The Greatest Moments in Tetris History

dscott — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:55:21 +0000

As the entire video game industry celebrates the fact that they’re still making bank while most other media industries are crumbling around them, one of the games responsible for the creation of the consumer game market celebrates its 25th birthday this week. And, no, it’s not Pong. It’s Tetris. Even if you’re not a big video gamer—you know, the type with the headsets, gaming chair and desert dick— it’s safe to say that you’ve moved a couple digital bricks in your lifetime.

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.

Arm Wrestling + Tetris = Tresling

bfred — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:23:49 +0000

Live and direct from the we’d-try-it-once department is Tresling, which is a head-to-head version of Tetris that incorporates elements of (what else?) arm wrestling. Tresling opponents face off Over The Top-style and their arm-wrestling motions are transformed into Tetris block maneuvers. Strange. It looks interesting enough in a “casual gaming” sort of way, but we’ll stick with the O.G. Tetris, thanks. What’s next, Resident Frisbeevil? See a video of Tresling in action after the jump.

[Engadget]

Complex Blog » Tetris

The Greatest Moments in Tetris History

Arm Wrestling + Tetris = Tresling