by In the past I related the story of my first experience with Nintendo. I’ve told about how I was hooked instantly and how Nintendo would go on to become a huge part of my childhood.
Fast-forward a few years, and Nintendo released the Game Boy. I had seen advertisements for it in comic books, and it was the subject of several conversations with friends at school each day. One day, while out on a shopping trip with Mom, we ventured into our local Roses department store and I saw the in-store demo display for the first time.
While the Gameboy itself was an impressive concept and product, it was the game that came with it at launch that I really fell for. That game was Tetris, and it instantly hooked me.
We all know the story of this game. Several different odd-shaped blocks fall from the top of the board, and you had to rotate them, move them left or right to get them to drop into position to complete a line and make it go away. If you weren’t quick enough or smart enough to do that on a consistent basis, your board would be full and your game would be over.
Every weekend that Mom and I went to Roses, I made a beeline to the electronics department where the display was, and I would play Tetris until she had to come find me when she was done shopping. I couldn’t get enough of it.
I had been saving up my allowance money, but was still a long way away from having enough to buy a Gameboy. Again, the Gameboy itself was cool, but in those early days, I was more excited about Tetris than I was the Gameboy itself. Luckily for me, I discovered that Tetris was available for the NES itself…and I had enough money saved that I could afford it!
Now, I wasn’t stuck with playing a smaller version of the game in that monochrome green color of the Gameboy, I could play a much larger version in full-color! I loved the gameplay of Tetris, and the excitement that came as the game got faster and faster, and constantly trying to top my own high score. But it was something else that eventually made Tetris one of my all-time favorite video games.
Tetris was a game with such a simple concept that just about everyone could understand it, play it, and do well at it. Even parents. One random evening my Dad popped into my room just to see what I was up to. He saw me playing Tetris, and something about it caught his eye, and he sat down on the bed and watched a while.
He asked several questions about it concerning the mechanics of how to get the pieces to rotate and such. I answered them without realizing that he was so interested in the game, he was actually asking me how to play it. When he finally thought he understood it enough, he asked me if he could play.
Until that point, I would have had an easier time believing the Tooth Fairy was real than envisioning my Dad ever playing a video game. I had never known my Dad to play any video game. But here we were, me sitting on the floor of my bedroom watching him work his way through the levels of Tetris as he sat on my bed.
For many weeks after that, he would come to my room in the evenings and we would play Tetris together, always competing to see who could get the highest score each night. And this is why Tetris is still one of my favorite games ever. It created a bonding experience with my Dad and me. It helped create memories that I still think back on and remember fondly.
Tetris went on to be one of the most popular games worldwide of all-time, and for me personally, it’s a first-ballot hall-of-famer.
