The endless ocean of Tetris remakes, clones, rip-offs, official and unofficial versions, ports, sequels and everything else under the sun, finding a version of this game that is even close to what was already a perfect puzzle game is pretty much impossible. This is where Tetris Blast comes in (or Bombliss if your in Japan). Released and only released on the original GameBoy, Tetris Blast includes bombs as part of the pieces. When rows of the playfield are filled, the pieces do not simply disappear like they do in regular Tetris. The rows disappear depending on how many bombs are in that row, exploding and taking out chunks of Tetris pieces that surround them. Every eighth piece is made entirely is made entirely of bombs. It is possible for rows to be filled with no bombs. Four bombs arranged into the shape of an O or a "square", it will become a larger bomb, allowing for a bigger explosion.
Tetris Blast has other modes of play, including Contest and Fight. In Contest, the player goes through stages with layouts of blocks, with the purpose of trying to clear the entire playfield to move on to the next stage. At the start of each stage, the player has 100 points. For each piece that enters the playfield, 1 point is lost. If the player runs out of points, the game ends. Creating explosions with large numbers of lines gives the player points back and when the playfield is empty, the remaining points are added to a total, and the next level starts.
In Fight, the player battles a small enemy who travels around the playfield. The various enemies in this mode can cause the blocks to rise up by drilling into the ground, eating the bombs in the pieces, preventing you from causing an explosion and causing the player to lose control over the piece in play. When a piece is placed on top of the enemy, it is flattened, preventing it from using it's attack for a short while as it climbs back above the Tetris pieces. To attack the enemy, the player must set off an explosion that hits it, causing its life bar to zero. If the player can clear the entire playfield of blocks or bring the enemies health down to zero, the enemy is defeated, and the player fights the next one in the roster.
Overall, this is a fun variation of Tetris and it should be tried by anyone who loves a good game of Tetris in their spare time.
The Good:
+It is a fun and well designed version of Tetris that's NOT vanilla Tetris.
+It has some challenge to it and requires some thought.