madison
ie8 fix
Game time

Hackers turn MIT building into giant Tetris game

When the brainiacs at MIT get bored, they light up the place by turning the tallest building on campus into an iconic video game.

The greatest 4/20 of all time at MIT?

(Credit: Graham Bratzel)

Hackers overrode the tallest building in Cambridge, Mass., last week, turning the 21-story Green Building at MIT into a giant Tetris puzzle game controllable from a nearby joystick attached to a podium.

The successful attempt comes after a glitch-filled try to run Tetris on the same building in September of last year. Hackers used 153 wirelessly controlled color-changing LED lights for the giant game on a building that hosts MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Science facilities.

The MIT-hosted Hack Gallery notes, "MIT hackers have long considered 'Tetris on the Green Building' to be the Holy Grail of hacks, as the side of the building is a wonderful grid for the game."

Players could control the prodigious puzzler with the ability to rotate, drop, and move blocks just like the real thing.

In a sweet twist, after beating the first level, the second level used harder-to-identify pale colors in the blocks, and the third level featured color-shifting tiles that appeared quite disorienting.

Check out some other smile-inducing hacks on MIT's Green Building over the years.

(Via BostInno)

CNET Update
What we know about the Xbox One
CNET's Bridget Carey breaks down the new features of the Xbox One, including live TV and Kinect controls, and what questions Microsoft still needs to answer
Play Video
 

Member Comments