This magazine plays Tetris — here’s how

Tetris He was immortalized in a playable McDonald’s game Plastic chicken pieceplayable Fake 7-Eleven Slurpee Cupand A Playable wrist watch. But the most interesting way to play Tetris However it is covered with paper.

last year The Tetris Company has partnered with Red Bull For a gaming tournament that culminated in the transformation of the 150-meter-tall landmark Dubai Frame into The biggest game in the world Tetris stabilizing using more 2000 drones act as pixels. Although the timing was pure coincidence, Red Bull also published a 180-page gaming version of its book Red Notice lifestyle magazine around the same time as the event, with a limited number of copies packaged in a less luxurious, but no less technically impressive, version of Alexey Pajitnov’s popular puzzle game.

To create a playable gaming magazine, Red Bull Media House (the company’s media wing) enlisted the help of Kevin Bates, who wowed the internet in 2014 by creating a Very thin Tetris-Play business card. In 2015, he launched the $39 ardoboyan open source portable credit card-sized device that has attracted a A thriving community of developers. Over the course of a decade, Bates has also created a pair of shoes that fit equally in the pocket Tetris-Playing with mobile devices Which costs less than $30 and The shrunken USB-C Arduboy Mini.

The GamePop GP-1 Playable Magazine System (as it’s officially called) is the latest evolution of Bates’ mission to use existing, accessible and affordable technologies to reimagine what a portable gaming device can be. Bates revealed during a phone call that it took “most of the last year” to develop Edge. He did not reveal the exact details of how he would cooperate with Red Bull. But if you are looking to create an officially licensed version of Tetris It’s thin enough to bend, and Bates is experienced, and he shared some of the technical details that make this creation a success.

While OLED display technology gave us Tablet-sized devices that fold into smartphonesThey are still expensive and fragile. To create a display that could remain embedded in a flexible magazine cover without reinforcement, Bates created a custom array of 180 2mm RGB LEDs mounted on a flexible circuit board that was just 0.1mm thick. While the display and coin cell batteries make it thicker in a few places – nearly 5mm at its thickest point – it really feels like you’re playing with a handheld device made of paper. Flexible circles are bonded between two sheets of paper to form the cover that wraps around a book-sized magazine, and is satisfyingly thin and flexible.

Flexible circuits are not a new idea. They have been used in electronics for decades. You can find it at Flip phones old enough that they now look like antiquesAnd almost every laptop. They are also frequently used to miniaturize devices that cannot be folded or bent at all, and to connect internal components where space is extremely limited. But only in the past five or six years has this technology become available to smaller manufacturers, and Bates says he’s been “been tinkering with flex circuits for almost as long.” This collaboration was an opportunity to use what he learned to create a device that could be used outside his workshop.

The GamePop GP-1’s display resolution pales in comparison to the OLED displays used in foldable phones, but Bates’ innovation is much more durable. Not only did the toy undergo the typical safety tests, Bates “hit it with a hammer several times” to test its durability. Its screen survived, but don’t try that with a foldable phone. They are Still much less durable.

Instead of buttons, the game uses seven capacitive touch sensors that are “printed directly into the copper layer of the board,” Bates says. There’s no real mechanical response when pressed, but the flexibility of the paper helps it feel like a button when pressed down. Bates says the sensors’ response is specifically tuned to take into account the thickness of the paper stock and adhesives used in the final printing process. You won’t be chased Tetris The world records are on the cover of a magazine, but the controls are satisfyingly responsive and the game is surprisingly much easier to play last Tetris Devices I’ve tested.

How flexible Tetris Cost of making the game? Neither Beats nor Red Bull have revealed the total price for all the off-the-shelf and custom components you’ll find sandwiched inside the magazine’s cover. But to help keep costs down, not all components are flexible. Inside the edge of the cover, next to the magazine spine, you’ll find a long but thin solid PCB on which a 32-bit ARM-based microprocessor is housed, as well as four rechargeable LIR2016 3V coin cell batteries.

Like most devices now, the toy can be recharged using a USB-C cable, but it’s not immediately clear where it is. Along the bottom edge of the magazine cover is a breakout USB-C port. Instead of a metal ring, its socket is a small paper pocket containing a covered head with a pin inside. It doesn’t feel quite as durable as the charging port on your phone, but it’s a welcome alternative to making the toy disposable when the batteries run out.

Bates had to cut some corners. The GamePop GP-1 keeps the high scores, but it’s modern Tetris Gameplay features, such as previews of upcoming pieces and the ability to save tetromines for later, are not included. There are sound effects, but when you start the game, you only hear a small snippet of code Tetris Feature. The toy’s piezo speaker “uses almost as much power as it does to power the rest of the system,” Betts says, which helps extend the life of the small rechargeable batteries. He tells us you can play for an hour or two this way, and the battery should last for months when not in use.

Red Bull produced about 1,000 copies of the magazine. It is only available online in Europebut can also be found in some stores and newsstands, including Famous magazines In New York and Rare magazines Outside Manchester, United Kingdom. However, only 150 copies were produced with the playable cover, and none were made available to the public. It was distributed to them Tetris Competitors, those featured in the magazine, influencers, and selected media.

A flip cover won’t revolutionize the printing industry, or pave the way for smartphones that we can fold up and put in our back pockets. The goal was to use existing technology in a way that players had never seen before.

Photography by Andrew Leszewski/The Verge