This is a demo by programmer “Masando Vision” which attempts to remake Tetris on the Nintendo Entertainment System / Famicom using Family Basic V2.

Family Basic V2 was only available in Japan, and allowed for minigames to be programmed in Basic, within 2k RAM space and using default graphics. Family Basic V3 (1985) has 4k RAM but is still limited. (This ROM uses V3.)

No sprites are used, and so the playfield updates more slowly using background nametables. It’s a little sluggish at first, and may need to be sped up in emulation, but is otherwise playable.

In this hack, a background graphic of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Russia was added by Garrett Gilchrist, replacing Japanese text in the ROM. A cultural landmark of Russia, the cathedral commonly appears in versions of Tetris.

Tetris (Russian: Тетрис) is a puzzle video game created by Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984. Bullet-Proof Software and Atari/Tengen published versions for the Nintendo Entertainment System which are now rare, compared to Nintendo’s own widely-released version.

• Database match: Family BASIC V3 (Japan)
• Database: No-Intro: Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20210216-231042)
• File SHA-1: 018ABD50D60EDD8DF30D9F8894F94FB3FCE95A4A
• File CRC32: 55211022
• ROM SHA-1: E232C621BFEDBFC6B100677BFBFC50B910248282
• ROM CRC32: B2530AFC