Tel Aviv's City Hall transformed into gigantic game of Tetris

We've all played Tetris. In fact, if you haven't then you should really put down whatever it is you're doing right now and either hit your local retro gaming store or (perhaps more conveniently) download it to your phone right now, because it truly is about as close to simplistic gaming perfection as you're ever likely to experience. The game is so perfectly crafted, in fact, that it's still played by millions across the world more than 30 years after it was first invented by a bored Russian programmer working night shifts at the Academy of Science in Moscow. It's also an incredibly iconic game, which has been ported to everything from phones, home consoles and watches, to t-shirts, mugs and now, buildings. Yes. Buildings, because the city of Tel Aviv in Israel recently decided to turn the facade of its City Hall building into a playable Tetris game.

This past weekend, the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality building was outfitted with a 32,000-square-foot screen made up of 480 LED lights. Meanwhile, two five foot tall joysticks were placed in the middle of nearby Rabin Square, where members of the public were encouraged to play against one another. The building not only supported Tetris but other '80s game favourites such as Snake and Pong. The kind of games anyone can pick up and play in seconds, but could take years to truly master. The installation is a part of the DLD Tel Aviv Innovation Festival coming to the city later this month (September 25 - September 29), and while people can play Tetris on the building throughout this week, it'll also be accessible every Thursday after dark until the end of the month.

This isn't the first time the game of Tetris has been played on a building either. Back in 2014 the game was played on the surface of a 29-story high rise in Philadelphia, and the year before, a group of MIT students hacked the side of a campus building using wirelessly-controlled LED lights and a controller attached to a podium to play the game. The trend even goes as far back as 1995 when Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands attempted a similar stunt.

Tetris has attracted a fanatical fan base over the years. In fact, Cambridge-based engineer James Newman recently spent more than £40,000 building a 33 foot wide, half tonne computer just to play the game. Granted he primarily did so in order to visualise how a microprocessor actually works, but the fact it could also play Tetris is almost certainly what brought it to the attention of the wider world. The game is soon to have its Hollywood moment too, as it's currently in development as a high-concept science fiction trilogy. Granted it's difficult to picture a blockbuster film franchise based around literally busting blocks, but if they can make major Hollywood films out of the Battleships board game and 50 Shades of Grey, then surely anything is far game.