In Hatris, the player must stack five hats of the same style to remove them from the board.
Hatris plays similarly to Pajitnov's previous Tetris, in that game objects falling from the top of the screen must be arranged in specific patterns to gain points and to keep the play area clear. In Hatris, hats of different styles fall from the top of the screen and accumulate at the bottom. To eliminate hats from the play area, five hats of identical style must be stacked. Different style hats stack differently.
Development and release
Hatris was originally developed with different ideas, such as using utensils and other kitchen objects before eventually settling on hats. Alexey Pajitnov decided the team settled on hats as it was the most fun of the objects.[2]
In Japan, Game Machine listed the arcade version of Hatris on their June 1, 1990 issue as being the eighteenth most-successful table arcade unit of the month.[14]
Entertainment Weekly gave the Game Boy version of Hatris an A and wrote: "There is, after all, a cure for Tetris addiction. It’s Hatris, a habit that's even harder to kick."[15]
Pazhitnov later said in an interview with Retro Gamer published in 2018 that "sales didn't match our expectations, I still can't explain what was wrong with it and why it was not as addictive as we wanted it to be. We thought it had some smart moves so it was a big disappointment."[2]
