9 Launch Games That Singlehandedly Made Their Consoles Worth Buying

5. Tetris - Game Boy

Halo Combat Evolved
Nintendo

Far from the first device to house Alexey Pajitnov's iconic, best-selling video game of all time, it was when Tetris finally found its way to Nintendo's original Game Boy that the game all about neatly stacking tetrominoes blew up to become a worldwide phenomenon.

Remember, the Game Boy was Nintendo's first handheld, it needed that one special game to expedite its success, just as then rights-holder Elorg needed a strong, established platform to help the ludicrously simple title succeed outside of its Russian homeland.

By today's standards, lugging something as primitive-looking as the Game Boy around as a means to play Tetris on-the-go is an absurd notion, but in the 90s, it was a revelation, one that mesmerized the minds of people from all walks of life and ages.

Most importantly of all, the pairing all-but eliminated the dreaded monotony of the daily work commute and for that alone, we should all be thankful for Pajitnov's contribution to video games.

In the words of Henk Rogers, "Tetris made Game Boy and Game Boy made Tetris."

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Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.