Coming to Philly Tech Week: 29 Stories of Tetris!

My fellow children of the 80s and 90s hear “Tetris,” and are immediately flooded with memories. We played the low-tech Soviet blockbuster on the old, original Game Boys – the big gray ones with the red buttons. We had epic battles with our friends and siblings set to a hypnotizing beep-boop soundtrack, we cursed the “z” shaped blocks (which never seemed to fit anywhere), and we prayed for the long, straight piece with the fervor of pilgrims. (We are probably chasing the dragon in 2014 by playing Candy Crush.)

You’re looking at the world’s largest video gaming screen. Photo: Creative Commons

A lucky 150 (“or so”) people will get to experience bigger, better Tetris on April 4th, as one of the kickoff events of this year’s Philly Tech Week. How big? Try 29 stories – the size of the Cira Center. In conjunction with Drexel University, Brandywine Realty Trust will present a turbo-charged arcade classic (last year’s pick was Pong) projected on the side of a skyscraper. This time around, they are upping the ante by playing on both sides of the buildings. Players with joysticks will position themselves in Eakins Oval, with north squaring off against south. That’s over 100,000 square feet of puzzle-solving action! To increase the number of players and add a fun aspect of cooperation to the mix, this will be a team challenge: one player will control vertical movement, and one will control horizontal moves.

In 2012, MIT students hacked the university’s 21-story Green Building and played Tetris with its (I.M. Pei-designed) windows. It was delightful geometric madness.

Even if you are all thumbs, you can come out and just watch the fun. There will be a beer garden and 10 food trucks, along with live music and app demos. Music, beer, food, and video games – what more could you ask for?

Interested in playing monster-sized Tetris at the Cira Center? Enter the player lottery here.