Tetris Unplugged

Love Tetris, but are devoid of electricity, a laptop and a fully charged Game Boy? There is a solution, two of them!

The Mini Tetris Cube is like a Rubik’s Cube, with 3D Tetris pieces. You play with the Mini Tetris cube by dumping the pieces out and then arranging them back into a 3D cube. There are supposedly over 9,000 solutions to discover. That’s a lot of replay value! Plus it is portable. Imagination Entertainment calls it the “next big craze”, but apparently they haven’t seen Tetris tower.

Tetris Tower more accurately represents Tetris, minus clearing lines. You drop blocks into a grid and the goal is to get them to arrange into one giant block. There is a clock on the game so you can test your skills against time or watch the seconds go by when you realize you are stuck with only Z shaped pieces. The downside is Tetris Tower requires batteries to power the clock and the flashing lights that tell you what piece you need to drop next, so this is pseudo-unplugged.

For me, the brain teasing Tetris cube is the winner in this battle. Tetris Tower is too much like Tetris and the real life controls won’t allow you to swiftly slide L pieces into place.