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Playing Tetris Is Good For You
An anonymous reader writes "Some UK researchers found out that playing Tetris is actually good for people with post-traumatic stress disorder, by interfering with memory. I wonder if playing Minesweeper is effective against boss-inflicted stress."
How does one "win" at Tetris?
Some Tetris variants have a win condition. Notably, Game Boy tetris launches various rockets when you achieve certain scoring goals. It's not VERY exciting, but if you just think back to how exciting the Game Boy was when it had come out (especially at my age, it was pretty special for me being just at the perfect age to be awed by that little Z80-powered masterpiece - now I'm just duly impressed) then you can recapture a little of that excitement.
I find that it's actually hard for me to truly enjoy the thrill of victory in most of those classic games because so many of them are such a grind. You had to do so much trial and error. The nice thing about more immersive games is that you can feel your way through them better (if the game is designed worth a damn.) I managed to complete a lot of even the difficult later missions in GTA3 the first time, for example, because the game is so fluid. (Some other missions kicked my ass over and over again. But anyway.) But Tetris on the game boy is not one of them. The head to head play is still a worker, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You're obviously not talking about the NES version, so which one are you referring to?
Microsoft's ancient port of Tetris to Windows 3.1 used a type equivalent to int16_t for the player's score. Certainly Tetramino for NES can track up to 6.5 million points, and Lockjaw can track up to 2 billion.
The Gameboy one was always the go-to version for me.