Tetris has been immortalized in a playable McDonaldโs plastic chicken nugget, a playable fake 7-Eleven Slurpee cup, and a playable wristwatch. But the most intriguing way to play Tetris yet is encased in paper.
Last year the Tetris Company partnered with Red Bull for a gaming tournament that culminated in the 150-meter-tall Dubai Frame landmark being turned into the worldโs largest playable Tetris installation using over 2,000 drones that functioned as pixels. Although the timing was a coincidence, Red Bull also published a 180-page gaming edition of its The Red Bulletin lifestyle magazine around the same time as the event, with a limited number of copies wrapped in a less grandiose, but no less technically impressive, version of Alexey Pajitnovโs iconic puzzle game.
To create a playable gaming magazine, Red Bull Media House (the companyโs media wing) enlisted the help of Kevin Bates, who in 2014 wowed the internet by creating an ultra-thin Tetris-playing business card. In 2015, he launched the $39 Arduboy, a credit card-sized, open-source handheld that attracted a thriving community of developers. Over the course of a decade, Bates also created a pair of equally pocketable Tetris-playing handhelds that cost less than $30, and the shrunken-down USB-C Arduboy Mini.
The GamePop GP-1 Playable Magazine System (as itโs officially called) is the latest evolution of Batesโ mission to use existing, accessible, and affordable technologies to reimagine what a portable gaming device can be. It took โmost of last yearโ to develop, Bates revealed during a call with The Verge. He wouldnโt divulge the exact details of how his collaboration with Red Bull came to be. But if youโre looking to make an officially licensed version of Tetris thatโs thin enough to flex, Bates has the experience, and he shared with us some of the technical details that make this creation work.
While OLED display technology has given us tablet-sized devices that fold into smartphones, theyโre still expensive and fragile. To make a display that can survive being embedded in a flexible magazine cover without reinforcement, Bates created a custom matrix of 180 2mm RGB LEDs mounted to a flexible circuit board just 0.1mm thick. While the display and coin-cell batteries make it thicker in a few places โ nearly 5mm at its thickest point โ you genuinely feel like youโre playing a handheld made of paper. The flexible circuits are bonded between two sheets of paper to create the sleeve that wraps around the book-sized magazine, and it feels satisfyingly thin and flexible.
Flexible circuits arenโt a new idea. Theyโve been used in electronics for decades. You can find them in flip phones old enough they now feel like antiques, and nearly every laptop. Theyโre also frequently used to miniaturize devices that donโt fold or flex at all, connecting internal components where space is extremely limited. But itโs only in the past five or six years that the technology has become available to smaller makers, and Bates says heโs been โmessing around with the flexible circuits for about as much time.โ This collaboration was an opportunity to use what heโs learned to create a device that would live outside his workshop.
The GamePop GP-1โs display resolution pales in comparison to the OLED screens used in folding phones, but Batesโ creation is far more durable. The game has not only undergone the typical safety tests, but Bates even โhit it with a hammer a few timesโ to test its durability. His display survived, but donโt try that with a folding phone. Theyโre still far less durable.
Instead of buttons, the game uses seven capacitive touch sensors that are directly โprinted in the copper layer of the board,โ Bates says. Thereโs no true mechanical feedback when pressed, but the paperโs flex helps them feel a bit like a button when you press down. Bates says the responsiveness of the sensors was specifically tuned to account for the thickness of the paper stock and the glues used in the final print run. Youโre not going to be chasing Tetris world records on the cover of a magazine, but the controls are satisfyingly responsive and the game is surprisingly much easier to play than other Tetris devices Iโve tested.
How much does a flexible Tetris game cost to manufacture? Neither Bates nor Red Bull would divulge the total price tag for all the off-the-shelf and custom components youโll find sandwiched inside the magazineโs cover. But to help keep costs down, not all components are flexible. Inside the edge of the cover, next to the magazineโs spine, youโll find a long but thin rigid PCB where an ARM-based 32-bit microprocessor is located, along with four rechargeable LIR2016 3V coin cell batteries.
Like most devices now, the game can be recharged using a USB-C cable, but itโs not immediately obvious where. Hidden along the bottom edge of the magazineโs cover is a deconstructed USB-C port. Instead of a metal ring, its socket is a small paper pocket containing a pin-covered head inside. It doesnโt feel quite as durable as the charging port on your phone, but itโs a welcome alternative to making the game disposable when the batteries die.
Bates did have to cut some corners. The GamePop GP-1 saves high scores, but modern Tetris gameplay features, like previews of upcoming pieces and being able to save tetrominoes for later, arenโt included. Thereโs sound effects, but when starting a game you only hear a small snippet of the iconic Tetris theme. The gameโs piezo speaker โuses about as much energy as it does to run the rest of the system,โ Bates says, so this helps prolong the life of the small rechargeable batteries. He tells us you can play for an hour or two that way, and the battery should last many months when not in use.
Red Bull made around 1,000 copies of the magazine. Itโs only available online in Europe, but can also be found in some stores and newsstands, including Iconic Magazines in New York and Rare Mags outside Manchester in the UK. However, only 150 copies with the playable cover were produced, and none were made available to the public. They were distributed to Tetris competitors, those featured in the magazine, influencers, and select media.
The playable cover isnโt going to revolutionize the print industry, or pave the way for smartphones we can roll up and stick in our back pockets. The goal was to use existing tech in a way that gamers havenโt seen before.
Photography by Andrew Liszewski / The Verge
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