The Video Game Critic

My wife and I were talking about much she used to love Tetris—would play for hours and got very good. Her work has been stressful and she’d like to get back into for fun.

Any recommendations?

I love Tetris, and mostly dislike Dr. MARIO, but I love the Tetris/Dr. Mario combo on the SNES. Good 2-player competitive fun to be had.

If you're willing to go modern, pick up Tetris Effect for PS4, which just came out last year. I haven't played it yet, but it is getting absolute rave reviews -- averaging over 90%. And it works with or without PS VR. All the reviews seem to indicate it's the best Tetris game in years and years -- keeps the old school flavor, but with a ton of modern twists.

If you're looking for something more old school, then I'd say stick to the basics - like the NES, Gameboy, SNES, or DS versions... you can't go wrong with any of them. For a more obscure Tetris, consider the CD-i version -- it has soothing videos and music playing in the background that will really help her de-stress.

For single player I would go with Tetris DX for the Gameboy Color. Plays great and even saves high scores.

Tetris DS is the one I currently have for ds/3ds. It has the standard mode as well as some bonus modes featuring Nintendo characters. I've also played Tetris party deluxe on DS, which was very good.

I think you two would enjoy Puyo Puyo Tetris. There are tons of modes, including some that "combine" both games.

Paul Campbell wrote:I love Tetris, and mostly dislike Dr. MARIO, but I love the Tetris/Dr. Mario combo on the SNES. Good 2-player competitive fun to be had.

That's my favorite version too. My wife and I still have competitions with this one. If you need it for modern systems, Puyo Puyo Tetris is great too.

I really loved Tetris Party. All the extra modes make it worth the price.

yea, I really like tetris party deluxe, and all the extra modes are really good. I did like it better overall than tetris ds

I'm partial to the original Game Boy's version Tetris.

I should note tho that there were a bunch of freeware & shareware Tetris clones, some of which are quite good. The Internet Archive has a collection of shareware compilation CDs you can download. Here's on with nothing but Tetris-style games: https://archive.org/details/cdrom-galax ... mania-1998

I remember RomTech's Galaxy of Games having some good Tetris clones: https://archive.org/details/GalaxyOfGames1 Most of the 300 included games won't work on modern PCs.