{"id":311579,"date":"2026-02-22T14:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T14:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/311579\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T14:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T14:55:09","slug":"this-magazine-plays-tetris-heres-how","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/311579\/","title":{"rendered":"This magazine plays Tetris \u2014 here\u2019s how"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tetris has been immortalized in a playable McDonald\u2019s plastic chicken nugget<\/a>, a playable fake 7-Eleven Slurpee cup<\/a>, and a playable wristwatch<\/a>. But the most intriguing way to play Tetris yet is encased in paper.<\/p>\n

Last year the Tetris Company partnered with Red Bull<\/a> for a gaming tournament that culminated in the 150-meter-tall Dubai Frame landmark being turned into the world\u2019s largest playable Tetris installation<\/a> using over 2,000 drones that functioned as pixels<\/a>. Although the timing was a coincidence, Red Bull also published a 180-page gaming edition of its The Red Bulletin lifestyle magazine around the same time as the event, with a limited number of copies wrapped in a less grandiose, but no less technically impressive, version of Alexey Pajitnov\u2019s iconic puzzle game.<\/p>\n

To create a playable gaming magazine, Red Bull Media House (the company\u2019s media wing) enlisted the help of Kevin Bates, who in 2014 wowed the internet by creating an ultra-thin Tetris-playing business card<\/a>. In 2015, he launched the $39 Arduboy<\/a>, a credit card-sized, open-source handheld that attracted a thriving community of developers<\/a>. Over the course of a decade, Bates also created a pair of equally pocketable Tetris-playing handhelds<\/a> that cost less than $30, and the shrunken-down USB-C Arduboy Mini<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The GamePop GP-1 Playable Magazine System (as it\u2019s officially called) is the latest evolution of Bates\u2019 mission to use existing, accessible, and affordable technologies to reimagine what a portable gaming device can be. It took \u201cmost of last year\u201d to develop, Bates revealed during a call with The Verge. He wouldn\u2019t divulge the exact details of how his collaboration with Red Bull came to be. But if you\u2019re looking to make an officially licensed version of Tetris that\u2019s thin enough to flex, Bates has the experience, and he shared with us some of the technical details that make this creation work.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

The game\u2019s screen is made up of 180 tiny RGB LEDs on a custom circuit board that can flex and bend.<\/p>\n

While OLED display technology has given us tablet-sized devices that fold into smartphones<\/a>, they\u2019re still expensive and fragile. To make a display that can survive being embedded in a flexible magazine cover without reinforcement, Bates created a custom matrix of 180 2mm RGB LEDs mounted to a flexible circuit board just 0.1mm thick. While the display and coin-cell batteries make it thicker in a few places \u2014 nearly 5mm at its thickest point \u2014 you genuinely feel like you\u2019re playing a handheld made of paper. The flexible circuits are bonded between two sheets of paper to create the sleeve that wraps around the book-sized magazine, and it feels satisfyingly thin and flexible.<\/p>\n

Flexible circuits aren\u2019t a new idea. They\u2019ve been used in electronics for decades. You can find them in flip phones old enough they now feel like antiques<\/a>, and nearly every laptop. They\u2019re also frequently used to miniaturize devices that don\u2019t fold or flex at all, connecting internal components where space is extremely limited. But it\u2019s only in the past five or six years that the technology has become available to smaller makers, and Bates says he\u2019s been \u201cmessing around with the flexible circuits for about as much time.\u201d This collaboration was an opportunity to use what he\u2019s learned to create a device that would live outside his workshop.<\/p>\n

The GamePop GP-1\u2019s display resolution pales in comparison to the OLED screens used in folding phones, but Bates\u2019 creation is far more durable. The game has not only undergone the typical safety tests, but Bates even \u201chit it with a hammer a few times\u201d to test its durability. His display survived, but don\u2019t try that with a folding phone. They\u2019re still far less durable<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

To keep it as thin as possible, the Tetris game uses embedded touch sensors instead of physical buttons.<\/p>\n

Instead of buttons, the game uses seven capacitive touch sensors that are directly \u201cprinted in the copper layer of the board,\u201d Bates says. There\u2019s no true mechanical feedback when pressed, but the paper\u2019s flex helps them feel a bit like a button when you press down. Bates says the responsiveness of the sensors was specifically tuned to account for the thickness of the paper stock and the glues used in the final print run. You\u2019re not going to be chasing Tetris world records on the cover of a magazine, but the controls are satisfyingly responsive and the game is surprisingly much easier to play than other Tetris devices<\/a> I\u2019ve tested.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Most of the game is made using flexible electronics, but there is a thin rigid PCB housing its processor and rechargeable batteries.<\/p>\n

How much does a flexible Tetris game cost to manufacture? Neither Bates nor Red Bull would divulge the total price tag for all the off-the-shelf and custom components you\u2019ll find sandwiched inside the magazine\u2019s cover. But to help keep costs down, not all components are flexible. Inside the edge of the cover, next to the magazine\u2019s spine, you\u2019ll find a long but thin rigid PCB where an ARM-based 32-bit microprocessor is located, along with four rechargeable LIR2016 3V coin cell batteries.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

The magazine features a deconstructed USB-C charging port along the bottom edge of its cover.<\/p>\n

Like most devices now, the game can be recharged using a USB-C cable, but it\u2019s not immediately obvious where. Hidden along the bottom edge of the magazine\u2019s cover is a deconstructed USB-C port. Instead of a metal ring, its socket is a small paper pocket containing a pin-covered head inside. It doesn\u2019t feel quite as durable as the charging port on your phone, but it\u2019s a welcome alternative to making the game disposable when the batteries die.<\/p>\n

Bates did have to cut some corners. The GamePop GP-1 saves high scores, but modern Tetris gameplay features, like previews of upcoming pieces and being able to save tetrominoes for later, aren\u2019t included. There\u2019s sound effects, but when starting a game you only hear a small snippet of the iconic Tetris theme. The game\u2019s piezo speaker \u201cuses about as much energy as it does to run the rest of the system,\u201d Bates says, so this helps prolong the life of the small rechargeable batteries. He tells us you can play for an hour or two that way, and the battery should last many months when not in use.<\/p>\n

Red Bull made around 1,000 copies of the magazine. It\u2019s only available online in Europe<\/a>, but can also be found in some stores and newsstands, including Iconic Magazines<\/a> in New York and Rare Mags<\/a> outside Manchester in the UK. However, only 150 copies with the playable cover were produced, and none were made available to the public. They were distributed to Tetris competitors, those featured in the magazine, influencers, and select media.<\/p>\n

The playable cover isn\u2019t going to revolutionize the print industry, or pave the way for smartphones we can roll up and stick in our back pockets. The goal was to use existing tech in a way that gamers haven\u2019t seen before.<\/p>\n

Photography by Andrew Liszewski \/ The Verge<\/p>\n

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See All Tech<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tetris has been immortalized in a playable McDonald\u2019s plastic chicken nugget, a playable fake 7-Eleven Slurpee cup, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[203,213,5064,61,60,564,216,80],"class_list":["post-311579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-gadgets","tag-gaming","tag-hands-on","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-reviews","tag-tech","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}