Philly Tech Week is a celebration of technology, engineering and innovation in one of our country’s most historic cities, one that kicked off this year on April 4th. If you’ve never heard of it, you’ve probably heard of its accomplishments: last year, they set up a game of Pong so giant it made the world record for the no doubt highly competitive “Largest Architectural Video Game Display” category.
This year, they played 30-story Tetris.
To pay homage to the iconic 30-year old game, which remains one of the top-selling video games of all time, the gaming department at Drexel University transformed the north and south faces of the Circa Centre into luminescent Tetris fields. The team then gave participants traditional arcade-style controllers, which they used to desperately move colored blocks all across the Centre’s 29 stories.
Along with his team, Drexel Entrepreneurial Game Studio director Frank Lee utilized the Circa Centre’s pre-existing LED arrays to create the fully interactive Tetris game, which wound up being played by hundreds of people, including the city’s mayor Michael Nutter and the managing director of Tetris Co., Hank Rogers. The lucky participants were chosen from an online lottery.
“I'm especially proud to help highlight the vibrant and innovative local, independent game companies in Philadelphia at the event,” Lee said on CNN of his work. “My hope is that some of these great startup game design companies will stay and grow in Philadelphia. I want to see Philadelphia become a mobile gaming hub, and I think an event like this is a way to get others to share my vision.”
Source CNN
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