GENRE
	Puzzle
	DEVELOPER
	T&E Soft
	PUBLISHER
	Nintendo
	NUMBER OF PLAYERS
	1
	WORTH PLAYING TODAY?
	No
	BUY NOW AT

T&E Soft was one of very few developers that signed on to develop for what I consider to be Nintendo’s most underrated, however premature, endeavor: the Virtual Boy. With 3D Tetris, the developer hoped to bring the classic and addictive Tetris experience to the next dimension. The game delivers a mediocre puzzle experience on Nintendo’s eye-strainer.

visuals

3D Tetris relies heavily on the 3D capabilities of the Virtual Boy. The well in which the player dumps the blocks is nothing more than a long, squared tube. The end of the tube is where the blocks go, which are made using vector graphics in order to convey their dimensions. A very simple interface, but complicated when it comes to the capabilities of the Virtual Boy. This title succeeds in making sure the player knows the dimensions of the blocks so he or she can put them together at the end of the well.

audio

The game doesn’t attempt to advance the Virtual Boy’s audio output, nor does it try to create any sense of nostalgia by using classic Tetris tunes. There really isn’t all that much to say here. You will hear appropriate noises for block rotation and some tunes while you play, but the aural experience is minimal.

gameplay

3D Tetris offers players three modes of play: Center Fill, 3D Tetris, and Puzzle. Each mode of play offers an easy, medium, and hard difficulty. Depending on your choice of difficulty, blocks will move faster and come in an increasingly strange variety, which makes them more difficult to connect coherently. Each mode offers the same basic goal: to fill the back of a well (a square tube, as mentioned earlier) with blocks. The player must connect the blocks until they create a flat surface in order to get points. The only way to eliminate blocks and get points is to make a full square.

Center Fill mode requires the player to drop blocks around a center point in the well, and then drop a block in the center point in order to eliminate the surrounding blocks. There are three submodes within this mode: Type A, Type B, and Clear It. Type A is high-score-driven. Simply get as many points as possible. Type B is the same, but the round starts with some blocks already included in the well as obstacles. Clear It is level-driven. When you succeed in the puzzles in this submode, you will advance to the next level until you complete the game.

3D Tetris is the main mode, which is the same as Center Fill without the center portion. It features two submodes: Type A and Clear It. In Type A, players attempt to get the high score by filling brackets in the well for points. Clear It is again level-based and requires players to complete five brackets in order to advance to the next stage.

Finally, Puzzle mode offers players a bit of a change to the standard formula in the two other modes. There is only one way to play—-Clear It. At the beginning of the mode, players are shown a structure in the well made out of Tetris blocks. It will disappear and players must reconstruct it mostly from memory using the blocks provided. A 2D picture is shown in the bottom right corner for aid in recreating the structure, but it is incapable of conveying three dimensions, and can thus be confusing.

The first two modes are standard Tetris with a twist, which isn’t bad, but it isn’t necessarily better. At the time of the game’s release, it may have been impressive to see the blocks in 3D, but it certainly isn’t too impressive now. The Puzzle mode is something of a train wreck. Unless you have a photographic memory and are, perhaps, an architect, you may be able to recreate the structures without a whole heck of a lot of tries. The game succeeds in providing a Tetris experience for the most part, but it is limited for a 3D title by today’s standards.

multiplayer

N/A

overall

3D Tetris is a mediocre game. With the N64 on the horizon, it is odd that this game appeared on the Virtual Boy with its limited capabilities, but then again, there are still plenty of questions beyond that about the Virtual Boy itself. This game is no reason to jump to eBay and buy a Virtual Boy. However, if you already own one and you’re considering expanding your library, you may consider dropping a few dollars on it. If you decide to get this game, make sure you keep your expectations low because it certainly isn’t anything particularly revolutionary. By today's standards, I wouldn't reccomend it. Even by 1996 standards, this game was not totally up to par.

5.6/10