From the DF Archive: Are There Any Tetris Games for Mac?

My recent spate of Tetris-related links got me thinking again about this post from 2018:

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.

Not much has changed from 2018. There is an officially licensed game in the Mac App Store now: Tetris Beat. It’s part of Apple Arcade, so most of you can probably download it and play it. It’s not just plain Tetris — and whatever it is that it wants to be, it sucks. It doesn’t even let you customize the controls. It occupies 2.3 GB on disk after installation. For Tetris! Jiminy. Niklaus Wirth would be rolling over in his (fresh) grave if you told him a Tetris game took 2.3 GB on disk and made the fans get loud on an Apple silicon MacBook Pro when you play it.

The best options for just playing Tetris on a Mac are web games: Tetr.io and Jstris. (I presume both websites are hosted in countries outside the reach of litigious The Tetris Company.) Tetr.io offers “desktop” versions, but their Mac app is an Intel-only Electron app that instantly made the fans on my MacBook Pro veritably roar. It’s far better playing online in Safari, but Tetr.io is geared toward Tetris fanatics, not casual play. Jstris is simpler, but fundamentally exists as a platform for competitive online play. (Go to Play → Practice to just play single player.)

What a sad state of affairs. A hearty fuck you to The Tetris Company for ruthlessly shutting down hobbyist clones while refusing to license a decent official just-plain-Tetris Mac app.

Update: Hard to believe I didn’t come across this on my own, but it turns out The Tetris Company has a decent simple Tetris game on their own website.

★ Thursday, 11 January 2024