(This month we inaugurate a new column in My Mac, The Game Guy’s, with our two resident game playing experts, Adam Karneboge and Mike Wallinga! Sit back, relax and enjoy their hard work.)

MIKE: Tetris was one of those overnight classics. The minute it came out, everyone knew it was something special.It can be ranked up there with the likes of PacMan, Space Invaders, and the Mario Brother’s series as being one of THE great video games of all games.

The premise of Tetris, for those of you out there who don’t know, is to fill a blank, empty playing area with oddly shaped bricks. Or, to be more precise, your goal is to avoid filling up that playing area. However, this is easier said than done, because those bricks are dropping down from the sky, eagerly eating up precious real estate, and there’s nothing you can do to stop the rain. Your only defense is to line up the blocks correctly and create solid rows, which then disappear and free up more room. To my knowledge, you CAN’T beat this game, you can just survive perpetually. After all, that’s the addictive part — seeing how long you can stay alive and how many rows of bricks you can clear.

One of the prices of popularity and quality is imitation. On every video game platform imaginable, Tetris has had several versions, clones and copycats. The Mac is no different. Not that this is a bad thing, however. I think it’s wonderful that I can switch between writing a report for school and killing a little time playing Tetris with just a click of the mouse, particularly with so many good Tetris clones out there for the Mac.

Continue reading »