the game that deliverr new game experiences with the Tetris ruleset. These modes are very interesting and are good games in themselves - just two examples are a race mode where players navigate a piece through a scrolling maze and a shadow mode where players have to place the pieces to match the outline of a picture in the background. All of the modes offer something different and all have on line and local multiplayer modes for up to 5 players. There is even a 2 player co-op mode and a balance board mode thrown in for good measure. The Deluxe version is the disc borne sequel to the WiiWare title Tetris Party - itself a great Tetris game. Deluxe adds some more modes (the great Bombliss mode for those who are into their Tetris) and enhances the online modes a bit too (now sadly abandoned of course) but there isn't much to choose between them. I highly recommend it.

Since Tetris Party Deluxe has been published a few other modern titles have followed. There was Ultimate Tetris which was a bit of a dud showing that it is still easy to mess the original forumla up but there have been a couple of more successful releases. Tetris vs Puyo Puyo offers the two games merged although you can still play them in their classic mode. Tetris Effect has introduced new rules and added a spectacular graphical polish that has revolutionised what a puzzle game can look like- there is even a VR headset option.

Bobby Fischer met with quite a sad end. Not to put too fine a point on it - he went quite mad and was caught up in all sorts of conspiracy theories and was quite outspoken on Israel, the US and Judaism. He died from an illness in early 2008. His reputation as a chess player while controversial is happily intact however. It's nice to see excellent modern versions of Tetris that keep its reputation as one of the greats too.

Tetris games are something I find very hard to resist and I've gathered up a decent collection of its implementation across several platforms. See a picture below.