Look Who it Was Random video

[MSX] Let's Quickly Play Kralizec's Tetris for MSX (2005)

1,895 views · Published 14 July 2011 · 19:02 · Indexed 24 October 2026

Channel: FiXato · 2011 · Gaming

Watch on YouTube

Let's Quickly Play Kralizec's Tetris for the MSX, an improved version of the Tetris 8K and Tetris Battle 8K MSX games that competed in the MSXdev04 programming contest.
Kralizec —consisting of Ramones, who did the programming, and Sutchan, who was responsible for the graphics & design— made 3 Tetris games. The first two, Tetris in 8K and Tetris Battle in 8K were released during this MSXdev04 contest. The last one is an improved version that combines these first two, and adds all sorts of extras. The MSXdev04 versions are available for download from http://msxdev.msxblue.com/?page_id=75 and their improved version can be downloaded from http://msxkralizec.msxcartridgeshop.com/KRA-PAS.htm#.
I've already played through the original 8K predecessors of this Tetris game during my Let's Quickly Play MSXdev series, but to show you the improvements of this version, I decided to record this improved version as well.
It's a simple and straightforward two player Tetris implementation. As the title implies, it is based on Aleksei Leonidovich Pazhitnov and Vadim Gerasimov's Те́трис. Being a 32KB ROM, it has space for more music, and both the game modes.

While the Tetris in 8K only had some in-game music, and Tetris Battle completely lacked any music, this version has music during the menu, and while playing!
The music is far more diverse than the 8K version (probably due to time & size limitations of the MSXdev editions), and even though I've played this version quite a bit over the years, I still dig it. It doesn't get that stuck in your head as the Nintendo tunes though.
I first played some of the single player mode, where the goal is to just stay alive and rack up a nice score. After clearing enough lines, you occasionally get a 'shock', which clears a few rows at the bottom.

Afterwards I gave the 2-player mode a go, even though I did not have a 2nd player around for the recording. Since this edition also lacks an AI-controlled 2nd player, I had to resort to attempting to play simultaneously against myself again (which is an interesting challenge in itself!)

For those unfamiliar with Tetris (shame on you!), the objective of the game is clear lines with the various shaped tiles, each consisting of 4 bricks. Think of it as trying to pack the trunk of your car as tightly as possible, with the difference that your bags don't disappear when you've filled a row, while the bricks do!
There's a small twist to this concept though when playing against someone else. Every time a player clears multiple rows with 1 tile, their opponent gets a broken row added at the bottom of their playing field for every cleared row, and their current piece gets destroyed. This is especially fun if your opponent was just trying to get a tetris themselves. ;-)
The first one to survive 3 rounds, wins the game.

So far this still is one of my favourite Tetris games for the MSX. Music is good, controls are pleasant and responsive enough to nudge that one brick right into place, allowing you to make up for some misplaced tiles, and graphics are nice. Being able to select between a couple of tile graphics is a nice bonus.
It improves upon the original Tetris in that it doesn't add rows to the opponent with just a single gap at a single location.
Playing against a friend is even more fun though, because it adds that competitive edge to it. Unfortunately it is limited to 2 players on a single screen and doesn't have any optional 'attack' items, but I guess only Triplex provides the true multi-player experience.

As usual, this recording was made using the cross-platform open source MSX emulator openMSX. For more information, see the official openMSX project page at http://openmsx.sourceforge.net/
This recording was made with 0.8.1 Development Build 12178, available from http://openmsx.fixato.net, home of the unofficial development builds of openMSX for Mac OS X and Windows x86 & x64.
I used the Boosted MSX2 EN configuration for this recording, though it should run on an MSX1 as well.

More from this channel