I am of the opinion that Tetris is genuinely the singular greatest game ever invented. Yes, other games have influenced the shape of the industry, its culture and trajectory. But Tetris is the universal language of games. Simple in its execution, brilliant in its game design loop and ever malleable to our times. You can learn so much just by looking at how the game has evolved through the years about technological advancements, the cultural zeitgeist, and just how far games have come. That is in essence what Tetris Forever is all about. A celebration of Tetris in nearly all its forms, redesigns and adaptations throughout the four decades it has been part of our culture. With its third entry in the Gold Master Series, Digital Eclipse has honed its skill with preserving games and providing context and is recommended to anyone even if they have never played a video game.

Tetris Forever is dedicated to the development, history and impact of Tetris as viewed through its original creators and those who helped bring it to the masses. As with all of Digital Eclipse ‘historical games’, you can browse the game at your own pace. Context is provided through text, high resolution scans, photos, and video interviews. This is for me, the highlight of this package. Where Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter story at times felt scraped together from already existing documentaries, the team behind Tetris Forever got the chance to sit down with all the major creators of Tetris that are still around. Aleksej Pazjitnov, the original creator of the game, Henk Rogers, who managed to license the game for home consoles and handhelds, as well as Gilman Louie who was responsible at Spectrum Holobyte for the marketing and production of the international PC version and Maya Rogers, current CEO of Tetris Inc. The story is expertly put together and super easy to follow. The interviewers struck gold with some of the most fun people to see talking on camera about their experiences with Tetris. For the Nintendo fans out there hearing the stories of how Henk Rogers made deals with former Nintendo of Japan president Hiroshi Yamauchi and visited their offices with accompanying video footage is a treat.

The best way to describe Tetris Forever is an interactive coffee table book. It is something you can flip through at your own pace, but enables you to engage with the contents at an interactive level. This especially comes through in the games. Several versions of Tetris and its sequels are available in full here. Including a faithful recreation of the original Electronika 60 version that Pajitnov originally programmed the game for, as well as the Spectrum Holobyte PC version, Tetris 2, Bombliss, Hatris and Tetris Battle Gaiden. That last on is a real treat for fans as it is one of the most fun competitive/multiplayer versions of Tetris. However, I will admit there was a slight disappointment that a lot of versions of Tetris have been left out. It is the curse of a game-series that has always been tied up in external licenses and until 2005 wasn’t unified under a single company. While I know that I am the sole person desperate to play Tetris on Philips CD-i, shining in absence is the original Game Boy version, the Nintendo NES version and even later versions such as Tetris on mobile phones. There is no Tetris Worlds, Tetris X on PlayStation or SEGA Tetris for arcades. These games are shown in photos and videos, but you can feel that this collection is limited by the tug of war between preservation and external rights holders. I’d kill to get an expansion pack, much akin to Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, but it does feel like a pipe dream at this point.

The games that are included however play excellent. The emulation quality is near perfect, with even accurate slow down accounting for the original versions. I adored seeing the small gameplay refinements in progressive versions and it makes you appreciate how far Tetris has come. This all culminates in Tetris Timewarp, a completely new Tetris game that celebrates the series history. In this version of Tetris, special timewarp pieces are added after clearing 10 lines. Removing a line with a timewarp piece, blasts you back to a different Tetris game from one of four decades. You only get a few seconds to clear a specific goal with the adjusted rulesets of these other Tetris versions, like the Elektronica 60 version with its relentless hard drop or a version of bombliss where you need to remove the big bomb. They feel like little puzzles that can massively increase your score. Placing Tetris Timewarp at the end of the collection feels like a real reward as you will recognize the different versions of Tetris when entering the timewarp. And while yes, the original Game Boy version is not playable in the collection, there is a dedicated ‘Game Boy Style’ mode in Tetris Timewarp that plays the original music with the color palette. While it isn’t quite the same, it is a nice gesture and acknowledgement of the impact of that particular version.

You’ve probably heard about the dire state of legal video game preservation over the last year or so. Last month the Video Game History Foundation alongside other lobbying efforts failed to gain an exemption on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for the remote access to videogames for libraries and institutions. This comes after their report on the loss of 87% of classic videogames. Digital Eclipse is showing a path forward with their Gold Master Series, and Tetris Forever is really a highlight so far in this series. Providing all these eccentric versions of Tetris with context like marketing materials, home video footage and insights from Pajitnov, Gilman and Rogers makes for an easily digestible historical document. It gives me hope that collections like these are able to tell and preserve the wins and failures of video games and their cultural impact. In fact, the notable absentees in Tetris Forever make a great case why it is more prevalent than ever that we need worldwide laws with regards to the preservation of games.

To put it simply: Tetris Forever is required reading. Not just for those who engage with games on a daily basis, but especially for people who are unaware of why games are cultural heritage and deserve to be preserved and celebrated as more than just toys. The new inclusion of Tetris Timewarp makes for a fun Tetris variant and is particularly rewarding after learning about the series' wide and wild history. So put the game on like a documentary with the family, introduce it to your colleagues and make them understand that it won’t be just Tetris forever, but games forever as well.