WMBFNews.com | Myrtle Beach/Florence, SC | News, Weather, Sports25 Years Later: Tetris still permeating game society
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CHARLESTON, SC (WCSC) - The game of falling puzzle pieces is celebrating a pretty impressive milestone. Fans may remember it as one of the first games on home entertainment systems, Gameboys, and now cell phones. But it has even older and harder to find roots.
It's a cult classic that was part of an era. It's Tetris and it's turning 25. "It's falling blocks. You have to line them up. That's how you complete each row," said David Ford, owner and operator of Charleston Game Room. "It just didn't stick very long."
To ford, the early 1980's arcade craze is as familiar as any game played on one of his 50 classic consoles. "When I was growing up, we were waiting in line, literally, to play the new game that came out," he said. "Donkey Kong, Pac-man, Mrs. Pac-Man, Galaga -- they were putting out games as fast as they could."
According to Ford, so many games were released in such a short time span that eventually the quality was lacking. By the time Japan introduced a merciless showering of odd-shaped box thingies to be puzzled together, gamers were in a state of overload.
"It was the same generation that had grown up playing Pac-Man and Mrs. Pac-Man, for example, and we were just off doing our own thing by the time Tetris came out," said Ford.
Too many games and not enough space meant something had to go.
"They started using old cabinets and converting them to other games and Tetris was one of those ones they kept converting." Ford says any of the games in his shop could have been an original Tetris, but after a quarter century it's hard to tell.
Console or not, Ford says it's the memories made long before Tetris went mainstream that matter most. "It was just a challenge, the competiveness of it, I don't think it really ever left."
Ford says none of the 400 units he's sold in two years of business have been an original Tetris game. But there is some good news for collectors. If you find one you can expect to pocket about $500 for it.
For people that remember playing Tetris in arcades, or just can't get enough of it on their old console systems or cell phones, there is a way to play it online. Tetris.com hosts almost a dozen different versions of the game, from the original to an Ice Age movie themed version.
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