Magical Tetris Challenge
Your favorite Disney characters are here!!
Developer: Capcom
Platforms: Arcade, N64, PlayStation, GBC
First Release Date: Before November 20, 1998?
“Donald Duck has found a mysterious purple stone on the end of his fishing rod. Mickey Mouse reckons it is from another world. Their enemies are out to get the stone, so it is up to Mickey Mouse and his friends to protect it via the power of Tetris.”
I can’t put it better than the back of the box. Capcom-developed Disney Tetris is an intimidating string of words, and one that resulted in a great game. A standard versus Tetris ruleset is available, but the main focus is the Magical Tetris mode. The most noticeable gimmick is the addition of Magic Pieces- nefarious pentominos and other large and inconvenient shapes. Clearing lines will send pentominos to your opponent's side, clogging up their queue of blocks. These blocks are awkward and unwieldy, with the exception of the five block tall straight piece. This block lets you score the elusive Pentris, so it’s not all bad. Learning to live with god’s least favorite shapes is all part of the fun.
If you’ve got an attack coming your way, clearing a line with somewhat specific timing will negate some of the pentominos coming in, and send back a different set of blocks to the opponent. These are all squares- from 2 by 2 up to 5 by 5 tiles long. These can definitely be deadly, but can set up Tetrises and Pentrises well if played right. There's also a rare set of truly terrible shapes, like a huge pyramid, that I assume come from some combination of repeated counters, or maybe from particularly large combos, I’m not sure. I just know it’s a nightmare to see those coming up in your queue.
Either this game or The Grand Master introduced the concept of combos to Tetris- making as many subsequent line clears as you can. This one certainly emphasizes it, both in terms of doing more damage to an opponent, and in getting a high score. Comboing is vital to doing well and it's pretty fun! I don't really know the pulse of the real Tetris heads’ thoughts on combos as a mainstay of modern Tetris games, but I think it works to give this game more distinct flavor. Oh, there's also a little rainbow meter comeback mechanic. It feels a little tacked on, but it’s certainly helpful. It doubles as a bit of increasing difficulty on a no-continue story mode run as well- each time it's used, the meter goes up slightly, and clears less of the board. This doesn't reset between matches unless you get a game over.
I’m very entertained by this game’s odd, idealized, sort of Americana setting? All the characters are hard-working blue collar folks, with Mickey as a mechanic, Donald as more of a sailor than usual, Goofy as a farmer, and Minnie as an ambiguous housewife/baker/woman. For the characters other than the popular mouse, their plots follow a similar structure: they all enjoy friendly Tetris matches and do favors for each other, and they all end up with a piece of the mysterious Tetris stone that Donald fished up. Sinister tycoon Pete saunters up to our heroes, and sets his minions Weasel and Wolf on them to get their part of the stone. After confronting Pete, he gives the stone back, but not before putting it in his ominous Tetris energy stealing device. Mickey's story takes place afterwards, where Pete uses the stone’s power to hypnotize the other characters and make them challenge Mickey. Mickey discovers the stone came from a crashed UFO. In the end, Pete loses, and is swiftly punished by being thrown into a portal to hell. Everyone goes home and enjoys delicious vegetable cookies.
Connie's Coin Rally:
A year later, a Game Boy Color version was released. It has the same Magical Tetris mechanics, but otherwise it's very much its own game. Because of the small screen, your opponent’s board is represented only by a meter, but it works well enough. There are some new variants of Tetris to play (some more successful than others) and a new quest mode, the Tetris Coin Rally. Your goal is to wander around a cute top-down town and gather all the coins you need before your rivals. The coins are numbered, and you only need a random set of them to win; the locations of coins are also random each time you play. Checking door memos, or talking to post boxes, trash cans, and streetlights can give you hints on where certain coins are, but it’s still easy to end up stumbling around looking for the last coin you need. I'm not exactly sure how it's timed, but your opponents will eventually cash in their coins and win, so you need to work fast.
Various challenges around the map feature some new Tetris modes, alongside standard and Magical modes. Target Tetris is a “clear with a preset number of pieces” puzzle mode. Towering Tetris has you clearing lines until a goal sloooowly rises from the bottom. A strange block, exclusive to this mode, controls like a regular piece, but lets you fire little blocks downwards to quickly fill in lines. Signal Tetris, a mode that is either quickly cleared or takes forever, is won when you can match a set of lights under the board to a preset pattern. When you make a line clear, the columns with the piece that cleared the line will swap colors. It’s easy to accidentally make matches in other lines, or have to make space and end up undoing your progress. Frustrating, but satisfying to get right. There's a special Signal Tetris found on the island in the bottom right of the map- you have to find three parts of the pattern first, and you don't actually have to write it down like I thought you did. You'll get a wildcard coin for your trouble.
Add challenging the other characters for their coins, and it makes for a pretty fun variety mode wrapped in a cute town exploration gameplay. The different modes can be unlocked to play outside of quest mode, and there’s also a two player only mode called Harmony Tetris. Lines will only clear when both players clear a specific row on both boards. Most importantly, clearing quest mode with all standard characters unlocks Pete for all modes. Maybe when Pete was thrown into that portal, he was just sent to a kinder world where he can hunt for his beloved coins. (Ignore the streetlight that tells you he’s plotting something evil if he wins…)
All versions of the game are worth playing, and I’d like to give special attention to the soundtrack, which the GBC version does its best to adapt. You’ve got to listen to the different stage themes, and of course, the extremely intense Pete theme. The intro sounds like you’re about to face off against some unknown horror, though you might as well be with how hard the last round is. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’d definitely recommend this game if you’re looking for a twist on versus Tetris, and the GBC version if you can’t get enough of it. Or if you like Disney characters, I guess. I'll see you around for Timon & Pumbaa's Jungle Games one of these days, I'm sure.
Thank you for reading!
