Tetris Attack

Forget about falling blocks; here the blocks shift sideways and the game flies at such a pace that it leaves you dumbfounded. Tetris Attack is, despite its name, an entirely different kind of puzzle than you'd expect, and it belongs among the most addictive puzzle games ever released on the Super Nintendo.

The principle is ingeniously simple: colored blocks keep shifting upward from the bottom, and you swap them in pairs side by side so as to line up three or more of the same in a row, causing them to disappear. The key to mastery, though, lies in chain reactions and combos, where the destruction of one set of blocks triggers an avalanche of others and dumps piles of garbage on top of your opponent. In two-player mode this turns into a merciless duel of reflexes and foresight, where it comes down to who overwhelms the other first.

In the version for the Super Nintendo the game is wrapped in the world of Yoshi and characters from the Mario games, so instead of stark abstraction you're accompanied by charming graphics and catchy music. This aesthetic turns an otherwise intensely competitive game into something accessible and friendly that will settle in with even players who usually steer clear of puzzlers. Beneath the colorful surface, though, beats a surprisingly deep strategy.

The game has its roots in the Japanese title Panel de Pon and reached the West precisely in the guise of Yoshi's world. The principle proved so timeless that it survived in dozens of further incarnations and variations across later platforms, which testifies to just how perfectly tuned a mechanic it is. The competitive multiplayer was ahead of its time and foreshadowed the later wave of competitive puzzle games.

Tetris Attack is proof that the best puzzles are easy to learn but hard to master to perfection. Whether you tune it solo and chase a higher score, or you battle a friend over who lasts longer, it draws you into a state of utter concentration that's hard to step out of. It's the pure joy of play in its most distilled form.

Why play: A timelessly addictive puzzler with a brilliant competitive multiplayer. Grab a second controller and get ready for the evening to slip away before you even notice.