DEVELOPER/PUBLISHER/PLATFORMS: Rocksteady Studios/ Edios Interactive/PC, PS3, XBOX 360

FUN FACT: Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy reprise their roles as the voices of Joker and Batman.

WHY COMPLEX IS CO-SIGNING IT: Let’s be honest, 99% of superhero-based video games suck. After the super noob-friendly Batman Begins game and the awful Superman Returns game, it was looking down hill for DC. But much like the newest Batman film, the Dark Knight is here to save them. To put it in simplest terms, Batman: Akrham Asylum is not only a fanboy’s wet dream but it also holds its ground as one of the best titles of this year.

STORY: Screw Sherlock, the Dark Knight will always be the greatest detective of all time. While most other superhero games stick close to the comics, BAA is original while still paying respect to comic history. The new plot, which focuses on Batman battling everyone he’s locked up in the past, is an interesting and new idea, but it’s the dynamic gameplay that’s most impressive…

GAMEPLAY: Stiff-moving and generic trademark attacks are the hallmark of horrible movie-to-game adaptations (we see you Fantasic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer). Arkham Asylum isn’t flashy, and Batman just kicks ass like any other non-superhuman. Aside from basic button-mashing, the game gives a certain amount of freedom to players. Although there are a lot of options available on how to dispose of enemies, the game’s most difficult setting provides a challenge even for serious gamers. We suggest you start out playing on the normal mode, then work your way up instead of acting like one of those I-start-playing-on-the-hardest-level dickheads.

GRAPHICS: While the movie version of Arkham Asylum was…eh…okay, the graphics of this game do a great service to Gotham’s little slice of hell. Featuring broken furniture, scribbles on the walls, and disgusting housekeeping, BAA provides players that disconcerting “Where the hell am I?” feeling that isn’t seen in games anymore.

DOWNSIDE: The only really bad thing that we can say about BAA is an overdrawn introduction with the Joker being taken inside Arkham. We get it, he’s crazy, he’s going to do something that starts the game, blah, blah, blah. After that though, it’s smooth sailing all the way to the end of the game.

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE GAME FOR PS3!

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE GAME FOR XBOX 360!

• CLICK HERE TO BEGIN THE COUNTDOWN…

Twenty years after Game Boy, the variety and strength of dedicated gaming handhelds has turned a novelty into a viable industry. The Game Boy’s distant cousin the Nintendo DSi ($169) is still on top, but Sony’s new PSP Go ($249) eschews hard media for downloadable games, and Linux-based units like the Pandora ($330) and Gamepark’s GP2X Wiz ($179) are as open-source as it gets for the homebrew and emulation community. Throw one in your bag and bring the arcade wherever you go.

As an addendum to our glimpse into the future of mobile gaming in the 2009 Style & Design package from our latest issue, we’re taking a look back at the 10 best handheld games of all time…

TITLE: Football (1977)
SYSTEM: Mattel Football
• (Move left.) BEEP! (Move right.) BEEP! (Move to the middle.) BEEP! BEEEEEEEP! Damn! Lost again! We all know and love the frustrating yet classic Football…even if it does look like a free Happy Meal toy.

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TITLE: Donkey Kong (1982)
SYSTEM: Game & Watch (Multi-Screen)
• Don’t be fooled by the title. This is an old-school game where you play as Mario trying to rescue Princess Peach from Donkey Kong. The DS looks like its modeled after Game & Watch, but thankfully the DS doesn’t run on those tiny-ass watch batteries that you can’t find anywhere.

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TITLE: Tetris (1989)
SYSTEM: Nintendo Game Boy
• Definitely changed the game in ‘89: long bricks smashing into open slots, AYO!

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TITLE: Super Mario Land (1989)
SYSTEM: Nintendo Game Boy
• With the release of the Game Boy, Mario’s adventure to save Princess Peach got a little more complicated than jumping over barrels. On his quest he fights monsters and Goombas, collects money, and faces Bowser, his greatest nemesis…and all he gets is a G-rated kiss?! Back to the dragon, ma!

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TITLE: Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (1992)
SYSTEM:Sega Game Gear
• Sonic runs (for a very long time, holla at that Gold Bond homie!) and fights to save his broski Tails. The Game Gear was kind of wack and took six AA batteries to power, but you can’t front on this classic.

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TITLE: The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (1993) SYSTEM: Nintendo Game Boy
• This version of the legendary franchise has only a brief mention of Princess Zelda and doesn’t take place in Hyrule at all. In this one, Link awakens in another man’s home, talks to an owl who tells him his destiny, and has to defeat nightmare monsters to play the Wind Fish a song. And you thought Mario was the only dude taking ’shrooms.

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TITLE: Pokemon Blue and Red (1998)
SYSTEM: Nintendo Game Boy
• Please don’t hate or think you’re too cool to have ever played this, we know you did. Like you, we spent weeks and months training and trying to capture all 151 Pokemon. Oh, and we didn’t use the item cheat. Cheaters!

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TITLE: Mario Kart DS (2005)
SYSTEM: Nintendo DS
• Now we’re very aware that Mario Kart Super Circuit for the Game Boy Advance was good, and you loved it, and blah blah blah. But this one is newer and better. End of discussion.

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TITLE: God of War: Chains of Olympus (2008)
SYSTEM: Sony PSP
• Kratos is back with his hack-and-slash killing sprees! Chains of Olympus is the prequel to the original God of War. Kinda like the X-Men Origins game—except you know, good.

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TITLE: GTA: China Town Wars (2009)
SYSTEM: Nintendo DS
• Handheld or not, this is one of our favorite games of 2009. Same concept as all the other ones, folks: rise to power. Only this time, you better listen: “No tickey, no laundry!” And if you have a problem with that, you’re going to die. Seriously though, we like this one because it has original gameplay, making good use of all the DS’s abilities. Guaranteed to waste plenty of your precious time.

Of course, not all Madden opponents are created equal, and over the years we’ve identified recurring archetypes of dickhead players. Here’s our list of the 8 worst types of Madden competitors. If you fit one of these profiles, then please put the controller down before you come fuck with us…

CAPTAIN AUDIBLE
• Relax on the shifting, homie. What are you doing over there, dialing international numbers?

MR. CONSERVATIVE
• Punts on 4th and 1, runs out the clock when he’s winning. This is a game, dude; who is you, Marty Schottenheimer?

xXRAGEQUITXx
• The online dickhead whose cheap tactics and mic abuse are only outdouched by the fact that he’ll log off once he’s behind.

One-Trick Pony
• He’s got one “money play” that he repeats over and over and over (and over and over) again. Real fun, fuck boy.

MR. RECKLESS
• The opposite of Mr. Conservative: The dude who goes for it on 4th and 20 from his own goal-line and throws into triple-coverage with the lead. Who is you, Steve Spurrier?

THE GLORY HUNTER
• He’s always played the Steelers. Except last year, when he was the Giants. And the year before that, when he was the Colts…

THE BLAME GAME
• Yo, on the real: Calling little animated football dudes “faggot” ain’t gonna magically make them play better. Hate the player—i.e. yourself, dickhead—not the game.

THE NOOB
• How is you 26 years old and never played a game of Madden in your life? Is you a female or somethin’?

Nerds everywhere, rejoice! World Of Warcraft is coming to the big screen. Of course, you h4rdc0r3 fans knew that already, but the project got one step closer to reality today when Sam Raimi (Spiderman, Drag Me To Hell) signed on to direct. Given Raimi’s experience with big franchises, we’re sure the WoW flick will have plenty of wild moments, but here are Eight Warcraft Moments that definitely won’t wind up in the movie…

When Warcraft Subscriptions Get Cancelled, Kids FREAK OUT:

Nerds Plot, Leeeee-ROOOOOY Jenkins Doesn’t Give A Damn:

Your Wife Is In Labor, Why Not Go Home And Play Warcraft For A Few Hours?

Warcraft Helps In The Fight Against Childhood Obesity:

We’re Sure Someone Has Really Done This Over WoW:

Who Said Warcraft Players Couldn’t Get Laid?:

No Slacking During The WoW Tourney. Get On Game!:

Don’t Just Stand There, Bust A Move:

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT ECKO’S FULL HALO COLLECTION

SUNRISE ADAMS
Game: Backyard Wrestling 2
Character: Herself! Except instead of having rough sex for money, she kicks your ass for the fun of it.
Most Recent Adult Title: Virtual Vivid Girl: Sunrise Adams. We’re glad that came out, so we didn’t have to mention her last movie, Slit Happens. Oops, we just did!

JENNA JAMESON
Game: GTA: Vice City, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4
Character: Pornstar Candy Suxxx and an unlockable skater named Daisy, respectively. Did we really need that “respectively” in there?
Most Recent Adult Title: Being Jenna. Apparently, doing girls-only titles is a convenient sidestep around that whole “I’m retiring from porn!” thing.

RON JEREMY (sorry, sorry!)
Game: Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude
Character: A fairy who gives Larry tips and advice. Tip #1: Don’t trust a fairy with a nine-inch cock.
Most Recent Adult Title: Gloryhole Confessions. Seriously? Gross.

KIM KARDASHIAN
Game: Facebreaker
Character: Herself! She’ll take shots to the face if you play your cards right.
Most Recent Adult Title: Kim Kardashian, Superstar. Don’t blame us, we’re not the ones who let a munchkin film us giving dome!

TERA PATRICK
Game: Saints Row 2, Backyard Wrestling 2
Character: An microbiologist named, uh, Tera Patrick in the downloadable mission “Ultor Exposed” and herself as a roof-diving wrasslin’ dynamo.
Most Recent Adult Title: Sex In Dangerous Places. Like Even Seinfeld’s house? That dude’ll cut ya.

GINGER LYNN ALLEN
Game: Wing Commander II and Wing Commander Prophecy
Character: Chief Technician Rachel Coriolis
Most Recent Adult Title: Three releases this year–at the age of 46!–including Cougar Club 2, White Mommas, and When Ginger Met Nina. Hopefully, her going rate includes a senior discount.

RIO (nee TINA YUZUKI)
Game: The latest game in the Ryu Ga Gotoku Yakuza franchise
Character: A cabaret hostess, from the sound of things (fingers crossed!)
Most Recent Adult Title: The inexplicably titled Maison S1 Hotel Annex, Come For Shiofuki And Orgies.

DEVELOPER/PUBLISHER/PLATFORMS:
EA Canada/EA Sports/360, PS3

FUN FACT: New this year is EA’s Photo Game Face, which allows players to use their own likenesses (or Gucci Mane’s) in the creation of original characters.

WHY COMPLEX IS CO-SIGNING IT: Unfortunately, last week’s Best of Video Games (So Far) post was filed too early to include Fight Night Round 4 (which officially drops tomorrow). But no worries: By the time ‘09 expires, we’re quite sure that FNR4 will be atop everybody’s year-end list (check the Metacritic.com stats, son!)

Many a wack boxing game has been released in the three years since the last Fight Night—we’re looking at you, Don King Presents: Prize Fighter—but they’ve all been pretenders, not real contenders. Fight Night Round 4 resoundingly reclaims the belt with everything you loved about Round 3—only better. That means noticeable improvements to the Legacy and World Championship modes (including a much deeper single-player career experience and online title fights) as well as subtle refinements to graphics and gameplay, which were pretty damn near flawless already. FNR4 is the best boxing game you’ll ever play, period. So even if you’re gonna be broke for the next few months, know that some Dutches and this game are all you need to kill off summer. Word!

The Top 10 Sneakers? Check. The Top 10 Albums? Done. The Top 10 Style Essentials? You already know. Today, we continue our Best of 2009 (so far) series by turning our spotlight on the industry that’s sending a big “eff-you” to the recession. Yup, no matter the state of the economy, video games are still moving big units. (Really, is there a better way to escape our crazy world than ensconcing yourself on a couch and button-mashing the pain away?) This year has seen the return of some all-time classics along with a couple Sony exclusives that almost (almost) make the PS3 worth it. Find out what games we picked and why in the countdown below…

#10: Guitar Hero: Metallica

GENRE: Music

DEVELOPER/PUBLISHER/PLATFORMS: Neversoft/Activision/360, PS3, Wii, PS2

RELEASE DATE: March 29

THE COMPLEX CO-SIGN: Guitar Hero (and Rock Band) are like the boat shoes of the video-game world: While we’re getting sick of the whole phenomenon (and the countless versions of them), we can’t deny their sheer ubiquity—or when they’re executed totally right, like GH: Metallica. To rock out in a rock game, you need a proper rock band, not fucking Cheap Trick or Sum 41. Metallica’s catalog is tailor-made for the GH experience, and while it’s not an ambitious title, GH: Metallica delivers what it promises.

[CLICK HERE TO BUY THE GAME!]

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#9: Skate 2

GENRE: Skateboarding

DEVELOPER/PUBLISHER/PLATFORMS:
EA Black Box/Electronic Arts/360, PS3

RELEASE DATE: January 21

THE COMPLEX CO-SIGN: There’s a reason that Tony Hawk’s is trying to, uh, hawk a new plastic skateboard peripheral for his upcoming game. Why? Because with its latest edition, EA’s Skate franchise has passed the veritable Tony Hawk series in terms of fun and overall experience. Really, there’s not much more to say than that Skate 2 is the best next-gen skateboarding game you can buy, with a great intuitive control system and a cool online component. As for that new Tony Hawk game? There’s a reason why Madden sucks on the Wii—we enjoy playing it strictly as a video game, not as an awkward approximation of real life. Take note.

[CLICK HERE TO BUY THE GAME!]

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#8: Resistance: Retribution

GENRE: Third-person shooter

DEVELOPER/PUBLISHER/PLATFORMS:
Sony Bend/SCEA/PSP

RELEASE DATE: March 17

THE COMPLEX CO-SIGN: And sometimes, you just want to shoot a muthafucka. Resistance: Retribution is a great shoot-’em-up on the PSP that plays (nearly) as well as its console version, with simple controls, a good storyline, and highly addictive gameplay. Best yet is the game’s multiplayer mode, which includes the ability to taunt the enemies you’ve merked out. And man, do we love taunting. Pick up and play this one—there really ain’t much more to it.

[CLICK HERE TO BUY THE GAME!]

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#7: MLB ‘09: The Show

GENRE: Baseball

DEVELOPER/PUBLISHER/PLATFORMS:
SCEA/SCEA/PS3, PS2, PSP

RELEASE DATE: March 3

THE COMPLEX CO-SIGN: They don’t make baseball games like they used to, but at least we have MLB 09: The Show, by far the best one out now. Like soccer titles (and unlike Madden and the NBA games), MLB 09: The Show is geared more toward the hardcore fan than the casual one. That doesn’t mean you have to be a hardball freak (ayo!) to appreciate The Show, but the game’s deep career and franchise modes—two of its strong points—will really only appeal to the true stat nerds. Which is OK, ’cause we’re stat nerds at heart. Everything here is better than last year, with the addition of more boneheaded errors to reflect Luis Castillo reality. All that, and those Dustin Pedroia ads are pretty damn good, too.

[CLICK HERE TO BUY THE GAME!]

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#6: Punch-Out!!

GENRE: Boxing

DEVELOPER/PUBLISHER/PLATFORMS:
Next Level Games/Nintendo/Wii

RELEASE DATE: May 18

THE COMPLEX CO-SIGN: It’s a three-word sell: “Punch-Out!! for Wii.” Easy enough, right? Lack of online kinda sucks, but other than that, it’s the perfect remake: It retains enough of the O.G. title for nostalgia’s sake but features enough upgrades and tweaks to make it feel fresh.

[CLICK HERE TO BUY THE GAME!]

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CLICK NEXT TO SEE OUR TOP FIVE VIDEO GAMES OF 2009 (SO FAR)!

As featured in the June/July issue of Complex, the Ghostbusters video game (Capcom–360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PC, DS) is out today and it’s already garnering good reviews. Since there’s only so much we can fit on a magazine page, we’re posting our extended interview with Glenn Gamble, senior artist at Ghostbusters developer Terminal Reality. See below for a gameplay trailer and Gamble’s discussion of the game’s illest weapon, Dan Aykroyd, and why the Infernal Engine is so dope…

Interview by Nick Marroni

Complex: How would you describe the gameplay of Ghostbusters?

Glenn Gamble: [Gears of War] is probably the closest thing to us out there on the market but Gears is a really good straight-up shooter, where this one, we had to come up with a whole new wrangling mechanic and trapping mechanic in the game, which is kind of interesting. It’s funny, ‘cause years ago, when we started the game, someone got the bright idea of using fishing mechanics, so we actually bought pretty much every fishing game that [our local] GameStop had, and [the manager] was like: “You’re doing a fishing game?” And we were like: “Kinda.’”

Complex: Terminal Reality is the proprietary house for the Infernal Engine, which powers Ghostbusters. In layman’s terms, how does Infernal enhance gameplay?

Glenn Gamble: It’s an insane engine—we have transitions going from indoor to outdoor, which you very rarely ever see in a game. You’ve got an incredible physics engine—everything can be destroyed. Being an artist, I built the table and then I have to take an extra day to break the table, just so, as a player you can slice it horizontally, you can blow the legs off the table if you wanted to, you can blow it lengthwise—you can just cut this table up however you want.

Complex: What was the thought process behind the variety of weaponry in the game?

Glenn Gamble: You get money for busting the ghosts and then you can upgrade—you can save your money to spend on the big upgrade items or you can spend it on the littler upgrade items. They really did a good job of branching out the [tech] tree—originally it was a real linear progression, but then when we started really messing around with it, it was like: “Why not? Why not give the player that kind of freedom?” It’s really crazy; we do branch out to kind of the weirder weapons. We’ve got a dark matter generator, which crystallizes ectoplasm—I’ve just re-done pretty much that entire look of that weapon to give it more of a weird ethereal look to it. So, it’s really kind of funky looking—you get these weird amethyst-looking crystals growing off the ghosts.

Complex: The proton beam is pretty sick.

Glenn Gamble: I spent over a month and a half getting the proton beam to look the way it does, with programmer’s help—he did all this crazy math, did it all wild, shooting every which direction. The proton beam originally was just as wild and crazy as it was in the movie and that’s really frustrating to a player when you aim at the crosshair and it goes five, ten feet to the left of the crosshair. So we had to control it in, but it’s that fine line of making it look like the proton beam, but at the same time it still have to hit somewhere around the target so people don’t get frustrated with it. Crossing the streams is absolutely bad—you can do it if you want, but you get a blowback and it’s a very damaging thing.

Complex: How was it working with the original cast?

Glenn Gamble: [Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, and all the rest are] all really into it—we actually had to go through a fresh batch recently, this little extension we had, they’ve come back in and recorded a few new lines where we needed it. Everybody’s on their ‘A’ game. I don’t know if you’ve heard Dan Aykroyd today—he’s gotten older as we all have; he doesn’t really sound like the Dan Aykroyd of yesteryear, but I don’t know what magic stuff he did, but I’ve heard the voice sessions and it’s great because he just kind of takes this deep breath and all of a sudden his voice sounds like it did 25 years ago; it’s just really cool. It’s like, “Oh my God, that’s Ray!” You hear that little childful glee in it and everything.

Complex: In the game, you play as a rookie Ghostbuster, not as one of the O.G. cast. Why is that?

Glenn Gamble: We wanted to keep the core feeling of the movie together and a big part of that is the character interaction. And, once we came to that realization, it was just the logical step of making the player the outside observer, the new guy on the block. The co-op is actually really cool—it’s all team-based with common objective points, so really feeding into that whole Ghostbusters team feeling. There are five main characters in the game, but we do have two other sub-characters that, in our opinion, are just as important, which are, one: the proton pack, because that’s got all your HUD information on it, as well it’s right there in the camera the whole time, so it had to be good. The other one was Ecto-1, both of which we wanted to treat as their own characters, even though they’re not technically a character in a character sense.

Complex: How is the Wii version different from the others?

Glenn Gamble: The Wii version’s being done by Red Fly—we are sharing everything, but at some point we did have to cut, because they’re going a very different stylistic route, because, of course, the Wii and PS2 versions aren’t nearly as powerful as the next-gen versions and it eventually led to character and story changes on their end to accommodate that. At the same time, to their system’s strength, I wish there was some way I could throw my controller and have it throw out a trap; that is one of the coolest things the Wii does. You can throw the nunchuku and it throws out the trap, and that’s the motion for it and it feels so cool and natural, I want to throw my 360 controller across the room and get the same result.

GHOSTBUSTERS GAMEPLAY TRAILER:

5. NINTENDO’S ACTUALLY MAKING SOME GOOD GAMES.
• Busting out with Super Mario Galaxy 2 and the completely new and unexpected Team Ninja collabo of the re-imagined Metroid, NINTENDO finally demonstrated that they still have some love for the O.G. gamers that put them on the map. After a past couple years of very disappointing nonsense like Wii Music and other stuff that not too many real gamers really care about, Nintendo’s shown that they’re still down for the cause and that there’ll be at least a couple good reasons to dust off that Wii—the Wii MotionPlus is none too shabby either and really steps the waggle game up a notch.

4. THE PS3 IS SERIOUS BUSINESS, BUT SONY STILL DOESN’T QUITE GET IT.
• With exclusives Heavy Rain, Uncharted 2, God of War III, and MAG on the way, the PS3 looks to have plenty to distract folks. Still, SONY failed to announce a price drop and the rumored PS3 slim doesn’t appear to exist; unless these things change before holiday madness, this generation’s console war will be all but decided. To make matters worse, the new PSP Go’s two main talking points seem to be (1) at $249.99, it costs about 80 bucks more than the original PSP and (2) people can’t play their old PSP UMD discs on it—go ahead and purchase the extended warranty while you’re at it. Heavy Rain is very, very cool, though, and gamers, people, and penguins everywhere should pay close attention to it when it launches early next year.

3. MICROSOFT IS IN IT TO WIN IT.
• All of the big three had strong showings at E3 this year, but MICROSOFT emerged as the overall winner. With Alan Wake, Halo 3: ODST, Left 4 Dead 2, Mass Effect 2, and former PlayStation exclusive Final Fantasy XIII all dropping within the next year, the 360 is still the cat’s pajamas. The no-delay, instant streaming, full 1080p video service through Xbox Live and the new, beyond state-of-the-art camera-based motion recognition that they’ve got going on (see above) pretty much solidifies Microsoft in the pole position for the current and next gen (if the streaming 1080p actually works as advertised). Microsoft has eliminated the need for a Blu-Ray disc player and one-upped the Wii in its mainstream, motion-recognition appeal—Grandma won’t want to waggle a remote anymore when she can just scan a golf club and get down to business.

2. THE FUTURE IS A BIT CREEPY.
• Along with Microsoft’s camera comes a scary advanced kid named Milo as part of Lionhead Studios head and Fable series developer Peter Molyneux’s new Project Natal (they’re trying to get people to say it Nuh-Tall, but, for real talk’s sake, let’s keep it Nay-Tul, please). Natal and Milo use the new motion recognition camera to simulate the most advanced, ostensibly real world yet seen in the interactive entertainment space (or any other space too, for that matter) and it’s downright creepy and just a bit unsettling to see how effective and immersive the simulation is. When this thing really reaches critical mass, WoW addictions may end up looking downright tame in comparison to the socially deprived children who might end up getting attached to Milo and his other soul-sucking little buddies.

1. THE REAL E3 IS BACK!
• The one thing everyone will agree on about this year’s show is that a big Electronic Entertainment Expo is a fun Electronic Entertainment Expo and that the more the merrier—things still aren’t back to E3’s peak years of the early ’00s and some companies probably wouldn’t have minded a bit more traffic and congestion, but it’s plain to see that this is the way things are supposed to be and the mistakes of the past two years now stand corrected. Especially cool is that surprises were actually left as surprises (though we already knew about the Em/Jay-Z DJ Hero performance) without everyone knowing ahead of time during the press shows exactly what to expect—Final Fantasy XIV pretty much came out of nowhere at the Sony show and the new Castlevania received a loud round of approval. Things should be good to go again for next year and beyond and E3 looks set to stick around. Video games are the business, and business is good.

What started as a Russian sensation created by Alexey Pajitnov and Vadim Gerasimov, turned into one of the best selling video game of all time with over 125 million copies sold since it debuted on an IBM PC in 1984. But more than a game, Tetris is an institution. So as we look forward to all the new iterations of Tetris that have yet to be released, let’s look back at some of the most memorable moments in the block-y game’s history…

TENGEN TETRIS: THE SOVIET MIND GAME, 1987
• When Tetris first dropped, it was like the Drake of the video game world—every company wanted a piece of it. To maximize their profits, Elektronorgtechnica, the company that owned the rights to the game, dished out rights to a number of different companies including Nintendo (console) and Atari (non-console). Despite this arrangement, Atari created a company called Tengen and released their own version of Tetris. The game was a hit with players as it featured more options—like cooperative play—than the original. Unfortunately, Nintendo took their ass to court and the game was pulled off the shelves.

THE BEST TETRIS PLAYER, EVER, 2005
• If you do anything long enough, you’ll become good at it. Even Tetris. That said, we don’t think we could ever become this good at a video game—not even Madden. We’re not sure who this kid is or how long it took him to become the Grand Master of this Tetris spin off, Tetris: The Grand Master, but we can surmise one thing he undoubtedly went without while honing his skills. And we ain’t talkin’ about a shower.

HUMAN TETRIS, 2006
• As part of their “Game Over” project, where they recreated popular video games with people, the NotSoNoisy crew won a YouTube Video Award in 2007 for the best creative video for their Human Tetris video. We don’t know how they do it in France, but here in America the term “blockhead” isn’t a good look.

THE SIMPSONS and FAMILY GUY, 2007
• Yeah, we’re surprised it took Matt Groening all those years to incorporate a Tetris reference into The Simpsons. As for Peter’s “Hey, Guys, I’m coming in!” (above), we’re just gonna Pause that and keep it moving.

TETRIS: THE MOVIE, 2008
• If you couldn’t tell from our video game movie showdown with Planet XBox, video game movies suck. Like, really suck on some Superhead in ‘98 shit. So as silly as this fake trailer for a Tetris movie seems, we can’t say it’d be any worse than another Super Mario flick.