Tetris is back!
A 2001 sequel released on PC, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2, Nintendo Gamecube and Xbox, wherein you get six different challenges, or "worlds". You play Tetris in your play area, or tetrion, to help the Minos escape. You must complete all six up to level 15 to get the Golden Ending, and to access classic Tetris. The variants are as follows:
- Tetris: The classic game.
- Square Tetris: Tetris with double the goal, but you're allowed to combine tetrominos into squares. Clearing a line with part of a gold square, made of the same tetromino, in it, nets the player 10 bonus lines. Clearing a line with part of a silver square nets the player 5 bonus lines.
- Cascade Tetris: A variant wherein gravity is universal. Gravity is important to determining levels.
- Sticky Tetris: Clear the bottom line of "garbage blocks", but pieces of the same color stick together. Create a 25-square shape and it disappears instantly.
- Hotline Tetris: Six hotlines which are the only lines that count. Higher hotlines give more points.
- Fusion Tetris: Similar to Sticky Tetris, but with a "fusion block" in the bottom line, and you must fuse indestructible "atom blocks" with the "fusion block".
Tetris Worlds is also historically notable as the first Tetris game to be beholden to the Tetris Guideline gameplay specifications to which all Tetris games henceforth must adhere (see the Tetris trivia page).
Tropes occurring in Tetris Worlds:
- Arrange Mode: Five variations
on the classic formula, ranging from simply enabling gravity for stray pieces to the far-fetched "Fusion Tetris", whose goal is to combine as many 1×1 blocks as possible rather than clear lines. Players are slowly introduced to these game modes as they play the campaign. The Game Boy Advance version also has "Popular Tetris", which is accessed via cheat code and emulates the classic Game Boy version, gameplay mechanics included.
- Embedded Precursor: "Popular Tetris", exclusive to the Game Boy Advance version, is an emulation of the classic Game Boy edition of Tetris.
- Excuse Plot: Which is still more plot than you usually get in a Tetris game. Apparently, the Minos (individual blocks that make up the iconic Tetriminos) are Animate Inanimate Objects, the Matrix (game area) is a "Tetrion", a device which serves as a gateway to other planets that one can open by playing Tetris, and the Minos are using the Tetrions as a means of exodus from their soon-to-be-doomed home planet, Hadar 4.
- Updated Re-release: The Xbox and Gamecube versions, being developed by Radical Entertainment instead of Blue Planet Software like the PS2 and PC versions. Both versions includes improved graphics, a different title screen, and a newly rendered opening cutscene, but the Xbox version has the added bonus of playing online via Xbox Live.
