Beneath the seemingly innocent exterior of Tetris lurks a game of complex mathematical laws. Here is a quick guide to the ‘Rules of Tetris’.
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Each Tetris piece is called a tetrimino (from the Greek ‘tetra’, meaning ‘four’) and is made up of a different configuration of four smaller squares. There are seven tetriminos in total.
Each piece
that falls down the screen is randomly chosen from one of these seven
types. The player must rotate the falling pieces and slot them together
to create a solid horizontal line, which is then cleared from the
screen. Fail to clear lines and the pieces start to stack up. If they
fill the screen, it’s ‘Game Over’.
Clearing one line at a time
is worth the least points, with two or three lines scoring higher.
The ultimate aim, though, is to clear four lines at once (called a
‘Tetris’) for the highest possible score.
However, you can only
create a ‘Tetris’ by using the long ‘I’-shaped piece, by arranging
pieces in such a way that a vertical gap is left. Skilled players plan
ahead by keeping an eye on the ‘Next’ window, which shows the pieces
that are coming next.
Bonus points are awarded if you speed up
the descent of a piece by pushing down on the +Control Pad. This is
easy at first, when the game runs slowly, but at higher skill levels
the pieces fall much faster and are hence harder to manoeuvre into the
right position.
Such is the unique mathematical nature of Tetris
that some thinkers have pondered whether, theoretically, it can be
played forever. However, the fact that the blocks appear randomly means
that the player is bound to lose eventually, no matter how fast their
fingers are!
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