Thirty six years after it was invented, Tetris is finally getting the game show treatment, complete with cash prizes and a wry host.
Called Tetris Primetime, the game show mode announced earlier today by Tetris mobile makers N3TWORK has you compete every night starting around 7:30 p.m. for a chance to win actual money. The company says it will be paying out $1,000,000 annually, which breaks down to a little over $2,500 a night.
Tetris Primetime seems aimed at capturing the spark of the similarly structured HQ Trivia which got super popular back in 2017 before briefly shutting down earlier this year after it had stopped paying out people’s prizes. Tetris Primetime even has a human host: New Zealand’s Millen Baird. Hopefully he’s treated better than HQ’s host was.
Smartphone Tetris, which is free-to-play with ads, is also getting a few other modes to bring it closer inline with some of the other successful versions of the game on consoles. Tetris Royale will be a 100-player will let players compete against one another across leaderboards based on their city, though it doesn’t sound like it will have any of the directly interactive elements of Tetris 99 on the Switch. Tetris Together is also being rolled out, a mode where players can share a match of Tetris, communicating with voice chat and emotes as they play. And of course there’s the existing solo Tetris mode where you just serenely organize blocks without letting anyone else in the world bother you.
Unlike the rest of these modes, Tetris Primetime is currently only be available in select counties and select regions within those countries (sorry Quebec). The 7:30 p.m. start time will also be based on the timezone of your nearest anchor city: Auckland, Perth, Moscow, Berlin, London, New York City and Los Angeles.