-
Popular culture
Tetris' popularity has resulted in its appearance in the media. It was featured in two episodes of the video-game oriented cartoon Captain N: The Game Master. It was also referenced in the Muppet Babies episode "It's Only Pretendo", The Simpsons episode "Strong Arms of the Ma" as well as "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo", Family Guy episode "Prick Up Your Ears", and Futurama episode "Fear of a Bot Planet." Commercials also occasionally parody the game. Police Academy: Mission to Moscow alluded to Tetris by depicting the Russians trying to hypnotize Americans through a puzzle video game referred to as "The Game" in the movie. Even other videogames have shown tributes to Tetris such as the character Ai from NeoGeo Battle Colosseum, who can summon and attack characters with various Tetris blocks.
In 2007, the video game website GameFAQs hosted its 6th annual "Character Battle", in which the users nominate their favorite video game characters for a popularity contest in which characters participate. The L-shaped Tetris piece (or "L-Block" as it was called) entered the contest as a joke character, but on November 4, 2007, it won the contest.
In Japan, a hugely popular live-action game show called Brain Wall ran for a number of seasons. Contestants would be assigned to teams (Red or Blue) and paired with recurring characters. Each team would then, in turn, face a wall of painted styrofoam with a Tetris-like shape carved out. The wall would advance on the contestant, who must pass through the opening by posing, squeezing or jumping. Later levels have a pool of water at the end of the run (the effect being to force the contestant into the pool if they fail.) The recurring characters provide running commentary, built-in rivalry and comic relief. Clips from the series are available on the Internet, under the show's English nickname "human Tetris". A variant of this game show was ported to Argentina as well, called "El muro infernal" ("The infernal wall" in Spanish).
In Thomas Pynchon's 2006 novel, Against the Day, mention is made of a "Captain Igor Padzhitnoff" (presumably pronounced the same as Pajitnov) whose preferred method of causing trouble was "to arrange for bricks and masonry, always in the four-block fragments which had become his 'signature,' to fall on and damage targets designated by his superiors".Source: Wikipedia
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments: