About

Tetris 99 is an online multiplayer Tetris game for the Nintendo Switch console developed by ARIKA and released on February 13th, 2019. The game pits 99 players against each other, with the online match continuing until all but one players lose. Online, the game was dubbed "Tetris Battle Royale", with multiple memes ridiculing the concept posted following the release.

History

On February 13th, 2019, Nintendo announced the release of a multiplayer installment in the Tetris video game series titled Tetris 99 in a Nintendo Direct^[1] presentation. On the same day, the game was made available for free to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers.

Reception

Early reception of the game was positive, with the game maintaining 8.7 user rating on Metacritic^[2] with six votes submitted after 24 hours and news outlet The Verge ^[3] calling the game "amazing".

Online Presence

On June 15th, 2018, Redditor^[8] tornillo86 posted a joke about a battle royale installment in the Tetris series to /r/gaming subreddit (shown below). The post gained over 1,600 upvotes in six months. Following the announcement of Tetris 99, Redditor^[9] IHad360K_KarmaDammit reposted the image to the subreddit, gaining over 6,200 upvotes in one day.

After the Tetris 99 was announced, multiple posts which referred to Tetris 99 as "Tetris Battle Royale" appeared on Twitter^[4][5] and Reddit^[6] (examples shown below).

Additionally, posts in which the concept of the game was ridiculed, often by comparison to Apex Legends, Fortnite, PUBG and other battle royale games, appeared on various online platforms. In one popular post, Twitter^[7] user _ScaleTipper made a reference to dance emotes from Fortnite.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References