Block party: Nintendo's 99-player Tetris is savaging my self-esteem

The new battle royale version of Tetris is absurdly compelling - but prepare to take a hit to your game-playing ego

I'm sorry to have to tell you this - not everybody takes it well - but you're probably not as good as you think you are at Tetris.

It's tough to take. Until this morning I thought I was a Tetris prodigy. Beginning with a year-long asynchronous rivalry with my brother on the Game Boy, where each of us would play obsessively until we'd topped all the high-score tables before smugly handing the console over to the other, I've played Tetris most of my life. I finished last year's Tetris Effect, a version of the Russian block-rotating puzzle game that somehow turns it into a psychedelic meditation on the birth of the universe, in one three-hour session.