It catapulted the Game Boy into the leading handheld game system, has captivated millions of people who otherwise never would've picked up a controller, and topped EGM's 100 Best Games of All Time list (EGM #100). That game is Tetris, and this old standby of a game is getting dusted off and given some new limbs with which to climb to the top of the next generation of puzzle games.

　　Since Alexey Pajitnov created the game in 1985, Tetris has been ported to just about every console and PC platform available. It's sold over 50 million copies worldwide - 30 million on Game Boy alone. But how can Henk Rogers, director of The Tetris Company and founder of Blue Planet Software (which is the worldwide agent for overseeing the creation of Tetris titles), keep the game fresh? "It's like keeping people interested in playing golf. You keep on making better courses, better clubs - that's what we do with Tetris," he told us.

　　A new Tetris title is headed to every current and future gaming platform in the coming months. Tetris DX for Game Boy Color and Magical Tetris Challenge for the Nintendo 64 have already been released but will soon be followed in mid-1999 in the US by Blue Planet's next-generation Tetris title, The Next Tetris (dubbed TNT), for the PlayStation and, eventually, the Dreamcast. But with this next round of Tetris titles, competition will be the name of the game. "We have created a very good handicap system which allows two people of very different ranks to play a very exciting game," he explains. "The objective of The Next Tetris is to achieve the goal of your skill level in a set amount of time. For example, if you're level 12, you need to dig through 12 lines of garbage in two minutes. If I was level six, I'd have to dig through six lines of garbage in two minutes. If one of us is playing above our skill level, all we have to do is win three games in a row, and we move to the next skill level and vice versa."

　　With the network capabilities of the Dreamcast, it's very likely that you will soon be able to compete against pros across the country. This kind of Tetris competition is already being formed on the Internet but will make the jump to console once Net play comes standard on tomorrow's consoles. "In history, Tetris has been a solitaire game - you play it by yourself and nobody knows how anybody else plays. That's going to change in the future. We're going to have national competitions and publish the results and broadcast the actual games that are played over the Internet, so everyone can see how the top players play."

　　Other innovations have been made to the game throughout its history as well. Arika, developer of Street Fighter EX and Fighting Layer, created an arcade game called Tetris: The Grand Master. That title includes two new features, the Initial Rotation System, letting you rotate a block above the pit right away, and the Temporary Landing System, showing you where your piece will land by use of a "ghost" image. This game also features power-up blocks and new modes of play not seen in any previous Tetris title.

　　"Tetris is like Happy Birthday. You don't sing it all the time, but when the time comes, everybody sings it," Rogers says. "It's been around as long as anyone can remember. So Tetris has become that kind of a title on the console. First of all, on handheld machines, there is no game that comes close to Tetris, because Tetris is so geometrically simple and compelling."