Just like the SNES/Genesis one, this is more about my teenage days than childhood but whatever...-

He can say whatever he wants but I know and must of my family knows it: my dad is a closeted videogamer.

No you won't see him buying game consoles or magazines or surfing the web about games. But he does like them in a way or another.

He bough the Atari mainly because he wanted to and we couldn't take him from the Pac man version away. In fact he still plays that pac man on his PC. He also bought a boring investment game and he got angered when I told a friend about it! (I told him not in a mocking way, the darn disc was there and I just said "oh is my dad's. He bought it some days ago" and my dad reacted as if I told him "yeah my dad buys porn") ¬¬ gimme a frickin way. who is trying to fool? specially after the TETRIS DAYS.

On 1992 more or less me and my brother received as a xmas gift a Tetris game (one of those chinese LCS handhelds) it had 2 games: a Tetris clone and a Columns one. Of course, we played more the Tetris one

Anyway one day my dad saw it and asked us what was it and we explained him how to play...that started probably the very very VERY first time in my life I would see my dad get addicted to ANYTHING (And damn he is addicted to the net and yet o_O).

He played it everywhere, everytime, MANY times: while watching TV , before going to bed , while eating breakfast, after dinner and of course in the bathroom

I don't remember how many days he played it. Maybe it wasn't more than a week. But he played TETRIS techincally the whole day (besides job) until one day he losted, tossed the game to the sofa and shouted "THAT'S IT! ENOUGH! I HAVE TO STOP" and went to his room.

wow. just wow.

But honestly, who could blame him? I guess that TETRIS is one of the most (if not THE most) perfect videogames ever created. Is fun, easy to learn, VERY CHALLENGING, it flexes the eyesight, the both sides of the brain...and it has the most simple design ever. Only a genious could have made such game.

Some random facts:

* The game was made by alexei pajitnov (?) on 1985 while working at an university in moscow BUT he didn't received a penny until 10 YEARS LATER when the USSR dissapeared and founded the Tetris company in Hawai <.<

* The soviet government, who had the rights, sold them to many companies, including Nintendo for "the videogame consoles"...which of course didn't included the SEGA and NEC ones x_X

* Atari, who had the Arcade rights, tried to play smart and thru its Tengen label made one for the NES and Nintendo sued them and winning....even if the Tengen version was better

*The Gameboy debuted with a copy of Tetris with Wii sports effects: it became the reason for MILLIONS of gamers to get a Gameboy..only to play Tetris!

* The famous "Tetris theme" is also an old folk russian theme ^^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxlujC8A004