Tetris fans plays classic game on side of 29-storey skyscraper

Who doesn’t love to play Tetris? Okay, now who wouldn’t love to play Tetris on the side of a 29-story skyscraper? Thought so.

Philadelphia’s skyscrapers looked a little different in the night sky on Saturday as hundreds of Tetris fans got to experience a very big version of the classic video game.

The Cira Centre, which normally is lit up at night by hundreds of colorful LED lights set in geometric patterns, took a different approach to create a larger-than-life Tetris game in support of the city’s Philly Tech Week.

Using the colorful LED lights, super-sized shapes were created that would "fall" down the two sides of the mirrored tower, in true Tetris style.

Competitors used joysticks to maneuver the shapes into their decided place — that is , however, if they won the chance to play. Residents could sign up in hopes that their name would be drawn, lottery-style, to play the giant game.

This is not the first time Tetris has been played on a large scale, but with the 100,000-square-foot “screen” used for this game, it might be a new record. It is, after all, Tetris’ 30^th anniversary this year.

Associate professor of digital media at Drexel University, Frank Lee, was responsible for overseeing this giant project. He told the Associated Press that putting the Tetris game on an office building was like creating a huge, virtual campfire.

Lee, who already holds the Guinness World Record for largest architectural video game display, headed a similar project when he brought a gigantic game of Pong to life last year, again on the side of the Cira Centre, which won him the record.

"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 to AP.

Among the attendees to witness this giant Tetris tournament was game designer Henk Rogers, who acquired the original rights to the game in the late 1980s and struck a deal with Nintendo, where the game originally took off on Game Boy. Rogers said he couldn’t believe the longevity of the game, especially as it continues to draw fans on more than 30 platforms.

“If a game lasts a year, that’s amazing,” said Rogers, commenting that they usually go out of style.

Well, it’s 2014, and Tetris players are still loving this old game, especially when it’s being played on the side of skyscraper!