At least in the case of the Tetris GB, there was no battery save in that cartridge. It really was a case of losing your score after every power off.
It's a Miyoo Mini Plus... a relatively cheap ($60) Chinese Linux device.
It's actually a Miyoo Mini Plus... a fairly cheap ($60) Chinese Linux based console for playing retro games. I definitely recommend it.
Hah! Amazing!
I mostly use mine for GBA games, and I think it's perfect. The screen is considerably better than both the unlit GBA screen and the lit GBA SP screen, and is the perfect size for those games. Definitely recommend a Miyoo Mini Plus over the RG35XX, if just for the wifi (which makes it easy to load up ROMs, but also to do OTA updates and things like retroachievements).
I've not played Tetris Effect yet... the last recent one I looked at was Puyo Puyo Tetris. While I can take or leave Puyo Puyo, I loved the Tetris aspect of that game... especially the four player mode.
Funnily enough, I just tried this last night after talking about GB Tetris. It really is awesome!
That's really impressive... had a "quick" go and immediately had a 200 line game on it. It's amazing how much difference the shadow piece makes (not to mention the hold and infinite spin).
It feels almost petty to mention, but my main problem with gaming these days is choice... there's just too much. I have a SteamDeck packed with over a decade of Humble Bundles and giveaways. I have a MiSTer FPGA with 10,000 retro games. I have subscriptions throwing me more games in a month than I could play in a year... and amid all that choice, I found I was playing none of it.
So I've taken steps. On retro devices, I've taken to removing the full ROM sets (or hiding them from view) and just selecting a handful of games that I used to own, or definitely want to play. In Steam, I've started a collection list of games I'm interested in and I only ever pick from that.
And, somehow, it works. Seeing only three or four games to choose from somehow short circuits that panic response of seeing three or four thousand. It's easier to fixate on a game, or to find something to genuinely enjoy about a title that may not be that perfect experience otherwise, rather than discarding it quickly and moving on to the next fleeting thrill.
Couple of oldies I fire up regularly: Tetris (Gameboy, 1989); Head Over Heels (Spectrum, 1987); Bruce Lee (C64, Atari, 1984)
Honestly, the highlight of the show for me was definitely the blindfold Breath of the Wild run... amazing!
Also enjoyed glitchless Elden Ring.