It's probably testament to what a comforting game Tetris is to play that even the crappiest interpretations can cause me to play until the point of digital paralysis.

The crappy port? Tetris DS. Oh, yes, it's very professional looking, but as a challenging puzzle game, it's just fundamentally broken.

Consider this: if you are good enough to break 200 lines in Tetris DS, the only thing that stops you from playing infinitely is the laws of mathematics and your own muscular atrophy.

Tetris DS has two features that make it possible to play forever, once you reach a certain skill level: first of all, you can infinitely spin your pieces. They don't lock down until you stop spinning. So if you keep on hammering the A button, they'll never lock, allowing you all the time in the world to position them where you want, or even just leisurely scope out your preview pieces. Furthermore, any screw-ups can be corrected by exchanging your hold piece.

So while it's true that Tetris pieces fall instantly to the bottom of the playing field past level 20, what this means is that even mediocre players can exploit the game to rack up huge points. The only strategy you need in Tetris DS to attain huge points is to keep the playing field as level as possible, so you can spin your pieces left and right into their proper positions. The only skill is your ability to madly jab the rotate button.

I'm no great shakes at Tetrtis DS, but five or six games allowed me to easily beat the Marathon mode, which unlocked endless. Yesterday night, I gave it a shot, and easily scored over a million points.

In fact, I'm convinced I could have continued until the caloric expenditure of my jabbing thumb desiccated me into a shriveled, gasping mummy, if not for the fact that, at around 1,100,000 points, my entire right hand stopped functioning. It simply dropped numbly to my side like someone had sucked the bones out, spilling my DS Lite to the floor. By the time I'd picked it up with my left hand, the Tetriminos had already piled up to the top.

And that was when the agony hit, as my right arm filled with molten blood and I felt a thousand invisible rusty hypodermics plunged into each and every one of my arm's pain receptors. My hand had contorted into a ghastly claw. For me to even use it again, I had to soak my arm in the tub for half an hour.

In its current iteration, playing Tetris DS has the same physical symptoms of a frontal lobe stroke. Hey, Henk Rogers! You can tweak a good game too far. Florian Eckhardt

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