Nintendo’s ’90s experiment with virtual reality, the Virtual Boy, is often the butt of jokes. But the doomed portable system had some great games. 3D Tetris, literally a three-dimensional take on the classic puzzler games, was one of them. And now Pit Blocks 3D is going to bring that same flavor of block-dropping to PC (but not VR) when it releases on September 27.
Just like with 3D Tetris, Pit Blocks 3D adds an extra dimension to the Tetris formula. You don’t just use falling blocks to create lines. You need to fill in entire layers of a 3D grid. The Tetris series has sold over 170 million games (physically and digitally) since debuting in 1984. Pit Blocks 3D may not be an actual Tetris game, but it can still attract fans of the puzzle series. And while Tetris has many imitators, few (if any) put the mechanics into 3D.
It also does a favor for retro gaming fans who want to try 3D Tetris but don’t own a Virtual Boy (which, you know, is most of them). Now we can have a taste of that gameplay without paying for a rare, old console and cartridge. Pit Blocks 3D does not support VR (although calling what the Virtual Boy did, with its 3D red-and-black graphics and lack of head-tracking, actual VR is misleading).
Pit Blocks 3D comes from SRM Games. The indie team is based in Toronto, and this is its first project.