Are There Any Tetris Games for Mac?

I’ve always enjoyed Tetris, even though I was never particularly good at it. After reading this story last week about the tragic life of Tetris co-creator Vladimir Pokhilko, I got the urge to play for the first time in years. I tried searching the Mac App Store for “Tetris”, expecting to find dozens of crummy knock-offs, but instead was surprised to find “Your search had no results”. Nothing. (There is an official iOS version from Electronic Arts, but come on, Tetris needs real buttons.)

I tried looking outside the Mac App Store, and as far as I can tell, there’s no official Tetris for Mac, nor are there any clones. Quinn was a decent clone I remember playing a decade ago, but as this Boing Boing report from 2006 says, the developer got a cease and desist from The Tetris Company and abandoned the game. (You can still play it on High Sierra, but it’s not retina, and worse, you can only download unsigned versions from sketchy download sites.)

So as far as I can tell, not only is there no official Tetris for Mac, there are no Tetris-like games either. Back in the 90s, there were several really good Tetris games for the Mac. Anyone remember Wesleyan Tetris? It was a goofy version in which the developer, Randall Cook, would rudely critique your gameplay.

If The Tetris Company wants to protect the name “Tetris”, fine, but I think it sucks that there’s no good way to play the game on a Mac today. Every computer should have a good version of Tetris.

★ Wednesday, 28 March 2018