TITLE
A New Generation Stacks Up Championships in an Old Game: Tetris
AUTHOR
Zach Schonbrun
PUBLICATION
The New York Times
YEAR
2021
ARTICLE TYPE
Article
FROM THE ARTICLE
There is, at any given moment, someone on Twitch playing Tetris before a live audience.On a recent Thursday night, the star attraction was a 14-year-old named Michael Artiaga, better known by his handle Dog, who is the 2020 and 2021 world champion on a game nearly three times his age. His hands moved across a narrow Nintendo controller with the breeziness of a cocktail pianist as he stacked the game’s familiar falling shapes and cleared one row after another. From time to time, he reached forward to take a bite of a sandwich.
In less than 10 minutes, Artiaga amassed points and reached levels that were inconceivable during the first 25 years of the game’s existence. The announcer — yes, these games have announcers — sounded appropriately flabbergasted.
[…]
The emergence of the Artiaga brothers continues a trend that has been developing in tournament Tetris in recent years. Interest in vintage video games has been growing, and applications for entry to the Classic Tetris World Championships, contested each year since 2010, have been increasingly steadily. Certainly nostalgia is part of the reason.
But tournament organizers have noticed something else: The competitors are getting younger.
GAMES MENTIONED
Tetris
PEOPLE MENTIONED
Andy Artiaga
Michael Artiaga
Vince Clemente
Sean Ritchie
Joseph Saelee
TOPICS MENTIONED
Esports
PRINT AVAILABILITY
December 28, 2021