3D Tetris: More dimensions = Less fun
Most folks who have come into contact with a computer have also played Tetris or some variant thereof, but what about 3D Tetris? Can you claim to have experienced the thrill of arranging four-segment blocks in not two, but three dimensions? Probably not, because it turns out 3D Tetris is both difficult to control, and quite boring. I didn’t have the patience to complete a single line (or plane actually). Still, you should totally give it a go because it looks nice and I’m sure once virtual reality takes off, it’ll be all the rage.
While I’m on the subject, I also want to give a shout out to Hatris, a whimsical variant of Tetris in which you organize/stack various types of hats. When my housemate and I played this on his Nintendo emulator, we both agreed that it was probably more fun than actually working in a hat store, but also a bit more repetitive. Amazingly, Hatris was created by Alexey Pazhitnov, the original author of Tetris. To learn more about Alexey’s Tetris-related adventures, go find this BBC documentary. It used to be on google video, but now it is not.
Update: I should also note that Providence and Tetris are forever intertwined. In April of 2000, Brown University’s Tech House used the Sci Li to create the largest game of Tetris ever to grace the western hemisphere.