First, if you don’t have a DS, go buy one. This game will more than justify it. Tetris was already an addicting game. But whereas before you had to use a little cable to connect a measly two players, you can now go on the internet and play up to four at a time. It even has items ala Mario Kart that you can use against people!
Please tell me that somebody else is addicted. My girlfriend and I have stopped having normal conversations and now we talk about “being a Nicholas” (the guy who wouldn’t quit even after losing 9 in a row), and about how we need the sticks and how much we have lightning bolts.
Go on… get it. You know you want it…
I don’t have any handhelds at the moment, but the DS has been tempting me a lot lately. I’m a huge fan of puzzle games in general, particularly Tetris and its zillions of variants. I’m thinking with how busy I am with projects these days, yet another addicting video game to sap my time would be a mistake, but you’ve definately given me something to think about for after graduation! 
Is there an option to turn these off? Folks have been trying to “improve” Tetris for decades. But none of the additions to the game seem to really make it any better than the original. I think that one reason Tetris has stood the test of time so well is its elegant simplicity, and adding extra elements detracts from that.
Or, put it this way: Fifty years from now, people will still be porting Tetris to new platforms. Some of those ports probably will have extra whistles and bells. But most of them will just be Tetris, and I’m willing to bet that none of them will have these particular whistles and bells.
Oh yes, they actually have several different modes of play. There’s the standard Tetris mode (now you have to get 200 lines to “beat” the game), something called push which is like Tetris from the top and bottom and you try to push the other person into death. There’s a couple of puzzle type games, and then also the aforementioned items game. When you play online you can do the 2 player standard mode or 4 player items mode, in addition to the push and some other stuff I haven’t tried yet. I think you can actually do up to 8 people playing at one time (off one cart via game sharing which is really nice).
I must warn you, though. It’s like a viral meme. All I see now are little pieces floating around at all times of the day.
Bad advice. They’re releasing an updated version of the console, the DS Lite, around…well, any time, now. It’s already out in Japan; there’s just not a concrete release date for the US, yet. It’s smaller, sleeker, lighter, and has brighter screens. You’d might as well wait for it, if you want a DS. Or, you can import it - they’re playable worldwide (unlike plenty of other consoles, that are coded to only work with games sold in their respective regions). $200 is the import price, but it’d probably be much cheaper when they sell it here (but who knows by how much, since the original was $150).
It costs more, though. I think you can pick up an old DS for $110 or so, so for the price of the new one you can get an old one and a couple of used games.
I lie; I’m just bitter that I don’t have the newer cooler one with the brighter screens.