If you would've told someone back in 1984 that Alexey Pajitnov would become world renowned, they would've likely laughed you right out of Russia. But on June 6th of that very year, said individual created what's easily the planet's most recognizable puzzle game: Tetris. We mean, who didn't have a childhood obsession with playing this very title on a TI-83 calculator while professors figured you were toiling away on classwork? Ah, good times. Feel free to share your best memories in comments below, and remember, there's no shame in tearing up. Or longing for a "T" to come along and fill that one last gap there on the right.

Given the multitude of ways Tetris has been tweaked already, we were beginning to wonder if the spectacular mods involving the famed title were dwindling down. Apparently not. Tresling is a brilliant creation involving a sophisticated arm wrestling board which converts tussling into block movements within the game. For each flinch, yank and pull, one's block turns -- if you can't maintain your position, chances are that your figure will end up all out of place. Believe it or not, it actually looks even more fun on video, so check out the heated competition in the read link below.

[Thanks, Tom]

If that unplayable version of Pong we saw for the Wii wasn't quite doing it for you, you 'll be happy to know that homebrewer Christian Auby (aka DesktopMan) has just hit the next stage in evolution: Tetris. That's right, you can now get a fully functioning version of the puzzler running on your Wii, thanks to that handy Twilight Princess hack, and what was probably a gargantuan amount of work on Auby's part. The game loads from the GameCube memory slot (using an SD adapter) out of Twilight Princess, but after the hack has been engaged you can jump back to the loader to pull something new off of a card, which should make experimenting a little bit easier. Check the video after the break to see how it all works.

[Thanks, Craig]

Playing famed titles on the sides of buildings ain't nothing new, but this rendition of Tetris is just too svelte to be ignored. Folks from the Finnish Student Union and Universimo gaming company (among others) were responsible for rigging up an elaborate (and shall we say, quite beautiful) colored graphics platform using the Mikontalo's D-staircase as light pixels. Reportedly, the installation will also be used for other demos created by pupils at the Tampere University of Technology, but we've all ideas the falling blocks you see above easily stole the show. Be sure and check out a bevy of photos from the unveiling in the links below, and in case that's not enough, you can peep a video of the setup in action just beyond the break.

[Thanks, Stanislav S.]
Read - Mikontalolights project page
Read - Mikontalo Tetris photographs
Read - Mikontalolights videos / blog

Just in case you were wondering what that Sparkfun LED Tetris game really looks like, we caught a whiff of it today at Maker Faire. Press the buttons on the right to rotate clockwise, and left to rotate counter-clockwise. It's more difficult than you might suspect when playing up close (the lights! the colors!), but it's pretty as all get out, and if we don't have one in our house -- on our wall -- very soon, we're going to curse the day we ever laid eyes on its beauteous visage.

Wall mounted video games are totally de rigeur these days, so it's a shame that the only way to get your hands on anything other than Pong, is to get your hands dirty and put it together yourself. In the case of the Picture Frame Tetris, it took nine guys several hours of work to put together 240 LED buttons into one huge array. So, what're all the buttons for? Well, if you press a button to the left or right of the currently falling brick, then it'll move in that direction. Similarly, you touch the top row of buttons to rotate the brick, and the bottom row to drop it instantaneously. (To us and our Gameboy damaged hands, it sounds like a lot of work to play as well as build.) If you want to get your hands digits on the Picture Frame Tetris, you'll have to check it out at the Maker Faire at San Mateo Fairgrounds in the San Francisco Bay Area. Alternatively, you could plunk down $1500 for a 16x16 board of interactive LED buttons, which would give you more than enough LEDs for a Tetris, but without the extras needed to play Tetris on your wall. Unfortunately, you'll probably have to enjoy the construction as much as the game in order to motivate yourself to make one.

Hacking into sensitive machines and playing brain games on them certainly isn't new -- and a pair of researchers at Cambridge have already done just that on a "tamper-proof chip-and-PIN payment terminal," -- but in a recent (and more serious) development, they've extended the exploit to demonstrate how they can "compromise the system by relaying information between a genuine card and a fake one." Saar Drimer and Steven Murdoch, members of the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory, have not only played Tetris on a banking machine, but have devised a scenario where a terminal is actually connected to a thief's laptop (instead of a bank, for instance), thus passing through crucial information without throwing a red flag to the now-screwed customer. Through a series of RFID, WiFi, and SMS connections, the duo even explains how something so simple could be used to steal thousands of dollars in diamonds and jewelry if working with a trained crew. Still, it's noted that this kind of stunt would be "difficult to execute in practice," and of course, whoever tries it runs the risk of being imprisoned for quite some time, but if you're interested in an eerily detailed description of just how beautiful you life can become if you actually pull this off, the read link demands your attention.