From the deepest trenches of the ocean, the Kraken has come! As the Kraken climbs the walls of your fortress, repel it by hurtling blocks down at the monster. As lines are cleared, the Kraken will retreat, but only momentarily. Can you survive the night, and live to fight another day? Compatible with all Game Boy models, and enhanced for the Super Game Boy! Featuring Two-Player simultaneous play!
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I have played From Below Pocket for many hours at this point. I bought the digital edition through Matt's website.
A port of Matt Hughsons 'From Below' on the NES, 'From Below Pocket' is a Tetris clone for the GB and GBC. It comes with 2 player support as well as SGB enhanced features.
It has the standard retro Tetris of course (and I'll get to that in a moment) but its the kraken mechanic gimmick that adds an optional wrinkle into the mix and delivers a fresh take on an all time classic. The kraken will mischievously push columns of bricks upwards, causing the matrix to spike and upset your carefully planned stack as you play. There are two kraken modes to choose from. One that sets the kraken to interfere after every block lands, or every 10 seconds. It's a neat gimmick and good for a change of pace. It's especially exhilerating when you smack the krakens tentacle away when dropping a tetrimino and he gets all pissy. Serves him right though!
The graphics are excellent and the SFX and music are particularly top notch! Just all around a good dopamine hit for the senses.
As for the classic mode, that of the traditional Tetris game play every one is familiar with. Well, we have good things to say about this version. For starters there is a fast drop feature built in, which also has customizable input mapping. If you have read my review on the original Tetris for the Game Boy, you will know I docked it half a star because the well was only 18 bricks tall instead of 20 (as in its NES cousin, a perfect retro Tetris experience. Thats unfortunatly a big problem for higher levels at such quick speeds as those two extra rows mean the difference between getting a long piece down the side at a critical moment or not. I have found this to be my main source of frustration with GB Tetris compared to the NES version. This can't be helped because the 8x8 pixel tile grid used to display the graphics on the Game Boy dictate that the maximum height of the well be 18 tiles... or does it?
Yes, that's right. Matt pulled a fast one here and skipped the rendering of every 8th pixel. Now we have 20 tiles (each 8x7 pixels in dimension) packed into the same small resolution of the GB screen!
Yep, the son a gun did it! We have the equivalent of NES Tetris on the Game Boy, a perfect retro Tetris experience (in my humble opinion) after 34 years since the release of Tetris (1989)! Some genuinely incredible innovation in Game Boy game dev!
Matt has also released his own post-release hack that adds a Ghost Piece display so you can see where the Tetrimino lands before you commit to the hard drop. I prefer playing using this hack as it's a welcome modern Tetris feature.
So, if I gave Tetris for the GB 4.5 stars, then it follows I just have to give 'From Below Pocket' a perfect 5 stars. This is easily the best version of Tetris you will find on the handheld and one of the best retro Tetris experiences out there. A must have homebrew title for puzzle fans.
Congratulations to Matt and the dev team!
A port of Matt Hughsons 'From Below' on the NES, 'From Below Pocket' is a Tetris clone for the GB and GBC. It comes with 2 player support as well as SGB enhanced features.
It has the standard retro Tetris of course (and I'll get to that in a moment) but its the kraken mechanic gimmick that adds an optional wrinkle into the mix and delivers a fresh take on an all time classic. The kraken will mischievously push columns of bricks upwards, causing the matrix to spike and upset your carefully planned stack as you play. There are two kraken modes to choose from. One that sets the kraken to interfere after every block lands, or every 10 seconds. It's a neat gimmick and good for a change of pace. It's especially exhilerating when you smack the krakens tentacle away when dropping a tetrimino and he gets all pissy. Serves him right though!
The graphics are excellent and the SFX and music are particularly top notch! Just all around a good dopamine hit for the senses.
As for the classic mode, that of the traditional Tetris game play every one is familiar with. Well, we have good things to say about this version. For starters there is a fast drop feature built in, which also has customizable input mapping. If you have read my review on the original Tetris for the Game Boy, you will know I docked it half a star because the well was only 18 bricks tall instead of 20 (as in its NES cousin, a perfect retro Tetris experience. Thats unfortunatly a big problem for higher levels at such quick speeds as those two extra rows mean the difference between getting a long piece down the side at a critical moment or not. I have found this to be my main source of frustration with GB Tetris compared to the NES version. This can't be helped because the 8x8 pixel tile grid used to display the graphics on the Game Boy dictate that the maximum height of the well be 18 tiles... or does it?
Yes, that's right. Matt pulled a fast one here and skipped the rendering of every 8th pixel. Now we have 20 tiles (each 8x7 pixels in dimension) packed into the same small resolution of the GB screen!
Yep, the son a gun did it! We have the equivalent of NES Tetris on the Game Boy, a perfect retro Tetris experience (in my humble opinion) after 34 years since the release of Tetris (1989)! Some genuinely incredible innovation in Game Boy game dev!
Matt has also released his own post-release hack that adds a Ghost Piece display so you can see where the Tetrimino lands before you commit to the hard drop. I prefer playing using this hack as it's a welcome modern Tetris feature.
So, if I gave Tetris for the GB 4.5 stars, then it follows I just have to give 'From Below Pocket' a perfect 5 stars. This is easily the best version of Tetris you will find on the handheld and one of the best retro Tetris experiences out there. A must have homebrew title for puzzle fans.
Congratulations to Matt and the dev team!