Tetris 99 isn’t just a great twist on a classic—it’s a gameplay revolution

Enlarge / What happens when more people get their hands on Tetris pieces in a single online match? A lot more than you might realize. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

In an interview with Ars Technica last year, Brendan Greene, the game designer best known for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), offered a throwaway opinion: every genre should have a battle royale mode. It wasn't necessarily the best-received suggestion at the time, as backlash against the battle royale phenomenon had begun, but Greene was in a good position to say it. He'd already struck gold multiple times slapping battle royale into other games as a modder.

Since then, we've mostly seen battle royale options land in PUBG-like shooters, but Wednesday's Nintendo Direct presentation shook everything up with its own surprise launch. Tetris 99, a Nintendo-published game, would launch immediately on Wednesday as a "free" perk, with zero microtransactions, for paying Nintendo Switch Online customers.

Shortly after cataloguing the Direct's firestorm of announcements, I booted up my Nintendo Switch and confirmed two things. First, this was Tetris.

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