atomicpoet

For people unaware of all the role-playing game (RPG) subgenres, here’s a brief explainer:

TTRPG – Tabletop RPG. The original RPG. Played on a literal table. Dice, paper, friends, arguments. Everything else evolved from here.

Examples:

• Dungeons & Dragons
• Pathfinder
• Shadowrun

LARP / LARPG – Live Action Role-Playing Game. The version where people physically dress as their characters and act things out in person. Foam weapons, costumes, fake accents, and enough in-character drama to power three soap operas. LARPing as a concept goes back to the 1970s, right alongside early tabletop like D&D, but it didn’t get the “LARP” acronym until the 1980s.

Examples:

• Vampire: The Masquerade LARP events
• Amtgard
• Dagorhir

CRPG – Computer RPG. Born from tabletop, moved onto computers. The CPU handles all the dice rolls you don’t want to argue about.

Examples:

• Baldur’s Gate
• Fallout (1997)
• Planescape: Torment

TBRPG – Turn-Based RPG. Everyone takes turns. This is the “classic” RPG format, so people often just call it an RPG.

Examples:

• Divinity: Original Sin II
• Wasteland 3
• Trails in the Sky

SRPG / TRPG – Strategy (or Tactical) RPG. Same turn-based idea, but on grids—squares or hexes—with multiple units to command.

Examples:

• Fire Emblem
• Final Fantasy Tactics
• Tactics Ogre

RTwPRPG – Real-Time with Pause RPG. You pause to assign orders, unpause to watch them happen. Baldur’s Gate fans still swear by this.

Examples:

• Baldur’s Gate II
• Pillars of Eternity
• Dragon Age: Origins

ARPG – Action RPG. Real-time combat. No turns, no waiting—just swing when you feel like it.

Examples:

• Diablo II
• Dark Souls
• Kingdom Hearts

IRPG – Idle RPG. The game mostly plays itself. Perfect for people who like progression bars but don’t like playing.

Examples:

• Clicker Heroes
• Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms
• AFK Arena

DBRPG – Deck-Building RPG. RPG progression tied to card decks. You level up by upgrading your deck rather than just your stats.

Examples:

• Slay the Spire
• Monster Train
• Griftlands

SurRPG – Survival RPG. Harsh environments, resource scarcity, and RPG progression systems. The game’s main plot is “don’t die.”

Examples:

• Outward
• Kenshi
• The Long Dark

RLRPG – Rogue-like RPG. Procedural generation, permadeath, and heavy RNG baked into an RPG framework.

Examples:

• Darkest Dungeon
• Stoneshard
• Tangledeep

SLRPG – Souls-like RPG. RPGs built around Soulsborne-style combat: stamina-based melee, brutal bosses, minimalist storytelling.

Examples:

• Dark Souls III
• The Surge 2
• Lords of the Fallen

JRPG – Japanese RPG. Made in Japan or heavily inspired by Japan’s approach. Console-heavy. Drama-heavy. Usually turn-based or action hybrid.

Examples:

• Final Fantasy VII
• Persona 5
• Dragon Quest XI

KRPG – Korean RPG. Similar to JRPGs but usually more PC-oriented. Often online.

Examples:

• Lost Ark
• MapleStory
• Vindictus

WRPG – Western RPG. Pretty much any RPG from the West that isn’t imitating JRPGs.

Examples:

• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
• Mass Effect
• Fallout: New Vegas

PRPG – Polish RPG. Technically a WRPG branch, but with its own personality. Darker tone, folkloric influences, and PC-first mentality.

Examples:

• The Witcher series
• Seven: The Days Long Gone
• The Thaumaturge

GRPG – German RPG. RPGs developed in Germany, usually open-world Eurojank epics with handcrafted maps, tough early-game difficulty, and an earnest-but-campy tone.

Examples:

• Gothic II
• Risen
• ELEX

LatRPG – Latin American RPG. RPGs from Latin America, often mixing local folklore, indigenous mythology, and JRPG/ARPG elements. “LARPG” isn’t used because Live Action Role-Playing already took it.

Examples:

• Mulaka
• Tunche
• Cris Tales

MORPG – Multiplayer Online RPG. Small-scale online RPGs, often instanced or lobby-based.

Examples:

• Phantasy Star Online 2
• Monster Hunter: World,
• Dauntless

MMORPG – Massively Multiplayer Online RPG. Persistent worlds, thousands of players, endless grinds.

Examples:

• World of Warcraft
• Final Fantasy XIV
• Guild Wars 2

MOORPG – Massive Online Open-World RPG. Marketing term for the “bigger” MMOs. You’ve seen the ads.

Examples:

• Black Desert Online
• ArcheAge
• EVE Online

MRPG – Mobile RPG. Made for phones. Often gacha-heavy, session-based, or both.

Examples:

• Honkai: Star Rail
• Raid: Shadow Legends
• Summoners War

BRPG – Browser RPG. Runs in your web browser. Lightweight, accessible, usually free-to-play.

Examples:

• Kingdom of Loathing
• AdventureQuest Worlds
• Urban Dead

VRRPG – Virtual Reality RPG. Built for VR platforms. Often more about immersion than traditional RPG mechanics.

Examples:

• Zenith: The Last City
• OrbusVR
• The Mage’s Tale

BBRPG – Bulletin Board RPG. Forum- or post-based roleplay. Writing-heavy, rules-light.

Examples:

• Gaia Online RP forums
• NationStates roleplay boards
• Myth-Weavers

So yeah, there’s a lot of alphabet in the RPG soup. Some of it’s legit, some of it’s marketing garbage, and some of it’s just fans inventing labels because that’s what fans do.

But they’re all chasing the same dopamine hit: numbers go up, loot gets shinier, and suddenly your “quick session” has eaten the entire weekend.

Let’s not beat around the bush: Will Rock is basically Serious Sam.

That’s the first comparison anyone makes. And they’re not wrong. It plays almost exactly like Croteam’s arena shooter—fast, chaotic, and ridiculous. But calling it a copy misses something important. Because Will Rock isn’t just a clone. It’s a four-month miracle, a budget game from a brand-new studio, and a strange, beautiful mess stuffed with quirks that make it unforgettable. That is, if you were lucky enough to stumble into it.

Saber Interactive was brand new in 2003. Will Rock was their very first game. They built it in just over four months. Four months to create an entire FPS from scratch on a brand-new engine. An engine that didn’t even have a name yet—it would later become Saber3D. At the time, Will Rock was basically a tech demo wearing an Ancient Greece skin.

The game came out in June 2003 under Ubisoft. But the marketing wasn’t exactly explosive. The most famous thing about it wasn’t a trailer. It was the soundtrack. Specifically: Twisted Sister’s “I Wanna Rock.” It’s definitely in the trailer. It’s apparently in the main menu. YouTube uploads show it.

And yet… after replaying the game, I never heard it once. That’s not a song you just miss. So maybe it’s a ghost track. Maybe it’s a Mandela Effect. Either way, it’s the most famous song that may or may not actually be in the game.

Distribution was weird, too. Ubisoft sold it in stores. But it also came bundled with Gigabyte PC-CDROM drives. A lot of players didn’t buy it—they just found it on their new hardware. That’s how many people first played Will Rock: by accident. Which might explain why it feels like a half-remembered fever dream now.

The story is early-2000s action nonsense. Willford Rockwell, archaeologist, gets possessed by Prometheus. Prometheus gives him powers. He goes to war with Zeus to save his girlfriend. That’s it. But the Greek mythology setting works. Where Serious Sam had Egypt and aliens, Will Rock has Minotaurs, Harpies, Centaurs, Cyclops, skeleton warriors, and massive Atlas statues that rip themselves free from pedestals and come for you.

And this is where the boom begins.

Minotaurs don’t just die—they split into more Minotaurs when you kill them. Atlas statues don’t just stand there—they crash forward like a granite linebacker. Harpies dive-bomb screaming. Rat-bombs explode. Enemies accidentally damage each other in the chaos. The screen becomes a mess of smoke, blood, and flying marble.

The weapons make it louder. You’ve got the standard pistol, shotgun, machine gun, and minigun. But then it gets weird. The shotgun looks like a lever-action rifle and uses rifle ammo. The Medusa Gun turns enemies to stone so you can smash them into gravel. The Acid Gun inflates enemies until they burst with a wet rubber squeal. The Atomic Gun fires a miniature nuke. And the shovel—the humble melee weapon—is absurdly effective, especially against archers. Every weapon feels tuned for chaos.

Then there are the Titan powers. You collect gold to buy them at altars. Immortality makes sense. Titan Damage makes sense. Titan Motion? It slows down time—and slows you down too. It’s basically useless. A broken power-up in a game already running at maximum speed. But that’s Will Rock. Half the fun is in its glorious mistakes.

The level design swings wildly. Sometimes you’re in wide-open killboxes built for maximum slaughter. Sometimes you’re in cramped switch-hunts that feel like filler. You’ll bounce on trampolines, fire yourself from catapults, sneak through a Trojan horse, pull endless levers. Sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes it’s busywork. But it’s never quiet.

Reviews at the time were mixed. Metacritic score: 63. GameSpot called it a “mindless knockoff.” IGN called it “hard.” Other critics called it too easy because enemies dropped in three hits and health pickups were everywhere. Even the difficulty became a quirk—easy for some, brutal for others.

For most players, Will Rock disappeared quickly. It was overshadowed by Serious Sam and never got a sequel. But for the people who remember it? It’s the quirks that stand out. The regenerating Minotaurs. The statues that wake up. The useless Titan Motion. The shotgun that’s somehow a rifle. The shovel that’s better than half the guns. The ghost of Twisted Sister haunting the main menu.

For everyone else, Will Rock is just another budget shooter from 2003. But for those who stumbled into it—maybe from a Gigabyte CD-ROM—it’s something stranger. A flawed, loud, chaotic snapshot of early-2000s FPS excess. A game that didn’t just copy Serious Sam. It kept the boom going.

Let’s not beat around the bush: Will Rock is basically Serious Sam.

That’s the first comparison anyone makes. And they’re not wrong. It plays almost exactly like Croteam’s arena shooter—fast, chaotic, and ridiculous. But calling it a copy misses something important. Because Will Rock isn’t just a clone. It’s a four-month miracle, a budget game from a brand-new studio, and a strange, beautiful mess stuffed with quirks that make it unforgettable. That is, if you were lucky enough to stumble into it.

Saber Interactive was brand new in 2003. Will Rock was their very first game. They built it in just over four months. Four months to create an entire FPS from scratch on a brand-new engine. An engine that didn’t even have a name yet—it would later become Saber3D. At the time, Will Rock was basically a tech demo wearing an Ancient Greece skin.

The game came out in June 2003 under Ubisoft. But the marketing wasn’t exactly explosive. The most famous thing about it wasn’t a trailer. It was the soundtrack. Specifically: Twisted Sister’s “I Wanna Rock.” It’s definitely in the trailer. It’s apparently in the main menu. YouTube uploads show it.

And yet… after replaying the game, I never heard it once. That’s not a song you just miss. So maybe it’s a ghost track. Maybe it’s a Mandela Effect. Either way, it’s the most famous song that may or may not actually be in the game.

Distribution was weird, too. Ubisoft sold it in stores. But it also came bundled with Gigabyte PC-CDROM drives. A lot of players didn’t buy it—they just found it on their new hardware. That’s how many people first played Will Rock: by accident. Which might explain why it feels like a half-remembered fever dream now.

The story is early-2000s action nonsense. Willford Rockwell, archaeologist, gets possessed by Prometheus. Prometheus gives him powers. He goes to war with Zeus to save his girlfriend. That’s it. But the Greek mythology setting works. Where Serious Sam had Egypt and aliens, Will Rock has Minotaurs, Harpies, Centaurs, Cyclops, skeleton warriors, and massive Atlas statues that rip themselves free from pedestals and come for you.

And this is where the boom begins.

Minotaurs don’t just die—they split into more Minotaurs when you kill them. Atlas statues don’t just stand there—they crash forward like a granite linebacker. Harpies dive-bomb screaming. Rat-bombs explode. Enemies accidentally damage each other in the chaos. The screen becomes a mess of smoke, blood, and flying marble.

The weapons make it louder. You’ve got the standard pistol, shotgun, machine gun, and minigun. But then it gets weird. The shotgun looks like a lever-action rifle and uses rifle ammo. The Medusa Gun turns enemies to stone so you can smash them into gravel. The Acid Gun inflates enemies until they burst with a wet rubber squeal. The Atomic Gun fires a miniature nuke. And the shovel—the humble melee weapon—is absurdly effective, especially against archers. Every weapon feels tuned for chaos.

Then there are the Titan powers. You collect gold to buy them at altars. Immortality makes sense. Titan Damage makes sense. Titan Motion? It slows down time—and slows you down too. It’s basically useless. A broken power-up in a game already running at maximum speed. But that’s Will Rock. Half the fun is in its glorious mistakes.

The level design swings wildly. Sometimes you’re in wide-open killboxes built for maximum slaughter. Sometimes you’re in cramped switch-hunts that feel like filler. You’ll bounce on trampolines, fire yourself from catapults, sneak through a Trojan horse, pull endless levers. Sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes it’s busywork. But it’s never quiet.

Reviews at the time were mixed. Metacritic score: 63. GameSpot called it a “mindless knockoff.” IGN called it “hard.” Other critics called it too easy because enemies dropped in three hits and health pickups were everywhere. Even the difficulty became a quirk—easy for some, brutal for others.

For most players, Will Rock disappeared quickly. It was overshadowed by Serious Sam and never got a sequel. But for the people who remember it? It’s the quirks that stand out. The regenerating Minotaurs. The statues that wake up. The useless Titan Motion. The shotgun that’s somehow a rifle. The shovel that’s better than half the guns. The ghost of Twisted Sister haunting the main menu.

For everyone else, Will Rock is just another budget shooter from 2003. But for those who stumbled into it—maybe from a Gigabyte CD-ROM—it’s something stranger. A flawed, loud, chaotic snapshot of early-2000s FPS excess. A game that didn’t just copy Serious Sam. It kept the boom going.

Let’s not beat around the bush: Will Rock is basically Serious Sam.

That’s the first comparison anyone makes. And they’re not wrong. It plays almost exactly like Croteam’s arena shooter—fast, chaotic, and ridiculous. But calling it a copy misses something important. Because Will Rock isn’t just a clone. It’s a four-month miracle, a budget game from a brand-new studio, and a strange, beautiful mess stuffed with quirks that make it unforgettable. That is, if you were lucky enough to stumble into it.

Saber Interactive was brand new in 2003. Will Rock was their very first game. They built it in just over four months. Four months to create an entire FPS from scratch on a brand-new engine. An engine that didn’t even have a name yet—it would later become Saber3D. At the time, Will Rock was basically a tech demo wearing an Ancient Greece skin.

The game came out in June 2003 under Ubisoft. But the marketing wasn’t exactly explosive. The most famous thing about it wasn’t a trailer. It was the soundtrack. Specifically: Twisted Sister’s “I Wanna Rock.” It’s definitely in the trailer. It’s apparently in the main menu. YouTube uploads show it.

And yet… after replaying the game, I never heard it once. That’s not a song you just miss. So maybe it’s a ghost track. Maybe it’s a Mandela Effect. Either way, it’s the most famous song that may or may not actually be in the game.

Distribution was weird, too. Ubisoft sold it in stores. But it also came bundled with Gigabyte PC-CDROM drives. A lot of players didn’t buy it—they just found it on their new hardware. That’s how many people first played Will Rock: by accident. Which might explain why it feels like a half-remembered fever dream now.

The story is early-2000s action nonsense. Willford Rockwell, archaeologist, gets possessed by Prometheus. Prometheus gives him powers. He goes to war with Zeus to save his girlfriend. That’s it. But the Greek mythology setting works. Where Serious Sam had Egypt and aliens, Will Rock has Minotaurs, Harpies, Centaurs, Cyclops, skeleton warriors, and massive Atlas statues that rip themselves free from pedestals and come for you.

And this is where the boom begins.

Minotaurs don’t just die—they split into more Minotaurs when you kill them. Atlas statues don’t just stand there—they crash forward like a granite linebacker. Harpies dive-bomb screaming. Rat-bombs explode. Enemies accidentally damage each other in the chaos. The screen becomes a mess of smoke, blood, and flying marble.

The weapons make it louder. You’ve got the standard pistol, shotgun, machine gun, and minigun. But then it gets weird. The shotgun looks like a lever-action rifle and uses rifle ammo. The Medusa Gun turns enemies to stone so you can smash them into gravel. The Acid Gun inflates enemies until they burst with a wet rubber squeal. The Atomic Gun fires a miniature nuke. And the shovel—the humble melee weapon—is absurdly effective, especially against archers. Every weapon feels tuned for chaos.

Then there are the Titan powers. You collect gold to buy them at altars. Immortality makes sense. Titan Damage makes sense. Titan Motion? It slows down time—and slows you down too. It’s basically useless. A broken power-up in a game already running at maximum speed. But that’s Will Rock. Half the fun is in its glorious mistakes.

The level design swings wildly. Sometimes you’re in wide-open killboxes built for maximum slaughter. Sometimes you’re in cramped switch-hunts that feel like filler. You’ll bounce on trampolines, fire yourself from catapults, sneak through a Trojan horse, pull endless levers. Sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes it’s busywork. But it’s never quiet.

Reviews at the time were mixed. Metacritic score: 63. GameSpot called it a “mindless knockoff.” IGN called it “hard.” Other critics called it too easy because enemies dropped in three hits and health pickups were everywhere. Even the difficulty became a quirk—easy for some, brutal for others.

For most players, Will Rock disappeared quickly. It was overshadowed by Serious Sam and never got a sequel. But for the people who remember it? It’s the quirks that stand out. The regenerating Minotaurs. The statues that wake up. The useless Titan Motion. The shotgun that’s somehow a rifle. The shovel that’s better than half the guns. The ghost of Twisted Sister haunting the main menu.

For everyone else, Will Rock is just another budget shooter from 2003. But for those who stumbled into it—maybe from a Gigabyte CD-ROM—it’s something stranger. A flawed, loud, chaotic snapshot of early-2000s FPS excess. A game that didn’t just copy Serious Sam. It kept the boom going.

Turns out Tetris Elements is my favourite Tetris.

And I’ve played a lot of Tetris. Atari Tetris, Nintendo Tetris, SEGA Tetris, Capcom Tetris, EA Tetris… I’ve even played multiple board game versions—and yes, there are more than you’d think.

But nothing fills me with joy like Tetris Elements, the 2004 THQ release that stayed stuck on Windows and Mac. Never consoles. Never handhelds. Just a weird budget disc for early-2000s computers.

It was meant to follow Tetris Worlds. ImaginEngine built it under THQ’s ValuSoft label. Mostly an educational-games studio, with a little help from a programming shop in India. Small budget, short schedule. The kind of game you’d expect to look rushed.

And it does. But it also tries things other official Tetris games never touched again.

On the surface, it’s simple: Classic mode plus five elemental modes. Earthquake, Fire, Ice, Stratosphere, Tempest. But these aren’t harmless gimmicks. They mess with the core game. Earthquake shakes the board and warps your stack. Tempest forces you to manage two rotating wells. Stratosphere drops meteors that can open perfect holes—or land garbage in the exact spot you needed clear.

Even the safe-looking modes have teeth. Ice will slam a piece straight to the bottom if an icicle hits it. Fire can chain explosions if you heat-drop pieces in sequence. These weren’t casual distractions. They were strange, playable twists on Tetris that you couldn’t get anywhere else.

And then there are the quirks.

The game says it uses the modern SRS rotation system. But pieces spawn in odd orientations, like the letters they’re named after. Wall kicks are inconsistent. The configuration files literally include a “–99, –99” coordinate—developer shorthand for “don’t use this”—as an actual kick entry. It shipped like that.

Hard drops don’t even behave consistently. Sometimes the next piece spawns instantly. Sometimes there’s a pause just long enough to throw off your rhythm. It feels half-finished.

Look in the game’s files and it gets stranger. All the rotation data, piece definitions, and rules are in plain-text .INI files. No encryption, no compression. It’s like the studio assumed no one would bother to check. That’s how players found five unused pieces just sitting there. Pentominoes, oversized blocks, even odd trimino shapes. All fully defined. None ever used.

The audio hides unused tracks too. Better quality than what shipped. There are unused menu graphics, leftover text strings. “Name Exists” sits quietly in the files. There’s even an unused “You Lose” screen. It’s a Tetris game with the workshop still attached.

Even the presentation feels slightly off. Clearing a Tetris flashes the screen white, like the game’s trying to burn your retinas as a reward. The music is fine—light techno, some nods to the classics—but the big feature was loading your own MP3s. And then the game speeds them up in pitch as your stack rises. A nice idea if you like drum ’n’ bass. Less nice if you don’t want your playlist chipmunked mid-match.

Reception at the time was muted. Two critics reviewed it. Scored in the 70s. People moved on. Hardcore players dismissed it. Casual players bought it in a bargain bin, played Fire mode once, and forgot it.

But the quirks gave it a second life.

The .INI structure made it one of the easiest official Tetris games to modify. Fans enabled the unused pieces. They rewrote gravity. They fixed rotation bugs themselves. It became a little laboratory for people who liked taking Tetris apart.

On Mac, it stuck around longer than expected. The disc ran on both OS 9 and OS X. PowerPC Macs could run it cleanly. Classic mode on OS X 10.4 ran even better. Intel Macs killed it, but by then it was already out of print.

On PC, it lived as long as people kept CD drives. No keys, just disc-based protection. When drives vanished, so did the game—until no-CD patches and Archive.org brought it back. Today it runs on Windows 10 with glitches. Windows 11 is hit or miss.

Its reputation now? Not a classic. Not even a cult favourite. Just an oddball entry people dig up because it’s strange, moddable, and unlike anything else in the series.

It’s not polished. It’s not balanced. But it’s an official Tetris that doesn’t fit neatly anywhere in the series history. And somehow, that makes it fit perfectly.

Turns out Tetris Elements is my favourite Tetris.

And I’ve played a lot of Tetris. Atari Tetris, Nintendo Tetris, SEGA Tetris, Capcom Tetris, EA Tetris… I’ve even played multiple board game versions—and yes, there are more than you’d think.

But nothing fills me with joy like Tetris Elements, the 2004 THQ release that stayed stuck on Windows and Mac. Never consoles. Never handhelds. Just a weird budget disc for early-2000s computers.

It was meant to follow Tetris Worlds. ImaginEngine built it under THQ’s ValuSoft label. Mostly an educational-games studio, with a little help from a programming shop in India. Small budget, short schedule. The kind of game you’d expect to look rushed.

And it does. But it also tries things other official Tetris games never touched again.

On the surface, it’s simple: Classic mode plus five elemental modes. Earthquake, Fire, Ice, Stratosphere, Tempest. But these aren’t harmless gimmicks. They mess with the core game. Earthquake shakes the board and warps your stack. Tempest forces you to manage two rotating wells. Stratosphere drops meteors that can open perfect holes—or land garbage in the exact spot you needed clear.

Even the safe-looking modes have teeth. Ice will slam a piece straight to the bottom if an icicle hits it. Fire can chain explosions if you heat-drop pieces in sequence. These weren’t casual distractions. They were strange, playable twists on Tetris that you couldn’t get anywhere else.

And then there are the quirks.

The game says it uses the modern SRS rotation system. But pieces spawn in odd orientations, like the letters they’re named after. Wall kicks are inconsistent. The configuration files literally include a “–99, –99” coordinate—developer shorthand for “don’t use this”—as an actual kick entry. It shipped like that.

Hard drops don’t even behave consistently. Sometimes the next piece spawns instantly. Sometimes there’s a pause just long enough to throw off your rhythm. It feels half-finished.

Look in the game’s files and it gets stranger. All the rotation data, piece definitions, and rules are in plain-text .INI files. No encryption, no compression. It’s like the studio assumed no one would bother to check. That’s how players found five unused pieces just sitting there. Pentominoes, oversized blocks, even odd trimino shapes. All fully defined. None ever used.

The audio hides unused tracks too. Better quality than what shipped. There are unused menu graphics, leftover text strings. “Name Exists” sits quietly in the files. There’s even an unused “You Lose” screen. It’s a Tetris game with the workshop still attached.

Even the presentation feels slightly off. Clearing a Tetris flashes the screen white, like the game’s trying to burn your retinas as a reward. The music is fine—light techno, some nods to the classics—but the big feature was loading your own MP3s. And then the game speeds them up in pitch as your stack rises. A nice idea if you like drum ’n’ bass. Less nice if you don’t want your playlist chipmunked mid-match.

Reception at the time was muted. Two critics reviewed it. Scored in the 70s. People moved on. Hardcore players dismissed it. Casual players bought it in a bargain bin, played Fire mode once, and forgot it.

But the quirks gave it a second life.

The .INI structure made it one of the easiest official Tetris games to modify. Fans enabled the unused pieces. They rewrote gravity. They fixed rotation bugs themselves. It became a little laboratory for people who liked taking Tetris apart.

On Mac, it stuck around longer than expected. The disc ran on both OS 9 and OS X. PowerPC Macs could run it cleanly. Classic mode on OS X 10.4 ran even better. Intel Macs killed it, but by then it was already out of print.

On PC, it lived as long as people kept CD drives. No keys, just disc-based protection. When drives vanished, so did the game—until no-CD patches and Archive.org brought it back. Today it runs on Windows 10 with glitches. Windows 11 is hit or miss.

Its reputation now? Not a classic. Not even a cult favourite. Just an oddball entry people dig up because it’s strange, moddable, and unlike anything else in the series.

It’s not polished. It’s not balanced. But it’s an official Tetris that doesn’t fit neatly anywhere in the series history. And somehow, that makes it fit perfectly.

Turns out Tetris Elements is my favourite Tetris.

And I’ve played a lot of Tetris. Atari Tetris, Nintendo Tetris, SEGA Tetris, Capcom Tetris, EA Tetris… I’ve even played multiple board game versions—and yes, there are more than you’d think.

But nothing fills me with joy like Tetris Elements, the 2004 THQ release that stayed stuck on Windows and Mac. Never consoles. Never handhelds. Just a weird budget disc for early-2000s computers.

It was meant to follow Tetris Worlds. ImaginEngine built it under THQ’s ValuSoft label. Mostly an educational-games studio, with a little help from a programming shop in India. Small budget, short schedule. The kind of game you’d expect to look rushed.

And it does. But it also tries things other official Tetris games never touched again.

On the surface, it’s simple: Classic mode plus five elemental modes. Earthquake, Fire, Ice, Stratosphere, Tempest. But these aren’t harmless gimmicks. They mess with the core game. Earthquake shakes the board and warps your stack. Tempest forces you to manage two rotating wells. Stratosphere drops meteors that can open perfect holes—or land garbage in the exact spot you needed clear.

Even the safe-looking modes have teeth. Ice will slam a piece straight to the bottom if an icicle hits it. Fire can chain explosions if you heat-drop pieces in sequence. These weren’t casual distractions. They were strange, playable twists on Tetris that you couldn’t get anywhere else.

And then there are the quirks.

The game says it uses the modern SRS rotation system. But pieces spawn in odd orientations, like the letters they’re named after. Wall kicks are inconsistent. The configuration files literally include a “–99, –99” coordinate—developer shorthand for “don’t use this”—as an actual kick entry. It shipped like that.

Hard drops don’t even behave consistently. Sometimes the next piece spawns instantly. Sometimes there’s a pause just long enough to throw off your rhythm. It feels half-finished.

Look in the game’s files and it gets stranger. All the rotation data, piece definitions, and rules are in plain-text .INI files. No encryption, no compression. It’s like the studio assumed no one would bother to check. That’s how players found five unused pieces just sitting there. Pentominoes, oversized blocks, even odd trimino shapes. All fully defined. None ever used.

The audio hides unused tracks too. Better quality than what shipped. There are unused menu graphics, leftover text strings. “Name Exists” sits quietly in the files. There’s even an unused “You Lose” screen. It’s a Tetris game with the workshop still attached.

Even the presentation feels slightly off. Clearing a Tetris flashes the screen white, like the game’s trying to burn your retinas as a reward. The music is fine—light techno, some nods to the classics—but the big feature was loading your own MP3s. And then the game speeds them up in pitch as your stack rises. A nice idea if you like drum ’n’ bass. Less nice if you don’t want your playlist chipmunked mid-match.

Reception at the time was muted. Two critics reviewed it. Scored in the 70s. People moved on. Hardcore players dismissed it. Casual players bought it in a bargain bin, played Fire mode once, and forgot it.

But the quirks gave it a second life.

The .INI structure made it one of the easiest official Tetris games to modify. Fans enabled the unused pieces. They rewrote gravity. They fixed rotation bugs themselves. It became a little laboratory for people who liked taking Tetris apart.

On Mac, it stuck around longer than expected. The disc ran on both OS 9 and OS X. PowerPC Macs could run it cleanly. Classic mode on OS X 10.4 ran even better. Intel Macs killed it, but by then it was already out of print.

On PC, it lived as long as people kept CD drives. No keys, just disc-based protection. When drives vanished, so did the game—until no-CD patches and Archive.org brought it back. Today it runs on Windows 10 with glitches. Windows 11 is hit or miss.

Its reputation now? Not a classic. Not even a cult favourite. Just an oddball entry people dig up because it’s strange, moddable, and unlike anything else in the series.

It’s not polished. It’s not balanced. But it’s an official Tetris that doesn’t fit neatly anywhere in the series history. And somehow, that makes it fit perfectly.

A 1991 ad for Renovation's SEGA Genesis games.

At first I laughed—but they weren’t wrong. We do have 8-way TVs now. Just run eight emulators side by side and tile them across your screen.

Hell, today’s budget TVs are bigger than the one in the ad. Dan was ahead of his time.

A 1991 ad for Renovation's SEGA Genesis games.

At first I laughed—but they weren’t wrong. We do have 8-way TVs now. Just run eight emulators side by side and tile them across your screen.

Hell, today’s budget TVs are bigger than the one in the ad. Dan was ahead of his time.

Before Tetris took over arcades and consoles, it was just a computer game.

Not even a Western one. It started on a Soviet mainframe.

What most people don’t know is that its first home versions were for DOS. The very first DOS port came out in 1986, made by Vadim Gerasimov—a Russian developer who adapted Alexey Pajitnov’s original concept for IBM PCs.

Then came the flood. Lots of other DOS ports followed, some barely licensed, others “licensed” in the Cold War handshake sense.

But the first official DOS release made specifically for the West? That was Spectrum Holobyte’s version in 1988. It beat the NES. It beat the arcade version.

And yes—this version was still based on Gerasimov’s DOS design.

Now, I don’t think it’s the best home version of Tetris. But it’s easily the strangest—and maybe the most interesting.

For starters, Spectrum Holobyte leaned hard into the Cold War theming. One of their print ads straight-up asked: “What are the Three Greatest Things to Come Out of the U.S.S.R.?” The answer? The Bolshoi ballet. Stolichnaya vodka. And Tetris. That was the pitch. The ad featured dancers in mid-leap, a frosty bottle of Stoli on ice, and a red game box with Cyrillic text and Saint Basil’s Cathedral slapped right on the cover. It was less a software ad than a cultural export campaign—equal parts kitsch, nationalism, and Cold War tourism. You didn’t just buy a puzzle game. You bought a Russian moment.

Inside the game, every screen drips with Soviet vibes: fishing vessels, space cosmonauts, Russian folk music, even a reference to the “Miracle on Ice.” The high score list? Labeled “Top Ten Comrades.” That kind of commitment.

This was deliberate. Spectrum Holobyte’s CEO literally asked the devs to preserve the “Soviet spirit,” not tone it down. He wanted Americans to want to buy a Russian product. Which, in 1988, was a pretty wild ask.

There was also a plane that flew across the title screen—an easter egg referencing Mathias Rust’s illegal flight into Red Square, which had humiliated the Soviet military the year before. Elorg, the Soviet licensing agency, didn’t love that. It got patched out. Along with a bunch of other Cold War touches. Fighter jets? Gone. Submarines? Replaced with a man on a horse.

Pajitnov himself insisted that Tetris be “a peaceful game heralding a new era in superpower relations.” Apparently, that meant fewer tanks.

Technically, this version of Tetris is barebones—but in a foundational kind of way. It’s missing a lot of what we now take for granted. There’s no hold piece. No wall kicks. No 180° rotation. Some versions don’t even give you bonus points for clearing four lines. Which, let’s be honest, kind of defeats the point of a Tetris.

Instead, scoring is mostly about how fast you drop pieces and whether you survive. That’s it. There is a hard drop, though. And you can set the starting height and level. Which was a nice touch.

Rotation is basic. Just clockwise and counterclockwise. No fancy adjustments. If a piece doesn’t fit, it just doesn’t. There’s no wall-kick logic to save you. And once a piece touches down? It locks immediately.

No second chances. No little delay. You either commit or you stack badly and panic.

Even visually, it’s oddly compelling. Only CGA and EGA are supported—VGA was still too new—but the artwork is stylized in a way that sticks with you. The backgrounds are moody and distinct. It doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be flashy. It feels… ideological.

I know the Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST versions had more colors. And some fancier music. But the DOS version has character. It’s a cultural time capsule disguised as a puzzle game.

Also worth noting: this version sold like crazy. Over 100,000 units in its first year. The average player? Mid-30s, probably an engineer or middle manager. Half were women—which, for a PC game in the ’80s, is almost unheard of.

And if you’re running this today? You’ll probably get a divide overflow error. You’ll need a patch just to launch it.

This wasn’t just a game. It was a diplomatic artifact. A licensing mess. A Cold War curiosity. A version of Tetris that, for all its simplicity, tells you more about 1988 than most history books.

Before Tetris took over arcades and consoles, it was just a computer game.

Not even a Western one. It started on a Soviet mainframe.

What most people don’t know is that its first home versions were for DOS. The very first DOS port came out in 1986, made by Vadim Gerasimov—a Russian developer who adapted Alexey Pajitnov’s original concept for IBM PCs.

Then came the flood. Lots of other DOS ports followed, some barely licensed, others “licensed” in the Cold War handshake sense.

But the first official DOS release made specifically for the West? That was Spectrum Holobyte’s version in 1988. It beat the NES. It beat the arcade version.

And yes—this version was still based on Gerasimov’s DOS design.

Now, I don’t think it’s the best home version of Tetris. But it’s easily the strangest—and maybe the most interesting.

For starters, Spectrum Holobyte leaned hard into the Cold War theming. One of their print ads straight-up asked: “What are the Three Greatest Things to Come Out of the U.S.S.R.?” The answer? The Bolshoi ballet. Stolichnaya vodka. And Tetris. That was the pitch. The ad featured dancers in mid-leap, a frosty bottle of Stoli on ice, and a red game box with Cyrillic text and Saint Basil’s Cathedral slapped right on the cover. It was less a software ad than a cultural export campaign—equal parts kitsch, nationalism, and Cold War tourism. You didn’t just buy a puzzle game. You bought a Russian moment.

Inside the game, every screen drips with Soviet vibes: fishing vessels, space cosmonauts, Russian folk music, even a reference to the “Miracle on Ice.” The high score list? Labeled “Top Ten Comrades.” That kind of commitment.

This was deliberate. Spectrum Holobyte’s CEO literally asked the devs to preserve the “Soviet spirit,” not tone it down. He wanted Americans to want to buy a Russian product. Which, in 1988, was a pretty wild ask.

There was also a plane that flew across the title screen—an easter egg referencing Mathias Rust’s illegal flight into Red Square, which had humiliated the Soviet military the year before. Elorg, the Soviet licensing agency, didn’t love that. It got patched out. Along with a bunch of other Cold War touches. Fighter jets? Gone. Submarines? Replaced with a man on a horse.

Pajitnov himself insisted that Tetris be “a peaceful game heralding a new era in superpower relations.” Apparently, that meant fewer tanks.

Technically, this version of Tetris is barebones—but in a foundational kind of way. It’s missing a lot of what we now take for granted. There’s no hold piece. No wall kicks. No 180° rotation. Some versions don’t even give you bonus points for clearing four lines. Which, let’s be honest, kind of defeats the point of a Tetris.

Instead, scoring is mostly about how fast you drop pieces and whether you survive. That’s it. There is a hard drop, though. And you can set the starting height and level. Which was a nice touch.

Rotation is basic. Just clockwise and counterclockwise. No fancy adjustments. If a piece doesn’t fit, it just doesn’t. There’s no wall-kick logic to save you. And once a piece touches down? It locks immediately.

No second chances. No little delay. You either commit or you stack badly and panic.

Even visually, it’s oddly compelling. Only CGA and EGA are supported—VGA was still too new—but the artwork is stylized in a way that sticks with you. The backgrounds are moody and distinct. It doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be flashy. It feels… ideological.

I know the Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST versions had more colors. And some fancier music. But the DOS version has character. It’s a cultural time capsule disguised as a puzzle game.

Also worth noting: this version sold like crazy. Over 100,000 units in its first year. The average player? Mid-30s, probably an engineer or middle manager. Half were women—which, for a PC game in the ’80s, is almost unheard of.

And if you’re running this today? You’ll probably get a divide overflow error. You’ll need a patch just to launch it.

This wasn’t just a game. It was a diplomatic artifact. A licensing mess. A Cold War curiosity. A version of Tetris that, for all its simplicity, tells you more about 1988 than most history books.

Before Tetris took over arcades and consoles, it was just a computer game.

Not even a Western one. It started on a Soviet mainframe.

What most people don’t know is that its first home versions were for DOS. The very first DOS port came out in 1986, made by Vadim Gerasimov—a Russian developer who adapted Alexey Pajitnov’s original concept for IBM PCs.

Then came the flood. Lots of other DOS ports followed, some barely licensed, others “licensed” in the Cold War handshake sense.

But the first official DOS release made specifically for the West? That was Spectrum Holobyte’s version in 1988. It beat the NES. It beat the arcade version.

And yes—this version was still based on Gerasimov’s DOS design.

Now, I don’t think it’s the best home version of Tetris. But it’s easily the strangest—and maybe the most interesting.

For starters, Spectrum Holobyte leaned hard into the Cold War theming. One of their print ads straight-up asked: “What are the Three Greatest Things to Come Out of the U.S.S.R.?” The answer? The Bolshoi ballet. Stolichnaya vodka. And Tetris. That was the pitch. The ad featured dancers in mid-leap, a frosty bottle of Stoli on ice, and a red game box with Cyrillic text and Saint Basil’s Cathedral slapped right on the cover. It was less a software ad than a cultural export campaign—equal parts kitsch, nationalism, and Cold War tourism. You didn’t just buy a puzzle game. You bought a Russian moment.

Inside the game, every screen drips with Soviet vibes: fishing vessels, space cosmonauts, Russian folk music, even a reference to the “Miracle on Ice.” The high score list? Labeled “Top Ten Comrades.” That kind of commitment.

This was deliberate. Spectrum Holobyte’s CEO literally asked the devs to preserve the “Soviet spirit,” not tone it down. He wanted Americans to want to buy a Russian product. Which, in 1988, was a pretty wild ask.

There was also a plane that flew across the title screen—an easter egg referencing Mathias Rust’s illegal flight into Red Square, which had humiliated the Soviet military the year before. Elorg, the Soviet licensing agency, didn’t love that. It got patched out. Along with a bunch of other Cold War touches. Fighter jets? Gone. Submarines? Replaced with a man on a horse.

Pajitnov himself insisted that Tetris be “a peaceful game heralding a new era in superpower relations.” Apparently, that meant fewer tanks.

Technically, this version of Tetris is barebones—but in a foundational kind of way. It’s missing a lot of what we now take for granted. There’s no hold piece. No wall kicks. No 180° rotation. Some versions don’t even give you bonus points for clearing four lines. Which, let’s be honest, kind of defeats the point of a Tetris.

Instead, scoring is mostly about how fast you drop pieces and whether you survive. That’s it. There is a hard drop, though. And you can set the starting height and level. Which was a nice touch.

Rotation is basic. Just clockwise and counterclockwise. No fancy adjustments. If a piece doesn’t fit, it just doesn’t. There’s no wall-kick logic to save you. And once a piece touches down? It locks immediately.

No second chances. No little delay. You either commit or you stack badly and panic.

Even visually, it’s oddly compelling. Only CGA and EGA are supported—VGA was still too new—but the artwork is stylized in a way that sticks with you. The backgrounds are moody and distinct. It doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be flashy. It feels… ideological.

I know the Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST versions had more colors. And some fancier music. But the DOS version has character. It’s a cultural time capsule disguised as a puzzle game.

Also worth noting: this version sold like crazy. Over 100,000 units in its first year. The average player? Mid-30s, probably an engineer or middle manager. Half were women—which, for a PC game in the ’80s, is almost unheard of.

And if you’re running this today? You’ll probably get a divide overflow error. You’ll need a patch just to launch it.

This wasn’t just a game. It was a diplomatic artifact. A licensing mess. A Cold War curiosity. A version of Tetris that, for all its simplicity, tells you more about 1988 than most history books.