Retro Remembrance - Tetris Attack (1996)

Recently I’ve been feeling nostalgic for the games that made my youth so memorable, fondly remembering the titles I would play during my summer holidays.

If like me you grew up during the 90s you may have been fortunate enough to have owned a Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES for short.

While the SNES offered over 500 titles here in the UK, it’s usually Mario and co. who had the most memorable games.

Sure there were over 500 titles, but you could loosely categorise them into side-scrollers, sports/racing, fighting games, puzzle games, RPGs and shoot ‘em ups.

Looking back now it’s more obvious that the tech restricted how much games within these genres actually differed from each other.

But it was thanks to the polish that came with the flagship titles that allowed Mario, Link and Donkey Kong to become pillars of gaming.

I owned maybe three or four SNES cartridges, and since my collection was small I could dedicate hundreds of hours to each one.

While trying to 100% each Mario game was definitely a goal I had, perfecting my skills in Tetris Attack is where all my time went.

You are greeted by Yoshi’s iconic “Nintendo” sting, which is followed by the cheerful intro into Yoshi and friends welcoming you to the game.

When playing alone I would usually complete the main story under ‘1 player Vs’, and also challenge myself to the endless or puzzle modes.

The premise of the game was just as the name suggests, it was Tetris but you attack your opponent with blocks while trying to survive.

When clearing blocks on your side a 4 or 5 tile swap clear will send blocks to your opponent, but chaining clears was my favourite play.

If you were fast enough you could set blocks up to chain into further clears after the first, to send gigantic blocks to your opponent.

In order to get rid of these garbage blocks all you had to do was make sure blocks you cleared were touching the garbage blocks.

I think I played the main story hundreds of times, on hard difficulty this was only 12 stages but I never tired of it.

The plot was simple: Bowser has bewitched Yoshi’s Island and it’s up to Yoshi to save his friends with the power of Tetris.

You start off on Yoshi’s Island and travel along a rainbow walkway to challenge and free other heroes from the spell.

Featuring characters from ‘Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island’, the easy mode will take you to stage 8 rescuing and collecting your friends.

If playing in normal or hard mode this unlocked the villains for stages 9-12, with hard mode Bowser being much faster than normal mode.

After reaching stage 9 you can play as the friends you saved, but losing as someone other than Yoshi locks them out of the run.

My favourite hero to play as was Raphael the Raven, whose lunar theme made me sure he was more powerful than his fellows.

Freeing Raphael takes you from the rainbow walkway into Bowser’s lair, a giant cave with spooky ambient music and tall spikes seen in the distance.

This is where you are met by Bowser’s henchmen, you must beat three of them in order to challenge Bowser himself.

After defeating Bowser’s trusted advisor Kamek Yoshi will progress along the cave, where it is revealed that the giant spikes were Bowser all along.

Bowser’s gigantic figure comes into view and the final battle can begin, with the speed of hard mode being no slouch even after countless clears.

After defeating Bowser and getting the true ending, the theme song will play you out with some lines from each of the surviving heroes.

It may not have been much of a story but I have fonder memories of this short tale than I do of most modern games.

The ‘2 player Vs’ mode lets you face off against someone locally, but at the time my friends couldn’t keep up with my combo clears.

Remembering Tetris Attack has gotten me in the mood to play the story all over again, I think I’ll dust off my SNES for a session.