Play Hatris Online

Summary

Hatris drops a parade of hats—derbies, baseball caps, cowboy hats, wizard hats, top hats and crowns—two at a time from the top of the screen. The trick is to line up five of the same style, and they vanish, clearing space for the next wave. Different hats stack in their own quirky ways, so a quick eye and a steady head become essential as the pile grows faster than you can think.

The concept started out with kitchen utensils, but Alexey Pajitnov and Vladimir Pokhilko settled on hats because they were simply more fun to watch tumble. After a demo at the 1990 Consumer Electronics Show, the game landed on the NES and later spun off into arcade cabinets by Video System, as well as mobile revivals in 2004 (Hatris DX) and 2006.

Critics were split: Entertainment Weekly gave the Game Boy version an "A," while Japanese magazine Famitsu ranged from 4/10 to 8/10 for the NES. The arcade version even cracked the top‑20 table units in May 1990, and the title resurfaced in the 2024 Tetris Forever compilation across modern consoles.

Despite the pedigree of its creator, Pajitnov admitted in a 2018 Retro Gamer interview that sales fell short of expectations, leaving him puzzled over why the hat‑stacking puzzle never caught fire like Tetris did.