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40-841: Tetris DS is a puzzle video game developed and published by Nintendo . It was released for the Nintendo DS on March 20, 2006, in North America, April 13, 2006, in Australia, April 21, 2006, in Europe, and April 27, 2006, in Japan. An installment of the Tetris franchise, the game supports up to ten players locally, and supported online multiplayer of up to four players using Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection prior to its discontinuation. Tetris DS features several new modes of play, each with

80-462: A different spin on gameplay. The game's standard mode plays in a similar manner as classic Tetris , in which the player must move clusters of different-shaped tiles ( tetrominos ), manipulate them as they drop by spinning them, and place them in a pile at the bottom. Players must stack each piece without empty space so that they can continue clearing lines of the pile. Difficulty of this mode increases with every 10 lines cleared. The game makes use of

120-408: A different theme styled after retro Nintendo games. They include Super Mario Bros. , The Legend of Zelda , Metroid , Donkey Kong , and Yoshi's Cookie . Multiplayer gameplay also incorporates items to be used competitively. The game received positive reviews from critics, who cited its additional game modes and multiplayer capabilities. Long after its release, it continued to be upheld as

160-472: A disorganized tower, and the player must attempt to get the box of balloons at the top to the bottom by touching and sliding the pieces, or double-tapping them to rotate. The latter contains 50 puzzles ranging in difficulty that must be solved by sliding pieces with the stylus, without rotating them. In Catch mode, which is themed after Metroid , the player controls a rotating block of pieces that can catch other falling pieces. The central core will detonate once

200-596: A prototype for Tetris DS developed by Tose Software originally to be published by THQ , but cancelled in favor of Nintendo's version. THQ had been working on the game since late 2004, but was prevented from releasing the game in March 2005 by The Tetris Company, causing THQ to file a legal complaint against the company alleging a breach of its license agreement. The legal dispute was later settled. Tetris DS received "generally favorable reviews" according to review aggregation website Metacritic . Several publications gave

240-502: A series of creatures walk into deadly situations, and a player assigns jobs to specific lemmings to guide the swarm to a safe destination. The 1994 MS-DOS game Shariki , by Eugene Alemzhin, introduced the mechanic of swapping adjacent elements to tile matching games. It was little known at the time, but later had a major influence on the genre. Interest in Mahjong video games from Japan began to grow in 1994. When Minesweeper

280-473: Is a competitive two-player game, where the objective is to push the opponent's pieces towards the bottom of the screen. The player always controls the top screen and must clear two or more lines to shift the block down towards their opponent. If the block is pushed all the way towards the opponent, the player wins; clearing more lines shifts the block more drastically. Touch mode consists of two variants; Tower mode and Touch Puzzle mode. The former stacks pieces in

320-707: Is a precursor to puzzle-platform games such as Lode Runner (1983), Door Door (1983), and Doki Doki Penguin Land (1985). Blockbuster , by Alan Griesemer and Stephen Bradshaw (Atari 8-bit, 1981), is a computerized version of the Rubik's Cube puzzle. Snark Hunt (Atari 8-bit, 1982) is a single-player game of logical deduction, a clone of the 1970s Black Box board game. Elements of Konami 's tile-sliding Loco-Motion (1982) were later seen in Pipe Mania from LucasArts (1989). In Boulder Dash (1984),

360-435: Is that the player must experiment with mechanisms in each level before they can solve them. Exploration games include Myst , Limbo , and The Dig . Escape room games such as The Room involve detailed exploration of a single location. Sokoban games, such as its namesake title, or block-pushing puzzle games, involve pushing or pulling blocks on a grid-like space to move them into designated positions without blocking

400-600: The Tetris brand to third parties. It is an American company based in Nevada and owned by Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov and Henk Rogers . The company is the exclusive licensee of Tetris Holding LLC, the company that owns Tetris rights worldwide. Tetris was created in 1985 by Pajitnov. As the initial versions of the game spread through the Eastern Bloc , interest in licensing it for western commercial release drew much attention. Elektronorgtechnica (Elorg)

440-484: The infinite spin feature that was initially introduced in Tetris Worlds , allowing the player to prevent a piece from being locked as long as it continues to spin. The Zelda -themed Mission mode features changing goals that appear in the top-right of the top screen; sometimes, only certain pieces can fall depending on what goal is active. A "hold" box allows the player to save a piece for later use. Push mode

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480-682: The Rope , as well as projectile collision games such as Angry Birds , Peggle , Monster Strike , and Crush the Castle . Programming games require writing code, either as text or using a visual system, to solve puzzles. Examples include Rocky's Boots (1982), Robot Odyssey (1984), SpaceChem (2011), and Infinifactory (2015). This sub-genre includes point-and-click games that often overlap with adventure games and walking simulators . Unlike logical puzzle games, these games generally require inductive reasoning to solve. The defining trait

520-573: The Tetris Company's copyrights by replicating elements such as the playfield dimensions and the shapes of the blocks. In October 2020, the previous licensing company for the Tetris brand, Blue Planet Software Inc. , founded by Henk Rogers in 1996, was merged with The Tetris Company , effectively rendering BPS defunct. In April 2021, a YouTuber called JDH made an operating system that only runs Tetris. Two months later, his GitHub repository

560-609: The Windows Phone 7 marketplace. The developer, Mario Karagiannis, rejected the claims of copyright infringement on the grounds that copyright does not cover gameplay design , but still removed the game, citing lack of resources to fight what he called "bullying". In the case Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. , a US District Court judge ruled in June 2012 that the Tetris clone Mino from Xio Interactive infringed on

600-488: The best portable Tetris title, and one of the best in the series. The game is split into six unique single-player modes, some of which are usable in the game's multiplayer. Each game variant is represented by a different Nintendo theme and character from a retro game, with the Super Mario Bros. sub-series featured in the game's standard, default mode, while other series appear in the alternate modes that provide

640-414: The board such as Zuma . Puzzle games based on Tetris include tile-matching games where the matching criterion is to place a given number of tiles of the same type so that they adjoin each other. That number is often three, and the corresponding subset of tile-matching games is referred to as match-three games. The Tetris Company The Tetris Company, Inc. ( TTC ) is the manager and licensor for

680-615: The company, Henk Rogers , stated that he believed that with Tetris DS , Nintendo would both "move Tetris forward" as well as make money. Also stating that Nintendo was given a great deal of creative freedom in designing the game, he called the game's producer, Hitoshi Yamagami, "one of the smartest game designers I know". Saying that he had "complete confidence in him", Rogers confirmed that there had been no issues combining Nintendo properties and characters with Tetris. Rogers cited Mission and Tower modes as interesting to him because they were unlike anything done before in Tetris . He stated that

720-533: The developers created, based on Puyo Puyo . In May 2010, lawyers representing the Tetris Company sent Google a Digital Millennium Copyright Act Violation Notice regarding Tetris clones available for Android. Google responded by removing the 35 games listed in the notice even though, according to one developer, the games contained no references to Tetris . In February 2011, the Tetris Company continued to make copyright claims against independently developed Tetris clones, most notably against Tetrada on

760-483: The distinct brightly colored blocks and the vertically rectangular play field ) to video game development companies and maintains a set of guidelines that each licensed game must meet. Initially, Elorg was a partner in the Tetris Company until Rogers and Pajitnov bought Elorg's remaining rights around 2005. The Tetris Company has also issued licenses to third parties for the production of other products, such as greeting cards and lottery tickets. TTC drew attention in

800-420: The game 3.5/5 stars, calling multiplayer the game's best addition, but suggesting purists would not like changes such as the hold box and infinite spin. The Times also rated the game 3.5/5 stars, calling the game "a little too retro to be anything other than a game to play in short bursts". By August 1, 2006, Tetris DS was close to going platinum in Japan, with more than 800,000 units sold. By July 25, 2007,

840-440: The game 4.5/5 stars, saying it was a "must-buy", although commenting that "zealots" may call the game too easy. 4Players rated it 90/100, calling it "next to Meteos the most important puzzler of modern times". Famitsu gave it a score of two nines, one eight, and one nine for a total of 35 out of 40. More mixed reviews included that of Ryan Davis of GameSpot , who rated the game 7.5/10. In his review, he said that while

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880-524: The game had sold 2.05 million copies worldwide. In the years following the game's release, English copies of the game became rare and difficult to find due to its popularity in the West, leading many to purchase more plentiful Japanese-language copies. Long after its release, Tetris DS continues to be held in high regard by critics as one of the best Tetris games ever made. In 2011, Stephen Totilo of Kotaku compared Tetris: Axis to Tetris DS , finding

920-482: The game very high or perfect scores. GamePro rated the game 5/5 stars, praising the game's large variety of modes, and calling it "an amazing puzzle package, and [...] easily one of the best DS games to date". Nintendo Power gave the game a rating of 9.5/10, stating that "you may not love all of it, but you will love much of it". Game Informer rated the game 9.25/10, calling it an "excellent reinvention of one of gaming's greatest titles". Pocket Gamer UK rated

960-400: The game was much better than other recent versions, it also made "enough minor, obvious mistakes to keep it from becoming essential", calling it "saddled with some unfortunate compromises". The A.V. Club gave it a B+, praising the game's modes as "innovative", but criticizing the game's online, where "dedicated fanboys [...] will eat newbies for breakfast". The Sydney Morning Herald rated

1000-469: The game, calling the series the "final boss of video game consoles". Puzzle video game Puzzle video games owe their origins to brain teasers and puzzles throughout human history. The mathematical strategy game Nim , and other traditional thinking games such as Hangman and Bulls and Cows (commercialized as Mastermind ), were popular targets for computer implementation. Universal Entertainment 's Space Panic , released in arcades in 1980,

1040-504: The goal is to collect diamonds while avoiding or exploiting rocks that fall when the dirt beneath them is removed. Chain Shot! (1985) introduced removing groups of the same color tiles on a grid, causing the remaining tiles to fall into the gap. Uncle Henry's Nuclear Waste Dump (1986) involves dropping colored shapes into a pit, but the goal is to keep the same color tiles from touching. Tetris (1985) revolutionized and popularized

1080-482: The inclusion of the "infinite spin" feature in games such as Tetris DS was done so that games could progress to faster action more quickly without becoming overly difficult, since people had less time to play while on the go. Saying that he believed a sequel on DS was not necessary due to the game's "solid play", he said that his only complaint about the game was that its online mode was "uneven" in its matchmaking. In 2016, The Cutting Room Floor discovered and released

1120-423: The late 1990s when it attempted to remove freeware and shareware clones of Tetris from the market by sending out cease-and-desist letters claiming both trademark and copyright infringement. Creators of Tetris clones claimed that the company had no valid legal basis to restrict tetromino games that did not infringe on the Tetris name trademark, since copyright "look-and-feel" suits have not stood up in court in

1160-403: The latter significantly better and recommending people play it instead. In a 2018 retrospective, John Linneman of Digital Foundry called the game the third-best in the series after Tetris Effect and Tetris: The Grand Master 3 - Terror Instinct , as well as the best portable Tetris game. Christian Donlan, also of Eurogamer , stated in 2020 that his DS was "largely still active" due to

1200-399: The movement of other blocks. Similar games include Baba is You and Patrick's Parabox . A hidden object game, sometimes called hidden picture or hidden object puzzle adventure (HOPA), is a genre of puzzle video game in which the player must find items from a list that are hidden within a scene. Hidden object games are a popular trend in casual gaming . In tile-matching video games,

1240-497: The past ( Lotus v. Borland ), and because the letters made no patent claims. In August 2008, Apple Inc. removed Tris , a clone of Tetris from its online App Store . In March 2009, the Tetris Company sued BioSocia, operator of the Omgpop gaming portal because one of its multiplayer games, Blockles , was too similar to Tetris . By September 2009, Omgpop removed the game from the website and replaced it with an alternate that

Tetris DS - Misplaced Pages Continue

1280-484: The pieces. The game's multiplayer features player-versus-player basic Tetris , competition Tetris with unique items for up to 10 players locally, and Push mode. Two and four-player competitions could be played over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection before it was shut down, either using a friend code or searching for random players in Worldwide mode, but can only currently be played using a homebrew server. Additionally,

1320-419: The player achieves a 4×4 block. If enough pieces fall to the bottom without being caught, the player will lose all their energy. Puzzle mode contains 200 puzzles, ranging from requiring three to five pieces to solve. The pieces must be selected in the proper combination, and rotated the right way to solve the puzzle by clearing all blocks. While the top screen displays the puzzle board, the bottom screen displays

1360-431: The player manipulates tiles in order to make them disappear according to a matching criterion. The genre began with 1985's Chain Shot! and has similarities to falling-block games such as Tetris. This genre includes games that require pieces to be swapped such as Bejeweled or Candy Crush Saga , games that adapt the classic tile-based game Mahjong such as Mahjong Trails , and games in which pieces are shot on

1400-480: The puzzle game genre. The game was created by Soviet game designer Alexey Pajitnov for the Electronika 60 . Pajitnov was inspired by a traditional puzzle game named Pentominos in which players arrange blocks into lines without any gaps. The game was released by Spectrum Holobyte for MS-DOS in 1987, Atari Games in arcades in 1988, and sold 30 million copies for Game Boy . In Lemmings (1991),

1440-437: The various modes can be played from a single cartridge using Download Play . Tetris DS was first announced on January 10, 2006. It was first released on March 20, 2006, in North America, with releases worldwide following on April 13, 2006, for Australia, April 21, 2006, for Europe, and April 27, 2006, for Japan. The rights for Nintendo to make a Tetris game were licensed by The Tetris Company . In an interview, an owner of

1480-558: Was followed by other physics-based puzzle games. A physics game is a type of logical puzzle video game wherein the player must use the game's physics and environment to complete each puzzle. Physics games use consistent physics to make games more challenging. The genre is popular in online flash games and mobile games . Educators have used these games to demonstrate principles of physics. Physics-based logic puzzle games include The Incredible Machine , Portal , The Talos Principle , Braid , Fez , World of Goo , and Cut

1520-410: Was privatized. The Tetris Company was established in 1996 by Pajitnov and Rogers to manage the worldwide licensing of the property. The visual expression in official Tetris games is covered by copyrights that are owned by Tetris Holding, LLC, the company into which Pajitnov placed his Tetris rights. The Tetris Company licenses the Tetris trademark (which includes Tetris trade dress elements, such as

1560-520: Was released with Windows 95 , players began using a mouse to play puzzle games. In 2000, PopCap Games released Bejeweled , a direct clone of the 1994 tile-matching game Shariki with improved visuals. It sparked interest in the match-three mechanic which became the foundation for other popular games, including Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (2007), Candy Crush Saga (2012), and Puzzle & Dragons (2012). Portal (2007)

1600-516: Was the Soviet agency created to control the import and export of hardware and software outside the Soviet Union. As part of the licensing of the game, Pajitnov agreed to let Elorg handle all licensing for a 10-year period. One of the main licensees of the game was Bullet-Proof Software , owned by Henk Rogers, with whom Pajitnov struck up a friendship. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Elorg

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