Game & Watch Tetris Jr Simulation Released Online

The love in recent years for LCD games has only grown to new heights as people have found more prototypes and created more emulators, but another trend has emerged and that is recreations and simulations. Simulations can include LCD games that were planned but not released including games that were prototyped, and one such title includes Tetris Jr. Tetris Jr. was a prototype Game & Watch electronic LCD game developed by Nintendo that was never released to the public and with only one known copy in existence, it holds a status of the rarest of the Game & Watches designed by Nintendo.

A simulation of the game has been released by Retrofab over on Itch.io that recreates the game in its entirety.

Like regular Tetris the object of the game is to score as many points as possible by forming complete rows from falling blocks of various shapes. However, instead of positioning the falling block by moving it left or right, you move the entire playing field instead. There are two game modes available.

Game A

A clown on the top screen throws randomly selected blocks of various shapes down a chute toward the bottom screen. Press the ROTATE button to turn the block 90 degrees as it falls. Press the DOWN button to increase the speed of the falling block. Use the LEFT and RIGHT buttons to move the entire playing field.

When a row is completely filled it is removed and points are awarded based on how many rows are cleared in one turn:

1 row     7 points
2 rows   25 points
3 rows   100 points
4 rows   400 points

If the playing field fills up with enough blocks so that a falling block can not move beyond the narrow chute, the playing field can then no longer be moved LEFT or RIGHT and the chute will fill with blocks until it reaches the top when a miss is scored. Score three misses and the game is over.

Game B

In Game B you have 3 rounds of 60 seconds each to try and score as many points as possible by forming complete rows. Every time you clear a row points are awarded (similar to Game A) and, in addition, a few more seconds are added back on the clock extending the time you have in the round. When the timer reaches 0 a miss is scored. The game ends after the third miss.

The G&W was first hinted in a 1989 advertisement for the Zelda (ZL-65) Game & Watch, where another new multi-screen Game & Watch was teased without any details given.

The going rumour was that this was retail production of a Tetris prototype that Nintendo had been developing after acquiring the license in 1988, but was never revealed and some have theorized that Nintendo cancelled the release due to concerns that a Tetris Game & Watch would hurt the sales of the upcoming Game Boy which would be packaged with a copy of Tetris. The prototype became the stuff of legend and some wondered if it was even real since no one had seen one and Nintendo employees suggested it did not ever exist.

This lasted until April 2023, when a Japanese journalist named Hiroyuki Maeda posted photos on Twitter of the prototype Tetris Game & Watch that proved it was real. And soon after, there were short videos posted on YouTube showing the gameplay, which stood apart from Tetris, notably with the circus-themed graphics and a unique mechanic where you move the board instead of the falling blocks.