Josh Gibson

Make sure you watch where you point your bricks, because there are some new Tetris sheriffs in town.

Tetris

The annual Tetris World Championships, held on the University of Southern California campus over the weekend, crowned several new kings of the classic puzzler. Hundreds of players competed on Sony's PlayStation 3 and the classic Nintendo NES console for an official Tetris trophy and more than $5,000 in cash and prizes.

The matches were decided by whoever faltered first by accumulating a game-ending tower of bricks; the tournament bracket had several interesting stipulations to make the epic brick battle more adventurous.

For example, once the top eight arose from the qualifying rounds of the NES tournament, gamers faced off against each other in best of three matches that started on level 18. Jonas Neubauer, a 30-year-old Loan Coordinator from California, won the NES tournament for a second consecutive year. I would avoid playing against him anytime soon.

The PlayStation Tetris tournament was a new addition this year, and split into two factions: one-on-one matchups, and a team scenario. After several grueling late rounds (with best of seven match-ups), John Tran, a 27-year-old student from California, won the solo contest. Tran also won the PlayStation multiplayer portion along with Roger Teng, giving him some unbelievable geek street cred for winning twice during a single video game championship.

Check out some videos of the event at the official Tetris YouTube page.