Sometimes, I think that my relationship with my girlfriend is of an opposites attract kind of thing. She's fiercely vocal and opinionated in public while I prefer to slink away into the shadows and quietly curse my enemies under my breath. She's extroverted and loves music and raves while I have no problem enjoying some quiet time, that is, it may sound quiet because I have headphones while playing a single-player campaign. But if there's one thing we love together, it's Tetris.

So for my girlfriend's birthday, I decided to bequeath to her my prized copy of Tetris DS, which one of my friends once told me is quite hard to find (apparently, new copies on Amazon go for $60). After an entire day of having fun in one of the livelier cities in the valley, Visalia, we returned to her house after Chinese take-out to enjoy an hour or so of Tetris DS and its handy single card download multiplayer.

After being pleasantly surprised at the options after downloading my half of the multiplayer component, we jump right into Standard mode. If there's one game I know she's played a lot, it's Tetris, and there was no clear sign of who's better than the other. We both exchange wins as she's more likely to continually clear lines to keep her space clean while I organize my blocks more to prepare for a deadly l-block drop, where mistakes may lead to huge, unintended pile ups.

But my personal favorite mode, Push, is something she's not readily prepared for and yes, Push is a very unorthodox way to play Tetris multiplayer.

The first two matches I win pretty handily as my strategy can push my opponent's space very fast and her strategy of slow and steady can't keep up with how much full on l-block drops can accomplish. On the third, I continue my strategy but let my blocks fall manually and keep my l-blocks for the last possible second so I could spend more time with her while watching her play the game so intensely. Of course, when the time for me to leave came, I just dropped a few l-blocks and finished the game.



After driving home and cleaning up from my trip, I exchanged texts with her wishing her another happy birthday and asking how the game was for her. She told me she hadn't stopped playing since I left (it's a 4 hour drive) and that Touch mode is her favorite. It was also funny how the next day, before going to work, her last text before I left for my shift was that she played her DS to the point of a complete battery drain.

My girlfriend loves her some Tetris!

- Show me your moves

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