10 Best Tetris Games of All TimeFrom 1984 to Today

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In 1984 a software engineer in Moscow wrote a little puzzle game on a computer that could not even draw pictures. Four decades later it is everywhere: on phones and handhelds, in VR headsets, in a 99-player battle royale and in an esports scene where teenagers keep finding new things to do with a cartridge from 1989. The Tetris Company counts more than 520 million copies sold across all its versions, which makes Tetris one of the best-selling game series ever made.

A big number 10 built from colorful Tetris blocks, with pieces falling against a night sky

There are hundreds of versions, official and otherwise. These are the ten we think matter most: the ones that defined the game, changed how it is played or are simply the best way to play it now. They are in release order, and each one ends with where you can play it in 2026. At the end there is a bonus: a game of our own.

1. Tetris (1984)

A green-on-black computer terminal showing Tetris pieces drawn with bracket characters

Alexey Pajitnov was working at the Soviet Academy of Sciences when he set out to recreate a pentomino puzzle he had loved as a child. Twelve five-square shapes felt like too many, so he cut them down to the seven four-square tetrominoes, and named the game after them and his favorite sport: "tetra" plus "tennis".

His Electronika 60 had no graphics, so the walls were drawn with text characters and every block was a pair of brackets. At first there was no score and there were no levels. What it did have was the idea that a full row disappears, and that was enough. Copies spread from computer to computer across Moscow and then, amid a famous fight over who owned the rights (told in the 2023 film Tetris), around the world.

  • Made by: Alexey Pajitnov
  • First on: Electronika 60, 1984
  • Play it today: a faithful recreation in Tetris Forever on Switch, PlayStation, Xbox and PC

2. Tetris (Game Boy)

Game Boy-style Tetris in four shades of green, with an I piece about to drop into a gap

This is the version that turned Tetris into a worldwide habit. Nintendo bundled it with the Game Boy in North America and Europe, so for millions of people the first thing they ever did on a handheld was rotate a falling block to the tune of a Russian folk song. With more than 35 million copies sold, it is the best-selling Game Boy game of all time.

It was also one of the first games to use the Game Link Cable: two players, two Game Boys, and every double, triple or Tetris you cleared pushed garbage onto your friend's screen. Tetris battles, where your clears attack your rival, start here.

  • Made by: Nintendo (R&D1)
  • First on: Game Boy, 1989
  • Play it today: Game Boy – Nintendo Classics on Switch, with a Nintendo Switch Online membership and online two-player (Tetris DX, the 1998 color version, is there too)

3. Tetris (NES)

NES-style Tetris with blue blocks on black: a tall stack with a one-block-wide gap and an I piece falling into it

Nintendo's home console version is simple and strict: no hold, no hard drop and no ghost piece, and the pieces get brutally fast as the levels climb. That strictness is exactly why it became the world's most competitive Tetris. Since 2010 it has been the game of the Classic Tetris World Championship. Its players have found ways to move pieces faster than the game was ever meant to allow: first by "hypertapping" the D-pad, and since 2020 by "rolling" their fingers against the back of the controller.

Then, in December 2023, 13-year-old Willis "Blue Scuti" Gibson reached level 157 and the game froze. He was the first person ever to "beat" NES Tetris by crashing it, more than 34 years after it came out.

  • Made by: Nintendo (R&D1)
  • First on: NES, 1989
  • Play it today: NES – Nintendo Classics on Switch, with a Nintendo Switch Online membership (added in December 2024, its first digital re-release)

4. Tetrisphere

A sphere covered in colored blocks floating in space, with holes showing a glowing core and a piece hovering above it

Tetrisphere throws away almost every rule of Tetris. The playfield is a sphere wrapped in layers of blocks, and instead of filling rows you drop pieces onto matching shapes on its surface to blast through the layers and dig down to the core. It began life as an Atari Jaguar game called Phear, but that version was canceled, and the finished game came out only on the Nintendo 64.

It is strange, colorful and unlike anything else on this list. Neil Voss's techno score is one of the best on the console (IGN ranked it the fourth-best Nintendo 64 soundtrack in 2000), and it has aged well.

  • Made by: H2O Entertainment, published by Nintendo
  • First on: Nintendo 64, 1997
  • Play it today: original cartridge only (no re-release yet)

5. Tetris: The Grand Master

An arcade Tetris screen where the lower stack has faded to faint outlines and a piece has just landed at the bottom, beside a gold GM grade and level 999

Arika's arcade series, known to fans as TGM, is Tetris at its most extreme. Past a certain level the pieces stop falling and simply appear on the stack (fans call it 20G), so you have to place them almost by reflex. You are graded as you play, and only the very best reach the top grade, GM. In the later games, the final test is a credits round where every piece turns invisible as it lands, and you finish from memory.

TGM came out in 1998, followed by TGM2 in 2000 and the legendary Tetris: The Grand Master 3 – Terror-Instinct in 2005. Twenty years later, Tetris: The Grand Master 4 – Absolute Eye arrived on Steam. Its launch was rough, but patches have since whipped it into shape.

  • Made by: Arika
  • First on: Arcade, 1998
  • Play it today: TGM and TGM2 Plus in Arcade Archives on Switch and PlayStation 4; TGM4 on Steam and, since June 2026, on Switch

6. The New Tetris

Tetris with a gold and a silver four-by-four square in the stack, a hold box and three next pieces, in front of a stepped pyramid and palm trees at dusk

The New Tetris gave us something nearly every Tetris game has used since: the hold piece, a box where you can park a piece and swap it back in later. It also shows the next three pieces instead of one, and it adds a new goal. Fit four pieces together into a 4×4 square, and the square turns gold if they are all the same shape or silver if they are mixed. Either kind is worth extra lines when you clear it.

Clear enough lines and you unlock real-time flybys of famous landmarks, while Neil Voss, back from Tetrisphere, provides a pulsing electronic soundtrack. It was also a superb four-player party game.

  • Made by: H2O Entertainment and Blue Planet Software, published by Nintendo
  • First on: Nintendo 64, 1999
  • Play it today: original cartridge only (no re-release yet)

7. Tetris DS

A dual-screen handheld with an 8-bit landscape on the top screen and a Tetris playfield on the bottom

Nintendo dressed each mode of Tetris DS in the look of one of its own classics, from Super Mario Bros. to The Legend of Zelda and Metroid, and used both screens and the stylus to play with the formula. It was a fantastic multiplayer game too: up to 10 players nearby, or four online. It sold more than 2.7 million copies and remains one of the best-reviewed handheld versions.

  • Made by: Nintendo
  • First on: Nintendo DS, 2006
  • Play it today: original cartridge only (official online play ended when Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection closed in 2014, though fan-run servers keep it going)

8. Puyo Puyo Tetris

A Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 match: a Tetris board on the left against a board of Puyo blobs on the right, with a character leaping between them
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2. Image: SEGA

Sega's big idea: put Tetris and its own blob-matching puzzler, Puyo Puyo, in the same game and let them fight. You can play Tetris while your opponent plays Puyo Puyo, swap between the two on a timer or mix tetrominoes and blobs on the same board. It is cheerful, deep and the best couch versus game on this list.

It came out in Japan in 2014 and reached the West in 2017. Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 followed in 2020, and Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S on Nintendo Switch 2 in 2025.

  • Made by: Sega (Sonic Team)
  • First on: Nintendo 3DS, Wii U, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita, 2014 (Japan)
  • Play it today: Puyo Puyo Tetris and Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 on PC (Steam); Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 on PlayStation, Xbox and Switch; Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S on Switch 2

9. Tetris Effect

Tetris Effect: Connected: a glowing well inside a ring of light, surrounded by a sea of particles and a whale made of light
Tetris Effect: Connected, the Deep stage. Image: Enhance Experience

The "Tetris effect" is what happens when you play so much that falling blocks follow you into your dreams. Tetris Effect, co-produced by Tetsuya Mizuguchi of Rez and Lumines fame, turns that idea into a journey: every move and line clear adds to the music, and every stage has its own world of light and particles. Its Zone mechanic lets you stop time and clear more than four lines at once.

It is the most beautiful Tetris ever made, and it plays wonderfully in VR. Eurogamer named it game of the year in 2018. Tetris Effect: Connected (2020) added multiplayer, online and local, including a mode where three players team up against a boss. A mixed-reality version has been announced for 2027.

  • Made by: Monstars and Resonair (with Stage Games on Connected), published by Enhance
  • First on: PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR, 2018
  • Play it today: Tetris Effect: Connected on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and Meta Quest

10. Tetris 99

One Tetris board in the middle of dozens of tiny opponent boards, some of them knocked out, with attacks flying between them

Ninety-nine players, one winner. Clear several lines at once or chain your clears together and you send garbage to someone else's board, you choose whom to target, and the last player standing wins. Tetris 99 brought the battle royale to puzzle games, and it is going strong in 2026, with regular themed Maximus Cup events.

  • Made by: Arika, published by Nintendo
  • First on: Nintendo Switch, 2019
  • Play it today: Nintendo Switch, included with a Nintendo Switch Online membership

Honorable mentions

  • Sega's Tetris (1988): the biggest arcade game in Japan in 1989, and the base for the rules of Tetris: The Grand Master. Its home version is on the Sega Genesis Mini (Mega Drive Mini outside North America).
  • Magical Tetris Challenge (1998): Capcom's versus game with Mickey and friends, where attacks drop oversized "magical" pieces on your opponent. It was directed by Hidemaro Fujibayashi, who went on to direct The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
  • Tetris Forever (2024): Digital Eclipse's playable museum of more than 15 classic versions and the stories behind them, plus a new game, Tetris Time Warp.
  • TETR.IO and Jstris: free, fast fan-made games you play in a browser, with big online communities. They are unofficial, but they are where many competitive players train.

Bonus: ColorTris (our game)

ColorTris on a phone: a stack of glowing X-shaped blocks in many colors, with the next block, level, lines cleared and touch controls
ColorTris on Android

We could not write about Tetris without mentioning our own: ColorTris is our "glowrious" (as in glorious, pun intended) take on the genre. Pick from 36 luminous colors to light up the board and play with 32 distinct shapes, not just the classic square. It is free to play on Windows, Linux, Android and the web.

Read more about ColorTris

Everybody has a favorite Tetris, and these are ours. Did we miss yours? Tell us

Tetris ® & © 1985~2026 Tetris Holding. Licensed to The Tetris Company. Game screenshots are © their publishers and come from their official press material. The pixel-art illustrations are our own.

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