Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters | |
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Directed by | Adam Cornelius |
Produced by | Adam Cornelius Robin Mihara Vince Clemente |
Starring | Thor Aackerlund Robin Mihara Harry Hong Jesse Kelkar Ben Mullen Chris Tang Jonas Neubauer Dana Wilcox |
Cinematography | Dan Billups |
Music by | Chris Pickolick |
Production company | Reclusion Films |
Release date |
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Running time | 93 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $100,000 (est) [1] |
Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters is a 2011 American documentary film that follows the lives of several gamers from around the country as they prepare to compete in the 2010 Classic Tetris World Championship held in Los Angeles, California. It recounts the development and rise of Tetris as one of the most-played video games of all time, the role it has played in shaping the lives of the gamers it chronicles, the mystery surrounding the whereabouts of former Nintendo World Champion Thor Aackerlund, and the conception and execution of the first-ever Classic Tetris World Championship by gaming enthusiast Robin Mihara.
The film was directed by Adam Cornelius and screened at over 15 film festivals both domestic and internationally, beginning with its World Premiere at the Austin Film Festival on October 21, 2011, and including an appearance at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the largest film festival of its kind. It debuted on DVD and Video On Demand (VOD) on August 21, 2012. [2] An expanded version of the film's soundtrack from composer Chris Pickolick has also been released.
An Oregon-based Tetris enthusiast by the name of Robin Mihara, longing to track down the best Tetris players in the nation for the purpose of organizing a competition, happens upon a website called Twin Galaxies, which has been tracking video game world records since the 1980s. From this website he learns of record holders and top scorers like Jonas Neubauer and Harry Hong (both of whom have achieved a so-called "max-out" with a high score of 999,999), Ben Mullen (world-record holder for most lines, with 296), Dana Wilcox, and Jesse Kelkar. In addition, he seeks to reconnect with several of the top players from the heyday of NES and Tetris—competitors from 1990's Nintendo World Championships—Trey Harrison and Thor Aackerlund, the latter of whom claims to have reached Level 30. Little has been heard of Aackerlund since his rise to notoriety as the poster child for video gaming in the 1990s, and being successful at playing video games is described by Mihara in the film as "the cornerstone of a very difficult life [for Thor]." Regardless of his reluctance, Aackerlund is able to put the past behind him and agrees to participate. With the addition of competitors like Matt Buco and Bay area Tetris: The Grand Master 2 Grand Master Alex Kerr (one of only 8 Americans to achieve this title as of 2018), [3] the stage is set to for the top eight competitors to go head-to-head in Los Angeles, vying for the title of Tetris Champion in the first ever Classic Tetris World Championship.
The film integrates a fair amount of Tetris gameplay footage and strategy, including backstories of the individual gamers, and also features a special messages and interviews from Tetris developer Alexey Pajitnov, Former Twin Galaxies Senior Referee Mr. Kelly R. Flewin, multi-platform champion gamer Chris Tang, and a special appearance by The Tetris Company CEO Henk Rogers.[ citation needed ]
Ecstasy of Order received the prestigious Audience Award for Documentary Feature at the 2011 Austin Film Festival, sharing the honor with Stories from an Undeclared War. [4] It received the award for Best Feature Film (any genre) at the 2012 Phoenix Comicon Film Festival. [5] The film has received generally favorable reviews from critics. Dennis Harvey of Variety noted that it will "delight fans of the highly addictive game", [6] while Allistair Pinsof of Flixist called it "one of the best videogame films of all time." [7]
Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov is a Soviet computer engineer and video game designer who lives in the United States. He is best known for creating, designing, and developing Tetris in 1985 while working at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre under the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. After Tetris was released internationally in 1987, he released a sequel in 1989, entitled Welltris.
Tetris is a puzzle video game created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov, a Soviet software engineer. It has been published by several companies on more than 65 platforms, setting a Guinness world record for the most ported game. After a significant period of publication by Nintendo, in 1996 the rights reverted to Pajitnov, who co-founded the Tetris Company with Henk Rogers to manage licensing.
Dr. Mario is a 1990 puzzle video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy. It was produced by Gunpei Yokoi and designed by Takahiro Harada. The soundtrack was composed by Hirokazu Tanaka.
Twin Galaxies is a social media platform and video game database. Twin Galaxies is the official supplier of video game records to Guinness World Records.
Sweet Home is a role-playing video game developed and published by Capcom for the Family Computer in 1989. It was developed alongside the horror film of the same name and tells the story of a team of five filmmakers exploring an old mansion in search of precious frescos hidden there. As they explore the mysterious mansion, they encounter hostile ghosts and other supernatural enemies. The player must navigate the intricately laid out mansion, battling with the enemies, and the five main characters with the limited weapons and health restorative items available. The narrative moves forward regardless of whether the characters stay alive, and leads to its five different endings.
The Nintendo World Championships (NWC) is a nationwide video game competition series, organized by Nintendo of America at no particular interval.
Tetris: The Grand Master is a series of puzzle arcade video games created by Arika.
Arika is a Japanese video game developer and publisher. It was formed in 1995 by former Capcom employees. It was originally known as ARMtech K.K, but was later named Arika. The name of the company is the reverse of the name of the company's founder, Akira Nishitani, who along with Akira Yasuda, created Street Fighter II. Arika's first game was Street Fighter EX. It was successful and was followed up with two updates, and its two sequels Street Fighter EX2 and Street Fighter EX3. In 2018, they released a spiritual successor to both Street Fighter EX and Fighting Layer, titled Fighting EX Layer. From 2019 to 2021, Arika collaborated with Nintendo to create the battle royale games Tetris 99, Super Mario Bros. 35, and with Bandai Namco for Pac-Man 99. Arika is also known for the Tetris: The Grand Master series, the Dr. Mario series, starting with Dr. Mario Online Rx, and the Endless Ocean series.
Thor Aackerlund is an American esports gamer, considered one of the first to go professional.
The 1980s was the second decade in the industry's history. It was a decade of highs and lows for video games. The decade began amidst a boom in the arcade video game business with the golden age of arcade video games, the Atari 2600's dominance of the home console market during the second generation of video game consoles, and the rising influence of home computers. However, an oversatuation of low quality games led to an implosion of the video game market that nearly destroyed the industry in North America. Most investors believed video games to be a fad that had since passed, up until Nintendo's success with its Nintendo Entertainment System revived interest in game consoles and led to a recovery of the home video game industry. In the remaining years of the decade, Sega ignites a console war with Nintendo, developers that had been affected by the crash experimented with PC games, and Nintendo released the Game Boy, which would become the best-selling handheld gaming device for the next two decades. Other consoles released in the decade included the Intellivision, ColecoVision, TurboGrafx-16 and Sega Genesis.
Thor: God of Thunder is an action hack and slash video game based on the Marvel Studios film Thor. The game was developed by Liquid Entertainment and co-written by Matt Fraction. Thor: God of Thunder marks Thor's first standalone appearance in a video game and features the voices of Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston and Jaimie Alexander, who reprise their roles from the film. The game was released in 2011 for Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360 and Nintendo 3DS. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game can be played in 3D on 3DTVs and on 2DTVs via TriOviz Inificolor 3D glasses. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions were met with unfavorable reviews, while the Wii, DS, and 3DS versions were met with mixed reviews.
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The Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC) is a video game competition series, hosted by the Socal Gaming Expo. The competition launched in 2010, during the filming of Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters, to determine the world's greatest Tetris player. In its first two years, the competition was held in Los Angeles, California, but was moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2012, and was held there annually through 2023. The 2024 edition has been held in Pasadena, California.
Game On Expo is a multimedia gaming convention that began in August 2015, and is the largest gaming and anime convention in Arizona. It covers all types of gaming from video games and arcades to board games and tabletop games. The expo boasts a large vendor hall, video game lounge area, free-play arcades, tournaments, cosplay contests, panels, and a variety of special guests.
Jonas Evan Neubauer was an American Tetris player, seven-time champion at the Classic Tetris World Championship, Twitch streamer, and a taproom manager. Neubauer is widely considered to be one of the greatest Tetris players of all time.
Tetris, also known as classic Tetris, is a puzzle video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Based on Tetris (1985) by Alexey Pajitnov, it was released after a legal battle between Nintendo and Atari Games, who had previously released a Tetris port under an invalid license. Bullet-Proof Software had previously released Tetris for the Family Computer in December 1988, while Nintendo had released Tetris for the Game Boy earlier in 1989. The game will be re-released for the first time on Nintendo Switch Online in winter 2024.
Tetris is a 2023 biographical thriller film based on true events around the race to license and patent the video game Tetris from Russia in the late 1980s during the Cold War. It was directed by Jon S. Baird and written by Noah Pink. The film stars Taron Egerton, Nikita Efremov, Sofia Lebedeva, and Anthony Boyle.
Michael Khanh Artiaga, known online as dogplayingtetris or simply Dog, is an American Tetris player from Texas. He is best known for back-to-back victories in the 2020 and 2021 Classic Tetris World Championships (CTWC), the former of which led him to set the Guinness World Record for the "Youngest Tetris World Champion" at 13 years old.