Going back to my youth, I had played every game imaginable, from the first hand held games such as Pac Man to all the Commodore 64 games of the early to mid 80s.
Then, all of a sudden, out of no where appeared the Game Boy. My first experience of it was my older brother receiving one as his main Christmas present. A large hand held gaming device from Nintendo featuring games such as Tetris and Super Mario.
The occasions my brother allowed me to play, I found it so addictive and it really did nail a generation of gamers to the turn of the decade. It’s release in the UK in 1990 came at a time where everything seemed to be on the move, and also compact.
I ended up sneaking into my brothers room when he went out with friends, myself not old enough to go to clubs or pubs at the time, and sitting there listening to the radio, the game of Tetris stood out as something to get engrossed in.
Tertris went on to enjoy world fame, on every platform, computer, console, hand held device and that was for good reason. Its simplicity yet complexity as the game went on made it open to all ages and abilities, where you would rotate the shapes to create lines which would disappear with each score, thus shifting the blocks above down by evaporating the blocks lines up below.
I have played Tetris a few times since on my laptop, and kind of forgot about it for the last few years. However, a recent visit to online gaming website solitaire.org helped relieve a bit of boredom during my lunch break.
A quick mooch around the games and I stumbled across https://www.solitaire.org/candy-fiesta/ which reminded me so much of Tetris.
The game is intuitive and easy to pick up quickly. You basically line up the shapes and colours to evaporate lines allowing new shapes to fall from above. You can match sideways or up and down, but not diagonally. It’s extremely simple but very much addictive in the same way Tetris is. You can pick up this game for five minutes or half an hour and its a great way to just shut your mind off for a bit.
It lists your high score and the amount of moves to get to that score. Music can be turned on or off, the game gives players 65 moves to score as many points as they can.
Highly recommended next time you fancy shutting off from the world for a few minutes.
Though it has now made me also want to dig out the Game Boy again!