Watching in abject horror as the Professor - who is a college educated man - climbs several tetrominoes to wedge his greasy little body between an L piece and a descending ceiling of spikes. He's dead! The Professor is dead and I couldn't stop it!!

Those who know me outside of this site understand how much I love Tetris, because I've subjected all of them to an absolute throttling in Tetris Battle Gaiden at least once. We simply can't be friends until I've copied a well full of blown apart junk, faxed it to you, and established Total Tetris Domination. Recounting my ill-deeds may not be enough to convince anyone passing by this review of my qualifications, but those of you who've been placed under the heel of Ninja Kid will hopefully trust me when I say Tetris Plus is kind of a crummy game.

Tetris Plus' main attraction is its puzzle mode, which presents the player with partially filled well that must be cleared so the Professor can escape. The Professor is under constant threat of a collapsing ceiling that progressively restricts the play space, and seeing as he has a tendency to climb blocks in front of him, the player needs to be mindful of how high up they're building their tetromino to ensure he doesn't get crushed while factoring what pieces are needed to open a path to the bottom of the well.

Despite being billed as a puzzle mode, the random nature of tetromino drops makes it more of a scramble to do the best with what you have, which I could deal with if not for the fact that Tetris Plus leans towards the GameBoy end of the spectrum and frequently puts the player into block droughts. You can't hold pieces either, so you might find yourself stuck stacking tetrominoes straight up to burn pieces and hoping to hell the Professor doesn't shimmy up them towards oblivion. Basic tetromino movement and spinning also feels clunky, and feedback when connecting pieces and clearing lines is just a little too limp to be satisfying.

Sure, the basic Tetris mode is perfectly serviceable, but there's so many better Tetris games out there that I see little reason to pick up Tetris Plus unless you want to dive into its more unique features, which I feel are poorly executed. If someone tells you that you should play Tetris Plus, watch out, it's probably the Professor and he wants to die.

as we head backwards into the past, i'm increasingly taken with how tetris plus and its sequel really nailed the "tetris, but" genre. color matching stackers are exploding in creativity, but the closed design of tetris hasn't lead to a longevity of tetris-likes. we'll discuss that phenomenon later once we get to the "tetris-like" boom of the late 90s and early 80s. but this half-decade hasn't brought us a lot of them -- the closest might be Cleopatra Fortune, honestly. (TGM is doing its own thing.) the Tetris Plus puzzle mode is genuinely brilliant. i'd be repeating my Tetris Plus 2 review to say more, so in short: pleasant, meaningfully distinct, very cute, rng-game-as-in-party-mode not rng-game-as-in-unfair, shame about the grave robbing but we will entomb them for their sins