People Play Tetris On The Side Of A Skyscraper At Philly Tech Week

Imagine this, but brighter and about 200 feet taller.

Sure, you’ve got a huge flat screen at your house to play your video games, and it’s probably very impressive. But we’re willing to bet you’ve never played a classic video game on the side of a building.

On the other hand, if you were at Philly Tech Week this weekend, we’ll apologize, because you just might have. One of the cooler things attendees could do yesterday was to play Tetris on the side of the Cira Centre, a 29-story building in downtown Philadelphia. The giant game is possible because of the thousands of LED lights embedded in the sides of the buildings, something people familiar with the area know very well from the patterns they usually display.

It’s not the first time the Cira Centre has been used for supersized gaming, as Frank Lee, a professor of digital media at Philly’s Drexel University, used the building to play Pong last year. Playing anything on a display that size apparently adds some extra difficulty, as Philadelphia resident Sam Robinson had this to say to an AP reporter:

"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. Everything’s happening so quick."

Henk Rogers, the man who secured the rights to Tetris for Nintendo, was on hand at Philly Tech Week too, and while he hinted at some special products and events to celebrate the game’s 30th birthday this summer, he didn’t spill the beans on any of them. Smart money says none of them will include a version played on anything bigger than the Cira Centre.

(via MSN News)