It wasn't exactly Minecraft, but students from Drexel University created the next best thing by turning a 29-storey building into a giant Tetris game.
The stunt was part of Philly Tech Week which started on April 4 and took place on the Cira Centre building in downtown Philadelphia. Luckily, the game designers had a building that was more or less pre-designed to be turned into a gigantic 1980s video game.
The Cira Centre boasts LED lights that can be programmed to light up in set patterns. Over the weekend, the lights on each side of the facade, with each equaling about 100,000-square feet, were manipulated by two players using joysticks.
"It has been probably 15 years since I played Tetris last on a Game Boy, and it's much different playing on the side of building that's a half-mile away," said one player. "Everything's happening so quick."
The purpose of the game was to inspire onlookers to think about technology. It also celebrated the game's upcoming 30th anniversary, said Frank Lee, associate professor of digital media at Drexel University.
This is not Lee's first crack at creating huge video games. Last year, he used the Cira Centre as the screen to play the mother of all video games, Pong. For pulling off the Pong stunt, Lee is in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's largest architectural video game display.
"This project began as a personal love letter to the games that I loved when I was a child - Pong last year, Tetris this year. But it ended up as a way of uniting the city of Philadelphia," Lee said.
In a nice tip of the hat, Henk Rogers was given a turn on a joystick. Rogers helped Tetris become one of the super games of the 1980s by acquiring its rights and working out a deal with Nintendo to place it on the Gameboy.
Rogers, who is now the managing director of Tetris Co., said he has big plans that include new products to celebrate the game's birthday on June. 6.
"If a game lasts a year, that's amazing," said Rogers. "They usually go out of style very quickly."
Tetris was "born" In June 1984 when Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris in his spare time while working for the Moscow Academy of Sciences. Born out of Pajitnov's love of puzzles and gaming, Tetris revolutionized puzzle games with distinctive "falling" pieces that players could arrange in real time along the bottom of the rectangular playing field, or "matrix," in order to clear lines.
