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Playing "Tetris" can be serious business. If you came in first place at last year's first annual Tetris Cup, you could have walked away with a travel voucher worth $1,500.
In November, Blue Planet Software and The Tetris Company hosted The Tetris Cup at the University of Hawaii. Even "Tetris" creator Alexey Pajitnov attended the festivities.
You'd be rightly confused about Hawaii being the homebase for hardcore "Tetris" play, but that's because Blue Planet (part of The Tetris Company) is in Hawaii.
Last year's Tetris Cup was a test run. In 2009, you'll have a shot at the crown, and if Blue Planet has their way, you could someday win a million dollars doing it.
Yes, a chance to win one million for dropping blocks. That probably won't happen this year or next, but that is Blue Planet's end-game goal with The Tetris Cup competition. They want live, televised matches showing how "Tetris" can be just as intense as a game of "Halo 3."
Blue Planet told MTV Multiplayer that The Tetris Cup is an idea they want to start rolling out in a much grander scale over the next few years. The company is in the planning stages right now for expansion, but because the company is already located in Hawaii, holding the first competition locally made sense for ironing out the kinks.
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The 2008 competition will still take place in Hawaii in the fall, but in 2009, there are wheels in motion to change that. Blue Planet hopes to take The Tetris Cup to between 10 to 15 cities across the United States and have players compete in various versions of Tetris across different platforms.
Last year, players only had to be versed in Nintendo's "Tetris DS" (which, if you remember, we'd been struggling to find). But Blue Planet hopes to incorporate PC, mobile and other versions down the line.
The idea, then, would be to have true "Tetris" champions capable of holding their own across different "Tetris" incarnations. There are even plans being drawn up to have a separate women's division, which made my girlfriend very happy today.
You might think you know "Tetris," but are you good enough to take on the world? Time to start hopping online again on "Tetris DS"…
[Photo Credit: Blue Planet Software]
