Pokémon Tetris (Pokémon Mini) Playthrough
171A playthrough of Nintendo's 2002 puzzle game for the Nintendo Pokémon Mini, Pokémon Tetris.
In this video, I captured every Pokémon to complete the Pokédex and see the end credits. You can see the completed Pokédex at 6:43:55.
It blows my mind that Nintendo's Pokémon Tetris might well be one of the most obscure versions of Tetris ever released under an official license, and that it was released for a platform that I had never heard of until just a few years ago.
Pokémon Tetris was the last of the half-dozen games released in Europe for the Pokémon Mini, a low-cost handheld that's shaped like a bit like a McNugget. It features a monochrome LCD screen that displays a 96x64 image, it's powered by a single AAA battery, and its games came on cartridges roughly the size of a fingernail.
The goal of the game is to complete the Pokédex, which covers all 251 Pokémon from Gen 1+2, by playing Tetris. As you play, you'll see the silhouette of a Pokémon hanging to the right of the playfield, and you can capture it by getting a "Tetris" (clearing 4+ lines with a single piece).
The game offers several nifty twists beyond that, though. You can rotate your pieces like you'd do in standard Tetris, but you can also flip your pieces by shaking the Mini, and on the harder difficulty levels, 5-block pieces are tossed into the mix. And since the game type and difficulty level determine which Pokémon show up, you'll be thoroughly familiar with all its permutations of the standard Tetris formula by the time you've caught 'em all.
With the amount of content packed into this 512K cartridge, I'm surprised that Pokémon Tetris was never remade for a more capable system. Had the graphics and music been reworked, this would've felt right at home on the GBA or as WiiWare. But as it stands, Pokémon Tetris remains a Pokémon Mini exclusive, and it's one that was never sold in North America.
I'm not a big Pokémon fan, but this was cool. I'm glad I gave it chance, because I had a lot of fun with it.
(The sound, though! Yeowch! It's like a PC speaker that's trying way too hard.)
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