“Gaiden” is a useful word.
It refers to a side-story, which may or may not be included in the official continuity
of a work.
You’ve certainly heard of Ninja Gaiden, and you might be familiar with Shining Force
Gaiden for the Game Gear, or Zelda Gaiden, which would eventually become known as Majora’s
Mask.
In many cases, it can mark a significant departure from established mechanics, as Fire Emblem
Gaiden did back on the Famicom, creating branching class promotions, establishing level-based
magic, and relaxing weapon durability issues.
And then there’s the whole nonsense about Barkley: Shut Up and Jam Gaiden, for which
I’ll refer you to Eric’s review on this very channel.
But enough about serious games.
WE WANT TETRIS.
Tetris Battle Gaiden strips away all of the series’ Russian influence and strives to
make it as cute as humanly possible.
Cossack dancers?
NOPE.
We’ve got princesses!
And rabbits.
And Best-of-three competitions.
That’s pretty much the entire scene here.
Rather than having time-unlimited challenges or puzzles, the goal in this outing is to
defeat a series of opponents in succession, hence the “Battle” part of the name.
You want personal challenges?
Go play Tetris Worlds.
This is for people who want their Tetris with a side of Ruthless.
To that end, each character in TBG (not to be confused with TMBG) has several different
levels of magic, which can be gathered by clearing lines with crystals and deployed
using the Up button.
Since the up button is occupied with magic, there’s no flash-drop in this game like
in more recent Tetris releases.
Also, you can’t just spin a piece forever to stall for time, a practice that has rustled
the jimmies of more than a few puzzle-game purists.
But put that aside.
The real appeal of the game is having a Tetris competition with a significantly more developed
feel of interaction with your opponent.
There are a number of strategic advantages to be gained through use of Magic, be they
impairing your opponent’s ability to get down off a big stack, or buying yourself some
time, or merely using the casting to eliminate either an inconvenient piece you’ve just
been handed or a potential strike from your foe.
Also, both players feed off of the same “incoming pieces” display in the middle of the screen,
with the topmost tetromino going to whoever placed one most recently.
This can sometimes inform your play, whether you want to hang back and avoid speed-dropping
your current block so your opponent gets stuck with that bothersome z-looking piece, or if
there’s a straight line up next and you want to throw your current piece any old place
so you can grab it and clear a Tetris.
They’re fairly small changes, all told, but the differences they bring to the game
itself have much larger ramifications.
Here in the states, we never really saw anything like this.
Our falling-block-puzzle games were more focused on the single-player aspect, like classic
Tetris or Columns, rather than more head-to-head-centric challenges like Puyo Puyo (AKA Dr. Robotnik’s
Mean Bean Machine) or later offerings like Meteos.
There’s certainly a place for both styles in any collection, so if you’ve got an import-capable
SNES, it’s worth it to track down a copy of Tetris Battle Gaiden.
Because nothing says Tetris like a pumpkin-headed ghost fighting a witch doctor.
Without any Russian influence whatsoever.
Charles Barkley approves of this message.