in the official continuity of a work. You’ve certainly heard of Ninja Gaiden, and you might

be familiar with Shining Force Gaiden for the Game Gear, or Zelda Gaiden, which would

eventually become known as Majora’s Mask. In many cases, it can mark a significant departure

from established mechanics, as Fire Emblem Gaiden did back on the Famicom, creating branching

class promotions, establishing level-based magic, and relaxing weapon durability issues.

And then there’s the whole nonsense about Barkley: Shut Up and Jam Gaiden, for which

I’ll refer you to Eric’s review on this very channel. But enough about serious games.

WE WANT TETRIS.

Tetris Battle Gaiden strips away all of the series’ Russian influence and strives to

make it as cute as humanly possible. Cossack dancers? NOPE. We’ve got princesses! And

rabbits. And Best-of-three competitions. That’s pretty much the entire scene here. Rather

than having time-unlimited challenges or puzzles, the goal in this outing is to defeat a series

of opponents in succession, hence the “Battle” part of the name. You want personal challenges?

Go play Tetris Worlds. This is for people who want their Tetris with a side of Ruthless.

To that end, each character in TBG (not to be confused with TMBG) has several different

levels of magic, which can be gathered by clearing lines with crystals and deployed

using the Up button.

Since the up button is occupied with magic, there’s no flash-drop in this game like

in more recent Tetris releases. Also, you can’t just spin a piece forever to stall

for time, a practice that has rustled the jimmies of more than a few puzzle-game purists.

But put that aside. The real appeal of the game is having a Tetris competition with a

significantly more developed feel of interaction with your opponent. There are a number of

strategic advantages to be gained through use of Magic, be they impairing your opponent’s

ability to get down off a big stack, or buying yourself some time, or merely using the casting

to eliminate either an inconvenient piece you’ve just been handed or a potential strike

from your foe. Also, both players feed off of the same “incoming pieces” display

in the middle of the screen, with the topmost tetromino going to whoever placed one most

recently. This can sometimes inform your play, whether you want to hang back and avoid speed-dropping

your current block so your opponent gets stuck with that bothersome z-looking piece, or if

there’s a straight line up next and you want to throw your current piece any old place

so you can grab it and clear a Tetris. They’re fairly small changes, all told, but the differences

they bring to the game itself have much larger ramifications.

Here in the states, we never really saw anything like this. Our falling-block-puzzle games

were more focused on the single-player aspect, like classic Tetris or Columns, rather than

more head-to-head-centric challenges like Puyo Puyo (AKA Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean

Machine) or later offerings like Meteos. There’s certainly a place for both styles in any collection,

so if you’ve got an import-capable SNES, it’s worth it to track down a copy of Tetris

Battle Gaiden. Because nothing says Tetris like a pumpkin-headed ghost fighting a witch

doctor. Without any Russian influence whatsoever. Charles Barkley approves of this message.