At first I nearly overlooked Tristix completely. In the first week
of August 2006 I added more than a dozen
Tetris clones and playtested some more.
Tristix seemed to me very much like
MEGA Tetris and
Tetrix II, and it
does not even have GUS support, only
Soundblaster. What more, it has, by default, all kind of weird
block shapes and special pieces, something I never cared for. So I
was ready to pass it over as yet another Tetris clone, but then I
took a closer look at the options menu. I changed a few settings. I
played it again. And I became a lot more impressed. Let's have a look
at the options menu first. You can:
- Configure the key settings for the four players. You do not have
to set all of them, conflicting keys are not a problem if you do not
plan to have more than one player anyway.
- Set the number of players.
- Choose the playing mode:
- Normal play is a regular game of Tristix with 1-4 players. For every ten
lines that a player completes, his level and speed increment. The goal of
all players is to score as many points as possible, and the success of any
player does not depend on that of any other.
- Challenge play is a single player challenge against a single computer
player. The number of players option is ignored. You compete against
progressively harder players. Your game is over when you lose a match.
- Competitive mode is a competition between 2 to 4 players (if played with
1 player it is identical to Normal play). The winner of the game is the
player who lasts longer than anyone else. In competitive mode, the creation
of a double, a triple, a quadruple, or a tristix (5 lines) will result in
your lines disappearing from your playing screen and re-appearing on that of
an opponent without the last piece you placed in them. This can severely
hinder their game play. Also in competitive mode, when one player completes
ten lines and advances to the next playing speed, all other players
experience the speed increase, too.
- Endless mode is the same as normal mode, with the exception that the
playing speed never increments. This makes it possible to play for a very
long time.
- Choose the piece sizes:
- Small is 1–4 blocks.
- Medium is four blocks. Choose this if you want to play classic
Tetris.
- Large is five blocks.
- All is, well, all of them. This setting is default and resembles
Pentix
- Choose how often special pieces will appear. Few is one in 50, some
is one in 25, lots is one in ten. There are three
common
special
pieces, only these were available in the shareware version:
- The bomb will destroy all blocks within a 3 block radius of its dropped
location.
- The shooter will fire up to 10 bullets that will blow up one piece at a
time.
- The dropper is exactly like the shooter except that it drops pieces
instead, which is useful for filling up holes.
Then there are three rare
special pieces:
- The double shooter is exactly like the shooter except that it shoots two
shots at once, causing mass destruction in a small amount of time. You still
get only 10 shots, but each shot is twice as powerful!
- The meteor shower drops 5 meteors down. Each meteor blows up the piece
it hits, and the highest pieces directly to the left and to the right of it.
- The flash flood
rains ten drops, which take the place of the lowest holes in your playing
screen. When all drops have fallen, a crash of lightning turns the drops in
all full lines to stone, and wipes out all other drops.
- Choose whether you want the next piece to be shown.
- Choose between four background sets, original, plasma, hardware, and
spooky, registered version only.
- The
Game Options
are available at runtime too. You can choose
between eight block sets and four equally repetitive tracks, and set the
music and SFX volume.
Now, don't get me wrong: Tristix isn't a masterpiece either. The
musical score, as mentioned, is repetitive and quickly becomes annoying.
Some of the backgrounds (there is one for each of the ten levels in each
set) are very good, but others are simply moronic.
It's a pity you can't edit them, though I guess if you really wanted
to the file format shouldn't be too difficult to crack.
But there are several things that set Tristix apart from similar
games. Most of all, I guess, it's low system requirements. Tristix
really runs on a 286. I've tried it, and it runs well. Under this
aspect, the missing GUS support isn't all that relevant any more,
since there is little point in installing a GUS on a 286. It is, of
course, a matter of preference if you want music and VGA graphics on
a Tetris clone at all. If you do, you will hardly find one with more
modest hardware requirements.
About This File
This page was originally based on the shareware version of Tristix,
and that was what you could download here. In January 2008, Evan Salomon
kindly sent me the full registered version, encouraging me to distribute
it. I guess that makes the game freeware now. There is no extra text
file in the archive to reflect this change of status, but rest assured
it's legit.
I have included a configuration file (TRISTIX.CFG) in the
archive. The only thing it does is set the keyboard for the first
player to something that can be considered standard: move with the
arrow keys, rotate with the up arrow, drop with space. Everything
else is still default.
Related changelog entries:
2008-01-21,
2006-08-11.
