Tetris for the NES has been generating headlines all year thanks to the explosion of interest when 13-year-old Willis ‘Blue Scuti’ Gibson became the first person to ‘beat’ the game. Now, Nintendo’s giving you the opportunity to test your own skills with this version of the game, as it’s just about to land in the Nintendo Switch Online classic game library.
Tetris officially launches into the Nintendo Switch Online NES library on December 12, Nintendo confirmed this week. This is one of the earliest versions of the game, and the first to be published by Nintendo on a home console. Thanks to its robust esports scene, it remains one of the most notable Tetris variants to this day, and many players simply refer to it as “classic Tetris.”
If you’ve seen headlines over the past year about all sorts of wild-sounding Tetris accomplishments, those have all been about this version of the game. Classic Tetris was meant to get so fast that it would be impossible to continue playing past level 29, but players eventually developed techniques to hit the buttons fast enough to make it far deeper into the game.
The community’s skill development came to a head in late 2023, when Blue Scuti became the very first person to ‘beat’ Tetris – crashing the game at level 157. Other players soon managed similar feats, and the community kept one-upping each other with new score world records and impressive tournament wins. One player has even far outdone the crash by achieving the game’s mythical ‘Rebirth.’
Will you be able to do all this on Switch when classic Tetris lands there? In theory, yes, though the Switch’s NES emulator has a hair of input lag that’ll mean you’re playing at a handicap compared to those using original hardware. But if you want an example of just how wild the accomplishments these prodigies have managed over the past year truly are, you’ll be able to find out firsthand very soon.
These are the best NES games of all time.