


The S, Z and I tetrominoes have two horizontally oriented states and two vertically oriented states.

This allows the bounding box to descend below the surface of the stack (or the floor of the playing field) making it impossible for the tetrominoes to be rotated without the aid of floor kicks.As a direct consequence, the J, L, S, T and Z tetrominoes have 1 of their 4 states (the spawn state) in a "floating" position where they are not in contact with the bottom of their bounding box.It is a pure rotation in a mathematical sense, as opposed to the combination of rotation and translation found in other systems such as Sega Rotation and Atari Rotation.These apparent rotation centers are shown as circles in the diagram. When unobstructed, the tetrominoes all appear to rotate purely about a single point.The basic rotation states are shown in the diagram on the right. In Tetris Worlds, the tetrominoes spawn in rows 22 and 23 (or just row 22 in the case of the "I" tetromino), however, in later games the tetrominoes spawn 1 row lower.The I and O tetrominoes spawn centrally, and the other, 3-cell wide tetrominoes spawn rounded to the left.All tetrominoes spawn horizontally and wholly above the playfield.The spawn orientations are included in the diagram on the right. The circles merely help to illustrate rotation centers and do not appear in-game. Starting with the spawn state on the left, the 4 rotation states resulting from successive clockwise rotations are shown in order. The 4 rotation states of all 7 tetrominoes.
