Tech: Tetris DS

A reality of the hospital waiting room, as I've mentioned before, is boredom. Luckily, I brought my Nintendo DS Lite to keep me occupied, as the hours and days can just blend into each other sometimes. The DS has a ton of great puzzle games (including hits like "Brain Age" and "Puzzle Quest"), but the granddaddy of them all has to be "Tetris." The original Game Boy version helped sell millions of units for Nintendo, and it's been reborn for the DS.

The game has plenty of modes, 3 action-based and 3 more sedate endeavors. The Standard, Push, and Mission modes are all played using the standard Tetris controls and playfield, while the Touch, Puzzle, and Catch modes offer strange variations on standard Tetris. The game supports single-card multiplayer for 10 people, and you can play online. With all my cousins assembled to see Grandma, we managed to get a rousing six-player competitive game going.

There are some potential drawbacks, here. If you don't like Nintendo, you may not like the in-your-face 8-bit themes that adorn all the game's puzzle modes (the standard marathon mode, for example, is played to renditions of the NES "Super Mario Bros." music and to the "Legend of Zelda" overworld theme). The trappings of modern Tetris - infinite spin, previews of the next 6 pieces, a ghost block showing where the block will land - are here in force, but mostly can be turned off or ignored. For everyone else, this is a meaty package that will delight most Tetris fans.

Rating: 85/100