Two little mobile game-related snippets that cropped up today. First, EA has just announced that its various mobile iterations of Russian legend Tetris have reached over 100 million paid for downloads since 2005. That is a lot of oddly shaped blocks being stacked into confined spaces. I wonder how many of those 100 million gamers have wasted culiminative hours of their lives, desperately thinking, "I just need the long thin one, I just need the long thin one!"

The falling object puzzler, which is celebrating its 25th Anniversary this year (do inanimate intellectual properties celebrate? I guess not), is also massive in Japan where mobile content provider G-mode has been distributing Tetris titles since 2001. "Just this past year alone our 'Tetris League' game in Japan has been played nearly 100 million times," says Takeshi Miyaji, president of G-mode in an enthusiastic press release which finally manages to mention Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of the game, in the fourth paragraph.

Fortunately, although he made little money from his masterpiece for the first few years of its rampant success, the rights reverted to him in 1996 and he now manages The Tetris Company with early US licensee Hank Rogers. Rogers told PocketGamer:

"1.2 billion people on the planet have handsets, so that leaves another 4.8 billion who don't have handsets, and therefore don't have access to Tetris... so I think there's still a lot of room for us to grow. To double in size, actually."

And with a grasp of mathematics like that, I'm sure the only way is up. Anyway, here's a fun fact about Tetris from that press release:

According to researchers, the Tetris game is an excellent tool for neuroscience research and has been used in over 30 scientific studies. Research published in 2009 in BMC Research Notes found that study participants who played Tetris showed increased brain efficiency and, relative to controls, an increase in brain tissue.

Also, as Homer Simpson discovered in one memorable Simpsons skit, it's great for teaching you how to effectively load your car with many times more crap than it should conceivably be able to hold.

Anyway, on to another classic mobile game - Snake...



The Guinness World Records 2010 Gamer's Edition has just declared that the mobile version of Snake is the most played game on the planet. An estimated one billion people have been making monochrome lines grow since the title was created for the old Nokia 6110 in 1997 by Nokia design engineer, Taneli Armanto. Allegedly, it only went on the phone because they had some room left in the memory and wanted a fun extra to fill it. By 2005, the game was on 350 million handsets.

Do you have any memories of either game you'd like to share?