★★★★☆ — a collector review of Magical Tetris Challenge (Nintendo 64) by @HollowOwl (verified collector) on 2026-06-15
A fantastic multiplayer game for Tetris fans
Magical Tetris Challenge was originally an arcade game from Capcom that later got home releases for the N64 and PS1. It features and arcade style story mode with short cutscenes between levels, _but the real fun is in the multiplayer._
What makes the VS mode interesting are the strange block types that can start to appear if a player starts doing combos or pulling off a Tetris. Gone are the normal 4 block shapes, and what appears will make any Tetris fan cry. Suddenly huge pieces in all shapes and sizes start falling. Even line pieces with 5 blocks can drop, allowing the player to set up a Pentris!
Countering an opponent's attack sends the strange piece back to the opponent, but they can do the same to you. This makes it so these messed up pieces can be bounced back and forth between players, and every time that happens it will grow in size. Eventually the resulting piece will be a massive cube that takes up nearly the entire field! Obviously this leads to some pretty intense battles.
As for controls, they are pretty standard for a Tetris game of this era. It features soft and hard drops, and the guide block to see where the piece will land at a glance. As this game was released before the "Hold" feature was introduced you will not find it here. That is probably for the best though because holding the attack pieces would probably break the game.
The single player is nothing special really. Just some short cutscenes of Disney characters talking with each other before deciding to fight each other in Tetris for whatever silly reason.
I mentioned earlier that this game was released on both the N64 and PS1, and there are some slight differences. The N64 version has lower quality audio and it sounds like some sort of echo filter was applied over everything to try and hide that. The music and sound effects are so good that it doesn't really matter though, and honestly it still sounds great blasting out of a CRT. This is one of the few fully 2D games on the N64 so it holds up incredibly well.
If you're looking for a great competitive 2 player game for N64 you should pick this up! As of writing this the game can be found for $20-$30 loose, so check it out!