Philadelphia Launches Philly Tech Week With Skyscraper-Sized Tetris
Philadelphia's Philly Tech Week kicked off Saturday evening as hundreds of Tetris fans got to play a giant size version of the classic video game using the 29-storey Cira Centre building as the screen.
Tech Week is a weeklong series of events with the purpose of getting Philadelphia citizens inspired about the possibilities of technology, Fox News reports. During the event, hundreds of LED lights are embedded into the building's glass façade, that is usually used at night to display colorful geometric patterns. On Saturday, however, the lights were controlled by joysticks operated by Tetris fans.
Frank Lee, a digital media professor at Drexel University, oversaw the development of the giant-sized version of the game and called Tetris the epitome of elegance and simplicity. He also compared the making of the event to creating a large virtual campfire.
"What I wanted to create was essentially a shared moment for the city of Philadelphia," Lee said.
Lee was also responsible for creating another giant-sized version of a classic video game using the Cira Centre. Last year he brought Pong to the larger-than life screen, which got him a spot in the Guinness World Record for the world's largest architectural video game display.
Russian computer programmer Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris in 1984, and it became a global hit after game designer Henk Rogers acquired the rights to the game. Rogers, who saw the game at a trade show in Las Vegas, landed a deal with Nintendo to develop the game for its original Game Boy, according to Fox.
Rogers told Fox that he was surprised at how long the game's popularity has lasted and how it has been developed for 30 different platforms now.
"If a game lasts a year, that's amazing," Rogers said. "They usually go out of style very quickly."
Rogers, who is the managing director of The Tetris Co., said they will be coming out with a line of new products and initiatives near the June 6 anniversary, but are keeping the details under wraps.
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