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Usually when one hears the combination of “hacking” and “college students”, it sends shivers along our skin contemplating the damage. In this case, however, when the elite of the MIT geek core pull a college hacking prank, fun usually ensues! Hackers took over the Green Building at MIT and tranformed the 21 story window grid into a giant Tetris puzzle game controllable from a nearby joystick attached to a podium.
The humorous and dazzling feat was accomplished using 153 wirelessly controlled color-changing LED lights for the giant game on a building that hosts MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Science facilities. The building has usually been the favorite target of such attempts in the past.
The MIT-hosted Hack Gallery notes, “MIT hackers have long considered ‘Tetris on the Green Building’ to be the Holy Grail of hacks, as the side of the building is a wonderful grid for the game.” The second level of the Tetris game involved a great twist as well, using harder-to-identify pale colors in the blocks, and the third level featured color-shifting tiles.
As for a little background, Tetris has an infamous legal battle behind it. It was originally invented in Moscow by Alexey Pazhitnov on an Electronica 60 at the Moscow Academy of Science’s Computer Center. He hadn’t received anything for it initially, due to the back dealings of rights infringements by English and American computer game companies. What ensued was an eight year battle between several companies. Alexey Pazhitnov and Nintendo won, finally giving Pazhitnov the money and fame behind it. Here’s a video of the hacked MIT building:
