No sh*t, Tetris guy. You knew that the silly physics flinger was on the way out when you started seeing too much branded merchandise at the checkout stand at the grocery store. I saw a senior citizen with an Angry Birds shirt on the other day. When I saw that I did that Jackie Chan hands-open-at-sides-of-head thing, and then walked it off, reminding myself that this is something that won't last. Angry Birds will never become a timeless game like Tetris has.
Still, Tetris dude, Henk Rogers, manager of The Tetris Company, is kind of a dick* about it.
"Again I like to compare it to a sport, in the beginning it's an activity, like golf was an activity, then it became a sport. I think once people have played it more than 20 or 25 years you can say it's here to stay, it's a sport, it's no longer a fad, Rogers told Industry Gamers in an interview. "Angry Birds is cute and everybody plays it for a while but they get burned out and move on and they will play another game."
Our game is older and better, he says:
"But Tetris is like Happy Birthday, it keeps on going. Everybody else has games that come and go, they make the hit parade, but these are all temporary. You have to work really hard to get your unknown game to be #1, but when we re-released Tetris it became #1 even though we didn't do any marketing. We have an unfair advantage, I gotta say. I'd rather have the goose that lays the golden egg."
Jealous, bro?
* - I can be a dick about it. He can't.
Contest:
2:30 PM on 12.22.2011 | 
...o...k...
I think that the real value of Tetris and Angry Birds was in bringing a novel new game type (the shit-falling-out-of-the-sky puzzle for Tetris, and the flinging-shit-at-other-shit puzzle for Angry Birds) to the masses. Both of these game types will be popular for the foreseeable future, and the original titles that brought us these types will remain in the public consciousness for years to comes.
Angry Birds? I run Tetris, motherfucker."
I lost interest in them both after only a couple of days.
Not that I challenge their validity as video games. They're just not my cup of tea. In fact, I'd say that both games are very good at one thing in particular, they both get people who don't play video games to play video games.
I can't say I see that as a bad thing.
I also love his amazing analogy: "It's like before when sports weren't sports, but then they became sports. You know."
At this point I like the music, but I couldn't stand to play the game anymore.
They're both kinda fad-ish as far as I'm concerned. It's time has come and gone. It remains because it became iconic decades ago. Tetris pretty much stands the test of time because it literally put puzzle games on the map.
I'm not downplaying it's achievement, but it's an old ass game. Who honestly plays Tetris anymore?
Not really, but I've bought them all and enjoyed the heck out of them.
Bring on moar and I will play them.
Yeah, I know it had been done before. But Angry Birds brought it to the masses, as in, the average joe on the street didn't know about physics puzzlers before Angry Birds, and now they do.
And so on.