Tetris Zone For Mac
Apr 28, 2007 tetrisonline is a new company. They are basically a licensee/developer. They will becoming out with tetris games in the near future. As for tetris zone being a commercial product, our concept is that we don't want inventory. And due to the majority of people having internet today, its a lot easier to obtain and will cost cheaper than a boxed product. Tetris Zone Full Version. And Mac OS X. Tetris Zone offers four modes of play, from the simple, yet challenging 15-level Marathon mode to an.
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| Tetris Zone April 15, 2007 David Peck |
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Enough of the history lessons. Really it's my cover for the shortest game review of all time. Not that there is a problem with Tetris Zone, but to sum it up.. it's Tetris! And come on, you must know about Tetris. It's fun, it's challenging, and it's great for exercising the old noggin with a little hand/eye coordination thrown in. More than likely sometime in the last 20 years you played it. My first exposure was on a Super Nintendo console.
Just in case that person in the back of the room is not familiar, there are these falling blocks with different shapes..
The Tetris player must rotate the blocks as they fall so they end up in an optimum position to complete lines. When a line is filled, it disappears allowing all blocks above it to settle towards the bottom of the tray. A typical Tetris game starts slow but accelerates. As you complete levels, blocks fall faster making the game much more demanding until the end, you are flailing trying to keep misplaced blocks from reaching the top of the tray and ending the game.
Tetris Zone was developed and is published by BluePlanet Software. More info about Tetris including a history section can be found at Tetris.com. System requirements are an Intel or PPC based Mac (G3 or better) running MacOS 10.3 or higher, including 256MB RAM and a 32MB video card (hence the good graphics).
Tetris Zone includes two choices of pleasing music and four game modes. Marathon, Challenge, Sprint, and the insane Master mode.
Marathon is a simple mode allowing you to go as far as you can. Challenge allows you to progress as far as possible in ten minutes of game play. Sprint allows you complete 40 lines as fast as you can. And Master mode is only for those incredibly brilliant or undeniably masochistic. In this mode, blocks appear at the bottom of the tray with no falling observed and a split second is allowed to slide the block in place.
Overall Tetris Zone plays well, no problems and no crashes were noted. Action was smooth and the music pleasant to listen too. Preferences allow a choice of music and the remapping of keys.I don't like having to log-in online to play. I assume this is for some kind of copy protection, but don't think it is warranted to play a solo game. It could be argued that this is the wave of the future with onerous schemes like 'Steam' in existence on the net, but I tend to resist when it comes to a casual solo gaming. You don't have to maintain an online connection to play, just to log in initially. There are multiplayer version of Tetris on the internet, and this could be a reason to have to log-in but Tetris Zone does not offer a multiplayer mode. And what happens when the log-in server crashes? I don't want to rely on external assets to play my game.
Macos sierra patch tool for unsupported macs. Another non-optional feature are ghost-pieces, an outline of the current in-play block that Tetris Zone uses to show the player where and how that block will fall. The developer says they want to encourage new players, but as an old-school Tetris player I view this as a crutch and desire that this feature be selectable on/off at player discretion. I find that even when I vow not to use it, when the going gets tough I'm looking at the ghost piece, damn my eyes!
At the time this review was submitted for publication, Tetris Zone made use of a compulsory leader board so if you're playing online (with an active connection to the internet), game results were automatically recorded for the world to see how smart or inept you are. This feature should be optional and the developer has indicated it will be optional within weeks. If you are playing off-line (disconnected from the net), no game results are uploaded.
• Nice game-play including several game modes.
• Good graphics and sound.
• Good value.
• Automatic leader board (to be fixed very soon if not all ready).
• No on/off for ghost pieces.
• No multiplayer mode.
| Tetris Zone |
| Publisher: Blue Planet Software |
| Pages: | 1 | Gallery |
Did you know that you can play Tetris on your Mac? Of course you did, you can play lots of games. But did you know that there's already a Tetris game built in? In fact, if you know your way around Emacs, you can play a whole bunch of awesome retro games like pong and snake. Read on to see how.
Are There Really Hidden Games on My Mac?
Yep. Tucked deep into the recesses of your Mac's darkest corners, there's a whole list of delightfully retro applications specifically written for a text editor called Emacs. In this tutorial, I'll walk you through the step by step process of getting to the screen where you launch the games and show you the hidden directory where you can see a list of your options.
Step 1: Open Terminal
The first thing that you need to do is open Terminal, which is located inside of the 'Utilities' folder inside of your 'Applications' folder.
Terminal is located inside of your Utilities folder
I know this is scary, but don't worry. You don't need to be a Terminal wizard to follow this tutorial. Even if it's your first time opening Terminal, you'll be just fine.
That being said, always take caution when opening Terminal. Never type in anything if you aren't exactly sure what's going to happen. This app has a crazy amount of control over how your Mac operates and you can seriously screw stuff up if you're not careful.
Step 2: Launch Emacs
Once you're inside of Terminal, you'll need to enable Emacs. No, I'm not talking about the big white Macs that Apple used to sell, it's a special text editor that's built on the concept of extensibility.
It's all super technical, and you can read about it here, but for now all you need to know is that you need to enter in this command and hit Return:
That's it! You just entered a command into Terminal. That wasn't so bad, was it?
Step 3: Launch Tetris
Once you've successfully enabled Emacs, your Terminal window will fill up with all kinds of crazy stuff. It should look something like this:
GNU Emacs in Terminal
Once you see this, hit the Escape key. This should bring up the screen shown below.
After you release the Escape key and see the screen above, hit the 'x' key. This should bring up a 'M-x' prompt at the bottom left of the screen. To launch the Tetris game, simply type 'tetris' here and hit Return.
After you release the Escape button, hit 'x', then type 'tetris'
That's it! This should launch the Tetris game. Now let's take a look at how to play.
How to Play
The Tetris game here will probably be one of the most basic, bare bones Tetris clones that you will ever play. This thing is super hidden, ugly and difficult to play. When the free online Tetris games are so good, the only real reason to play this one is to chalk up some hardcore nerd points.
If you're like me though, that's more than enough of a reason to bust this out from time to time. As you can see, the playable area is oddly narrow. The score and next block are shown to the right of the main area.
As blocks (aka Tetriminos) fall, use the arrow keys to push them around. To spin a block, use the up key. To instantly drop a block, hit space.
More Games
As it turns out, there are quite a few games that can be accessed using the exact same method described above. Follow the same steps, only when you get to the part where you typed in 'tetris' try a few other things like 'pong' or 'snake'.
Pong in Terminal. One player uses the 4 and 6 keys, the other uses the arrows keys.
To see the directory of games that are available for you to play, go to Finder, hit Command-Shift-G and type in the following:
This should bring you to a folder that shows a bunch of different games. Try entering the various names seen here into the M-x prompt from before.
Emacs Games can be found in /usr/share/emacs/22.1/lisp/play
To get you started, here are some game names that I know work:
- tetris
- pong
- snake
- solitaire (Not what you think)
- gomoku (sort of like Connect 4)
- 5x5
- dunnet (text based adventure game)
- landmark
- doctor
To be honest, several of the games that I came across were just plain confusing. You're launched into a bizarre screen and forced to figure out what's going on. Others are not so much games as animation examples or simulations. For instance, try typing in 'doctor' and you'll find yourself in a frustrating conversation with a quirky electronic psychotherapist!
Which Game is Your Favorite?
I'd wager that most Mac users have no idea that these games are hidden away on their computer. The Mac OS has been around for so long that there's a lot to discover if you know where to look.
Now that you know about these hidden gems, you simply have to go try them. Follow the instructions above, then report back here to let us know which game you liked best.
And if you want to uncover more of your Mac's capabilities, have a look through the Mac utilities and apps on Envato Market.