Image from wikipedia.org.

This week I’ve spent quite some time reading this article on MeatFighter.com. The article reverse engineers the inner-workings of NES Tetris. With superb visual aids, the author, o__1¹ , surveys the mechanics and data structures used to implement Tetris on the NES. Then o__1 designs and implements an AI script to play Tetris with super-human speed and precision. o__1 even describes how to try it at home, providing instructions and the necessary Lua scripts to run the AI on your own copy of Tetris.

I hope to see more articles looking back on classic games with this tremendous attention to detail. An older article looking at Pac-man AI shows similar obsessive depth. Articles like these help supplement our appreciation of these games as works of art by documenting the essential technical complexities underlying these games. I think that’s a good thing for everyone from hobby developers to professional developers, as well as designers and fans.