Turns out Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, was at a party celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64 on Monday night. There he was overheard by CNET blogger Daniel Terdiman mentioning that his favourite ever game is Tetris.
it wasn't just the normal version of Gameboy Tetris that he loved. Specifically, he said, it was the version for the Gameboy Lite, a rare version of the machine distributed only in Japan that has a backlit screen suitable for play on long plane rides.
Super geeks, just like musos and film buffs are always a little bit elitist. They don't just know all the products you know, they know much rarer versions of the products you know. I suppose in Woz's case, the difficult-to-come-by GB Lite version of Tetris is a practical necessity rather than a simple status symbol, but still, the old Game Boy version always lasted well for me. Anyway, I know a lot of programmers who love Tetris - there is something in the anally retentive exactness of the game that appeals, I think.
On the subject of Tetris, I was moderately amused to find that Rubbish Pixels' Six Biggest Arseholes in Gaming post last week included the 'L' block in Tetris:
This pixelated, asymmetrical tosser trickles down the screen like he owns the place, doesn't bother trying to fit anywhere and loses you ten lines when you panic and place him horizontally over the clear space you'd been saving for a straight line block.
I've so been there.
