Four decades after a simple game was developed on an Eletronika 60 Soviet computer, the iconic puzzle, Tetris, lit up the skies of Dubai.<\/p>\n
Nineteen-year-old Fehmi Atalar from T\u00fcrkiye won the first-ever Red Bull Tetris World Championship held this month, as every move he made was displayed by drones flying above the cityscape.<\/p>\n
The December 11-13 tournament brought together top players from 60 countries, creating a rare international gathering for one of the world\u2019s most enduring video games.<\/p>\n
The final unfolded on the facade of the Dubai Frame, where more than 2,000 synchronised drones formed a massive playable screen, transforming the landmark into an esports arena. The championship followed months of online qualifiers that included more than seven million matches and national finals across six continents.<\/p>\n
At the centre of the spectacle stood Atalar, a computer engineering student from T\u00fcrkiye, who advanced to the Grand Final alongside Peru\u2019s Leo Solorzano. The decisive match lasted just 10 minutes.<\/p>\n
Atalar posted a score of 168,566, more than double his opponent\u2019s target, securing the first-ever global title in one of the most technologically ambitious settings competitive gaming has seen.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Anadolu, Atalar said he found his opponent a bit nervous and making some bad choices.<\/p>\n
“But that doesn’t mean he’s a bad player. He is a good player” but nerves got the better of him, he said. In comparison, \u201cI was very, very chill and played better than him.\u201d<\/p>\n
From old television screen to drone display<\/p>\n
While the final relied on cutting-edge technology, Atalar\u2019s connection to the game began years earlier, shaped by a far simpler setting.<\/p>\n
Tetris, first released in 1984, has sold more than 520 million copies worldwide, ranking among the best-selling video games of all time, according to industry estimates.<\/p>\n
That legacy reached Atalar through his family.<\/p>\n
He started playing Tetris in 2019, and the inspiration came from his aunt. \u201cWhen I was a kid, like six or seven years old, I was watching my aunt playing Tetris on CRT television and I got inspired,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four decades after a simple game was developed on an Eletronika 60 Soviet computer, the iconic puzzle, Tetris,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,61],"class_list":["post-368627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}