Pros: Addictive, legendary gaming fun
Cons: the original version is pretty hard to come by these days
The bottom line: One of the greatest video-games ever, Tetris was one of the key factors in making the Game Boy what it was. An undisputed classic game that everyone wants to play.
It's really quite hard to know where to begin reviewing a game like Tetris, because the thought that not everyone on this Earth knows all about it and is addicted to it is something I find very hard to take in. I would be willing to bet that Tetris may well be the game that has recieved the most versions released of it ever. Possibly Space Invaders may top it, but the fact that such things exist as arcade machines where you can take money if you win enough points fast enough in a game of Tetris basically displays how well established it is.

I'm going to have to admit ignorance and say that I really have no idea what the origins of the game are. I know that nobody owns the rights to it, which is why it has appeared in so many incarnations over the years, and that this version, the one released for the original Game Boy, was the one that shot it to International fame.

You see, if you have just arrived from the Planet Saturn, Tetris is a puzzle game where you are presented with a rectangular area, into which various shapes made of 4-Square blocks each fall vertically downards, and your job is to try and re-arrange these shapes to fill a line of the rectangle, in which case the line will disappear. The goal is simply to get as many lines and, by consequence, as many points as possible, and to ensure that the blocks do not pile right up to the top of the rectangle, or its game over.
As your time racking up points went on, the blocks begin to fall faster and faster, making it more difficult, but some help is provided by the fact you are given a display of what the next shape to fall will be, so you can build up a strategy to remove these lines, because removing more than one line at once means more points.

There is no way to 'beat' Tetris, you can only really beat whatever score, be it your own best or that of someone you know. There is no ending, no amount of levels, if you had the AC adapter, I've no doubt that technically, power-cuts aside, if you were good, your game of Tetris could possibly go on forever.

You may be asking, "why the hell would I want to play a game I can't win?", the simple fact is that Tetris is almost disgustingly addictive. At school, when the new computing PCs came in, with Tetris installed, very little work got done in computing class. This sort of gameplay made it a natural candidate for going to Nintendo's then launching hand-held the Game Boy, and Tetris was the original pack-in title, and I wonder how many people out there, like me, still have the original copy of it that came packaged with the Game Boy, and still play it regularly.

Now, the basic game of Tetris is about as close to gaming perfection as you are likely to see. It has no flaws that I, or anyone I know, has ever detected, it's simple, and it's brilliant. The graphics don't matter. The fact is that all they have to do is make the blocks clear, which they do. Ditto for the sound, although the main track of music has almost become as legendary as the game itself. Controls simply moved the blocks with the D-Pad and rotated them with A and B, one clock-wise, one counter. All of it worked perfectly. But this was the late 80s, before Nintendo could rely on it's hardcore base of frothing at the mouth fanboys to buy whatever they put out, so instead of just putting out this epic game like it is, which they could easily have done, they were kind enough to put in two additional options to give this already immortal game more life.

First up is 25 Lines, where the idea is to remove 25 lines from the screen. While I can't say it's a mode I've ever used, it's nice to know it's there nonetheless, but the more important addition was a 2-Player mode. Now, linking up 2 Game Boys for 2-Player games was always a chore. It required both players to have the same game, as well as the hassle of linking the two GBs up, and timing switching them on correctly. However, 2-Player Tetris almost made it all worth it. In this mode, you competed to see who could get the most lines against another player, getting a large amount of lines at once made the game drop a whole lot of random blocks on your opponent. It's almost as addictive and fun as the single player mode.

At the end of the day, if you are reading games reviews, chances are you have played Tetris and know what you think of it. However, just in case anyone hasn't, I have to say that using words to justify giving a 15 year old hand-held puzzle game is almost impossible, and understanding where my perfect score comes from can only really be achieved by playing the game, which I would recommend you go and do ASAP.