The Mega Drive/Genesis version of Tetris is an unreleased port of the popular game of the same name, specifically Sega's arcade version. The game was supposed be released in April 1989 by Sega, but the release was canceled after Sega learned that they didn't actually have the rights to release the game. Infamously, although reportedly less than 10 copies were produced, the game eventually got into the hands of pirates who commonly released it on multicarts and single releases.
Overview[]
The game plays like a standard version of Tetris. Blocks slowly fall from the screen and onto the playing field. the player must rotate these blocks to arrange lines for them to disappear. The more blocks the player clears at one time, the more points the player will receive. As the player progress through the game, the speed of the game gets faster, and the backgrounds (Seemingly representing the evolution of Earth) change. If the playing field overflows, the game is over. New to this version is an extra mode, which features special blocks that sometimes clear multiple rows of blocks.
Pirated Releases[]
Sometime after 1989, the game started to be seen on various pirated carts. These versions have the copyright removed from the game. The first pirate carts of this game seemed to originate from Taiwan and used the box art seen on the Japanese version of the Game Boy version. Due to the game's small size, it was commonly seen on early multicarts for the Genesis/Mega Drive. In total, the game was seen in over 25 multicarts. The game was even seen in the 1992 Jackie Chan film, Police Story 3: Supercop.
Trivia[]
- The Genesis/Mega Drive Mini would eventually include an updated version of this game, which was officially licensed.
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