What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Tetris (MY ARCADE Tetris Pico Player)

March 15th, 2025

Today has not been a bad day so far. I spent a lot of time on this site, doing some background work, and went to the movies. It's a decent Saturday!

Yesterday, I got a very strange Tetris themed Famicom-on-a-chip mini arcade system pretty cheaply. A lot of the games on it seem to be the strange off-brand rubbish I saw on the commonly sold Famiclones when I lived in Japan. I'll write about some of those later, and maybe give some of them a fairer shake than I have in the past. No matter how bad any of the "extra" games are, though, the version of Tetris included is pretty decent. Rather than being able to speed pieces to the bottom, the pieces just kind of plunk down with no control if you're looking to speed them up a bit, which was my only real irritation with it. The Famicom, or at least Famicom-esque hardware, gives it interesting vibes, and I like the version of the Tetris song it's using. This wasn't as bad a buy as I thought it might be.

I kept playing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team, too, doing a somewhat filler-ish dungeon between story beats. I can add extra Pokemon to my party now, which is nifty, and I'm pretty pleased to have Magnemite first.

I haven't forgotten about fighting games, either, and I did Sonic's classic mode playthrough in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. I play too much Sonic, so I got frustrated when I couldn't do a homing attack against a band of Kirbies. I think that speaks well to the gameplay, though. Characters feel reasonably accurate enough in Smash Ultimate that I get thrown when something is missing from their "moves," which is more than I'd expect from a game balancing so many cast members. It's neat!