Tetris she was immortalized in a playable plastic McDonald’s chicken nugget, a playable fake 7-Eleven Slurpee cup, and a playable wristwatch. But the most interesting way to play Tetris yet it is wrapped in paper.
Last year, The Tetris Company teamed up with Red Bull for a gaming tournament that culminated in the 150-meter-tall landmark Dubai Frame being transformed into the world’s largest gaming venue. Tetris installation using over 2,000 drones that acted as pixels. Although the timing was a fluke, Red Bull also released their 180-page game edition Red Bulletin lifestyle magazine around the same time as the event, with a limited run wrapped in a less grandiose but no less technically impressive version of Alexei Pajitnov’s iconic puzzle game.
To create a playable gaming magazine, Red Bull Media House (the company’s media wing) enlisted the help of Kevin Bates, who stunned the internet in 2014 by creating an ultra-thin Tetris-playing business cards. In 2015, it launched the $39 Arduboy, a credit-card-sized open-source handheld that attracted a thriving developer community. Over the decades, Bates also created a pair of equally pocketable ones Tetris-gaming handhelds that cost less than $30, and the miniaturized USB-C Arduboy Mini.
The GamePop GP-1 Playable Magazine System (as it’s officially called) is the latest evolution of Bates’ mission to use existing, accessible and affordable technology to reimagine what portable gaming can be. Development took “most of the last year,” Bates revealed during a call with The Verge. He would not reveal the exact details of how his cooperation with Red Bull came about. But if you want to create an officially licensed version Tetris that’s thin enough to bend, Bates has the experience and shared some of the technical details that make this creature work.
While OLED display technology has given us tablet-sized devices that fold into smartphones, they are still expensive and fragile. In order to create a display that could survive being embedded in a flexible magazine housing without reinforcement, Bates created a custom matrix of 180 2mm RGB LEDs mounted on a flexible circuit board just 0.1mm thick. While the display and coin-cell battery make it thick in a few places – nearly 5mm at its thickest point – it really does feel like you’re playing on a handheld made of paper. Flexible circuitry is sandwiched between two sheets of paper to create a case that wraps around a book-sized magazine and feels satisfyingly thin and flexible.
Flexible circuits are not a new idea. They have been used in electronics for decades. You’ll find them in flip phones that are old enough to feel like antiques now, and in almost every laptop. They are also often used to miniaturize devices that do not fold or bend at all, and connect internal components where space is extremely limited. But it’s only been in the last five or six years that the technology has become available to smaller manufacturers, and Bates says he’s been “playing around with flexible circuits for about the same amount of time.” This collaboration was an opportunity to use what he learned to create a device that would live outside of his workshop.
The resolution of the GamePop GP-1’s display pales in comparison to the OLED screens used in foldable phones, but Bates’ creation is far more durable. Not only did the game pass the typical safety tests, Bates even “hit it with a hammer a few times” to test its durability. Its display survived, but don’t try that with a foldable phone. They are becoming much less sustainable.
Instead of buttons, the game uses seven capacitive touch sensors that are directly “printed into the copper layer of the board,” says Bates. There’s no real mechanical feedback when pressed, but the flexibility of the paper helps them feel a bit like a button when pressed. Bates says the sensors’ response has been specifically tuned to match the thickness of the paper and adhesives used in the final print. You will not chase Tetris world records on the cover of the magazine, but the controls are satisfyingly responsive and the game is surprisingly much easier to play than others Tetris device I tested.
How much does flexible cost Tetris game production cost? Neither Bates nor Red Bull have released the total cost of all the standard and custom components found on the cover of the magazine. However, to help keep costs down, not all components are flexible. Inside the edge of the case, next to the spine of the magazine, you’ll find a long but thin solid circuit board that houses the 32-bit ARM-based microprocessor, along with four rechargeable 3V LIR2016 coin-cell batteries.
Like most devices, the game can now be recharged using a USB-C cable, but it’s not immediately obvious where. A deconstructed USB-C port is hidden along the bottom edge of the magazine cover. Instead of a metal ring, its socket is a small paper bag containing a pin-covered head inside. It’s not as durable as the charging port on your phone, but it’s a welcome alternative to being a disposable toy when the battery dies.
Bates had to cut some corners. The GamePop GP-1 keeps high scores, but it’s modern Tetris Game features such as previews of upcoming installments and the ability to save the tetromino for later are not included. There are sound effects, but you only hear a small snippet of the iconic one when you start the game Tetris topic. The game’s piezo speaker “uses about as much power as the rest of the system to run,” says Bates, so that helps extend the life of the tiny rechargeable batteries. He tells us you can play for an hour or two this way, and the battery should last many months when not in use.
Red Bull produced around 1000 copies of the magazine. It is 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 of Manchester in the UK. However, only 150 playable cover copies were produced and none were released to the public. They were distributed to Tetris competitors, those featured in the magazine, influencers and selected media.
A playable cover isn’t going to revolutionize the printing industry or pave the way for smartphones that we can roll up and stick in our back pockets. The goal was to use existing technology in a way that players had not seen before.
Photo by Andrew Liszewski/The Verge