I finally beat Tetris!

I’ve finally done it. I’ve beaten the game Tetris.

More specifically, Atari 2-player arcade Tetris, which is the best version of Tetris ever released (in my opinion) and the one that was available in arcades before Nintendo secured the rights to the game from the Soviet Union.

A few years ago, my daughter and I picked up a Taito arcade cabinet that I restored to play Tetris using the original Atari arcade game printed circuit board (PCB). I accidentally smashed the neck of the CRT monitor when removing it, so I installed a Wells-Gardner arcade LCD (which takes the CGA video signals generated by the Atari Tetris game PCB inside the cabinet), as well as a matching HAPP bezel to make it look great, as shown below. And I’ve played it quite a bit - Tetris has always been one of my favourite games, and is a great way of relieving stress and regaining focus after a long day.

Today, as I was playing around the 50,000 point mark, the screen paused and started jumbling up the characters.Rebooting the game didn’t help. I put the game PCB in another working arcade cabinet to verify that it was indeed the PCB that had failed.

Yes, that’s right. The game PCB died during gameplay, leaving me the clear winner.

Like any game trophy, I’m going to frame the PCB and stick it on the wall in my rec room. As for the Tetris arcade? Well, it’s a good thing I bought a spare Tetris PCB on eBay last year so that I can get my Tetris fix tonight ;-)