Tetris Attack (SNES)

Yoshi takes the center stage in Tetris Attack, a puzzle game that really doesn't have a whole lot to do with Tetris at all. That's because it was originally Panel de Pon, which had the misfortune of being a game about precious little fairies coming out at a time when most western gamers were male and/or believed girls had cooties. It was rebranded as a Tetris spinoff (which Henk Rogers of The Tetris Company would later regret allowing Nintendo to do), receiving additional changes and new features. Funny enough, Nintendo ended up pulling a Super Mario USA and brought this version of the game back to Japan, albeit under the Satellaview service.

Despite an increasing amount of cameos and references in other Nintendo games, most prominently the Super Smash Bros. series, the original Panel de Pon stayed in Japan until getting an international, albeit untranslated release via the Nintendo Classics library for the Nintendo Switch Online service (notably in lieu of Tetris Attack itself, probably due to licensing issues over the Tetris name). It is also featured in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Sub-Pages#

Regional DifferencesTetris A-Hack! Satellaview Event VersionsThree contests are known to have been held. Rev. 1An updated version used in the Virtual Console and Switch Online releases.

Developer Credit#

The following string, used for initializing RAM, is present in both Tetris Attack and Panel de Pon:

ﾊﾟﾈﾙ ﾃﾞ ﾎﾟﾝ BY B-CRASH

Unused Graphics#

Found Only in Tetris Attack#

Tiles for thicker gray garbage blocks. These are never used because, like in Panel de Pon, the gray garbage blocks in Tetris Attack are only ever one block thick.

These tiles indicate that these larger blocks would have used a mixture of bumps and craters rather than just bumps. Most intriguing of all, the blocks would have also had Shy Guy faces! The tiles are loaded in the spot where the second player's garbage block graphics were located in Panel de Pon.

This graphic reading "Yoshi" is loaded in VRAM alongside the graphics used for the title screen. Perhaps it would've been used had a different title been decided for the game.

Found Only in Panel de Pon#

A speech bubble reading "LET'S GO!" (in English) gets loaded in VRAM alongside the sprites for Lip in VS. Mode's overworld.

It also contains an extra tile that can be used to arrange it in a way that lacks the "tip" that would point towards Lip.

In Tetris Attack, the majority of the tiles that would've composed this speech bubble have been overwritten by Yoshi's head.

Extra Music Test Songs#

Panel de Pon	Tetris Attack

All special ending themes can be accessed in the sound test with Game Genie code 4C27-C70A (Tetris Attack) / 4C20-3F62 (Panel de Pon) or PAR code 83D23D2A (Tetris Attack) / 83D7462a (Panel de Pon). Just press Left on song 00 or Right on song 23 to gain access to the six additional tunes in Tetris Attack or seven additional tunes in Panel de Pon.

Error Messages#

Anti-Piracy#

Panel de Pon	Tetris Attack

Although the game doesn't have SRAM by default, the game runs an SRAM check upon boot-up. This is simply done by writing two bytes of values to $700000 and if the write was successful (highly likely if one has used a cartridge copier), it will display the above screen and freeze. Notice that "information" is misspelled as "infomation" here.

Tetris Attack additionally checks for several signs of a "dirty" system state on boot that would also indicate that the game was being run from a copier. To boot to the anti-piracy screen, use PAR code 808600:10 (for Panel de Pon) or 8086AB:10 (for the US version of Tetris Attack).

Region Error#

Attempting to play Panel De Pon or the US version of Tetris Attack on a European console and vice versa will lock up the game on this screen. Unusually, this error seems to be intended for detection of cheat devices.

References#