Play Tetris With Your Dancing Feet, Thanks to MIT Students
A trio of MIT students has created a new way to enjoy Tetris by letting players control the popular puzzle game on a 6-foot tall LED light display using a Dance Dance Revolution mat.
Dubbed Burton-Conner Tetris Battle in honor of the dorm which houses its progenitors, the contraption allows up to two participants to outwit opponents by strategically stepping on the pads. Stomping on the popular music game’s arrow key icons, players can use the movement of their legs to drop and rotate pieces into clean lines, as in the original gaming classic. As demonstrated in the obligatory and appropriately neon-drenched YouTube video, the Frankenstein-like hybrid puts a newer, more physical spin on the timeless mindbender, minus a video game system and motion-tracking PlayStation Move or Kinect attachment.
Designed using a combination of electrical engineering and old-fashioned DIY chutzpah, it represents the first time that Tetris and DDR, released in 1984 and 1998, respectively, have been mated by enterprising hackers. Credit apathy as much as imagination though, as the game, built by Russell Cohen, Leah Alpert and Andrew Carlson, boasts an equally quirky source of inspiration: As Cohen recently told tech website Engadget, “we did this because we were bored.”