Tetris has a long, long place in my heart. I remember having it on Gameboy, but never quite "getting" it and thinking of it like some kinda timekiller while I was in the car on my way to church as a child or something. It was okay, and the song was cool, but that's about it. I didn't really seriously consider it again until I was in high school, when Tetris became a calculator game for my TI-83+ (which is still on my desk at my office job to this day). At this point, Tetris became competitive, and what else is a burned out gifted kid to do but play Tetris in class instead of focusing on the lectures at all? So, play Tetris I did. A lot. It was between that or Phoenix (think Galaga but with powerups) but Phoenix got kinda boring. So, Tetris it was.

At some point, I got a Nintendo DS, and naturally got the Tetris game for it. This is where the addiction REALLY started taking hold, as it was 20 levels of Marathon Mode, and each level (or couple of levels) was dedicated to a video game, so the music would change and the background would change. I was enchanted, haha. I'd stay up until like, 3am almost every night to just grind away. It was at this point I started really experiencing Flow State or, more notoriously, The Tetris Effect. It was a therapuetic experience to literally turn my brain off and watch my body play Tetris on autopilot. And over time, I got more consistent, more accurate, and more addicted. Just more and more time of turning my brain off. It felt amazing, and I wanted more. I'd continue to play Tetris on my DS until college.

In college, things shifted a bit. Facebook was starting to release apps and games to be associated with Facebook, including the infamous Bejeweled and Farmville. I played Bejeweled a bit, but eventually that changed. Eventually I found out about Tetris Friends. While the Facebook extension was pretty cool, I ended up dedicating myself to the Tetris Friends website instead of the Facebook app. Tetris Friends did a lot of new things for me that helped increase replayability and engagement. They introduced microtransactions that were earned from meeting goals or performance things, so you'd get cool block skins, avatars, music, etc. You could also unlock performance tweaks, like the sensitivity, fall speed, etc. It was pretty revolutionary at the time. At one point in my Tetris Friends grinding, I hit one of the top 50 Marathon Daily Scores in the world. I was obsessed with it. It also introduced me to playing on the PC, which I think I'm MUCH faster at, and therefore its much more fun. I picked up DJing at the time, so I'd just put on some house or trance music and just grind away playing Tetris. I'd do this a LOT, and again, it was therapuetic, often helping me with breakups, depression, grades, stress, you name it. It was the perfect escape.

Eventually, I grew up and moved to Chicago from Atlanta. I still played Tetris where I could, but not on Tetris Friends. Maybe I'd play the PS3 version or something. I still played and enjoyed it, but trying to master T-Spin Triples and the algos associated with it was proving to be frustrating so I kinda moved away from it. Again, playing more casually. It kept going that way until a very, very important point in time: Tetris Effect (PS4) was released. This would prove to change everything.

There is no way you didn't get a little awed while watching that. When I watched it for the first time, I think I cried, because it hit on so many points of why I love the game and what it means to me and what it did for me. I will always love Tetris for this reason. The new title was even more into that Flow State, and really helped me during my time of major depression while I lived in Boston. It definitely means a lot to me. Since then, I got a little sad about my speed and consistency when using a controller, so I moved on to TETR.IO which is a much more competitive and community-based "battle mode" style for Tetris. I mean, battle mode is fine and all, but its not what I live for, and I find it frustrating a lot of the time. Still, I'm decent at it. I'm pretty quick and there is admittedly a lot of fun in just DUNKING on opponents. So once again, just putting on tunes (now Vaporwave) and going at it again for hours without stopping. It felt good.

Anyway, if I find more things to talk about here, I'll do that. Perhaps I'll also link some more articles or memes as I come across them! Compile it all together for funsies and other Tetris enthusiasts!