Hacker Cinema
Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters
2012 · Film · documentary · 93 min
Directed by Adam Cornelius
A documentary that captures the greatest world record Tetris players as they prepare for the Classic Tetris World Championship. From the days of Thor Aackerlund and his historic victory at the 1990 Nintendo World Championships, right up to the present and Harry Hong's perfect "Max-Out" score, this documentary expertly chronicles over two decades of Tetris Mastery.
4 positivefrom 4 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
One impressive thing about Tetris is that more people than ever play it 40 years after the game was created.
Another amazing thing is that CTWC (Classic Tetris World Championship) [0] launched in 2010, and still runs, bringing new generation of players every year.
Even more impressive, in recent years those new generations of players found new creative ways to use the original NES gamepads (e.g. rolling) to get to levels that were previously unreachable to humans.
There’s great documentary about Tetris and CTWC: Ecstasy Of Order [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Tetris_World_Championship
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecstasy_of_Order:_The_Tetris_Masters
That is also a favorite documentary of mine.
My shortlist of inspiring documentaries for people with startup/gaming mindsets:
- Indie Game
- Startup.com
- American Movie (Mark Borchardt has a thing or two to teach all of us about working hard to make dreams become reality)
- Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters
There's a documentary about the best Tetris players (on NES): "Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters"[0].
It follows one man's journey to gather the best Tetris players in the world for the first "Classic Tetris World Championship", as well as the preparation of the players, who try to break a new record, or to reach the unattainable level 30.
If you like obsessive people and want to learn more about the boundaries of Tetris, I recommend this documentary.
[0]: http://watch.ecstasyoforder.com/
There is a well documented thing called the Tetris Effect, where you see the blocks in dreams or when your eyes close. There's been some neuro research on it. When I asked these guys about it, they said they got past it after a while. They all say, yes, I have experienced Tetris Effect stuff, but at some point the brain seems to filter it out.
My impression is that these players are spending a lot of their conscious energy on the next-piece box, constructing the stack, and just staying calm. I think the majority of what they're doing is near instinct at this point, since they play so much, they just kinda "know" the right move for any given situation. Or at least, most of them. A max out game is a combination of random luck and extreme skill/practice.
The documentary "Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters" (steaming free on Hulu) has more on all of this. Disclosure: I wrote parts of that film. Ben Mullen is one of the main subjects of the film.