structural:expansion, quality:correction, linguistic:translation, information:classification
Initial reviews

The IBM version received positive reviews. Compute! called it "one of the most addictive computer games this side of the Berlin Wall... is not the game to start if you have work to do or an appointment to keep. Consider yourself warned". Orson Scott Card joked that the game "proves that Russia still wants to bury us. I shudder to think of the blow to our economy as computer productivity drops to 0". Noting that Tetris was not copy-protected, he wrote: "Obviously, the game is meant to find its way onto every American machine". Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column of Dragon No. 135 gave the version 4.5 out of 5 stars. Roy Wagner reviewed the game for Computer Gaming World the same year, and said that " Tetris is simple in concept, simple to play, and a unique design".

The Macintosh version also received positive reviews. Macworld praised its strategic gameplay, stating that " Tetris offers the rare combination of being simple to learn but extremely challenging to play", and also praising the inclusion of the Desk Accessory version, which uses less RAM. Macworld summarized their review by listing Tetris' pros and cons, stating that Tetris is "elegant; easy to play; challenging and addicting; requires quick thinking, long-term strategy, and lightning reflexes" and listed Tetris' cons as "None". The Lessers gave the version 5 out of 5 stars in Dragon No. 141.

In their June 1989 issue, Zzap!64 awarded the Commodore 64 version a score of 98%, the joint highest score in the history of the magazine.

There was a hoax that circulated in February 2019 that the original NES instruction manual for Tetris had named the seven tetrominoes with names like "Orange Ricky", "Hero" and "Smashboy", but was disproven. Despite being disproven by video game historians, a question on the October 7 broadcast of Jeopardy! alluded to these names.