Things You Should See : Human Tetris

By Zach Galligan on 05/06/2008

The YouTube phenomenon has been, culturally speaking, kind of a double-edged sword. For every worthwhile clip (a herd of wildebeest dramatically fighting off a pack of lions, for example), humanity has been deluged with silly snippets of kitties swimming blithely in bathtubs, border collies destroying pumpkins for a Snausage, and mentally unstable fans declaring their undying love for Britney Spears.

That's why I was cautiously jubilant when one of my students (I teach at Stonestreet Studios, a secondary studio affiliated with Tisch School of the Arts at NYU), Chelsey Donn, told me about a YouTube clip called Human Tetris.

The word Tetris doesn't just excite me, it sends waves of gushy nostalgia cascading through my overly sentimental psyche. Suddenly, it's 1991, the year of Metallica's Black Album, Silence of the Lambs, and Super Nintendo. There I am, perched in front of my 32-inch Sony Trinitron, controller in hand, cursing wildly as T and I and L- shaped blocks come hurtling down from the top of the screen, leaving me nanoseconds with which to rotate and fit them into impossibly cramped geometric quarters.

Breaking from my reverie, I thank Ms. Donn and assure her that I'll check it out. Plopping down in front of my computer, however, I discover that Human Tetris really has little to do with the video game of my youth. Rather, Human Tetris (or Brain Wall, as it's called in Japan) is a game show unlike any other I've seen. The contestants (between one and five players) stand at the end of a long rectangle, vaguely resembling a lane in a bowling alley, in a smaller section called the Play Area. Improbably, they are dressed head to toe in silver spandex, with brightly colored knee and elbow pads and, occasionally, a crash helmet. Behind them, beckoning ominously, is a six-foot square pool of noxious-looking yellow water. Numbers on the screen countdown quickly, and, as time runs out, throbbing music begins and a black curtain rises, revealing a curiously pink Styrofoam wall. The wall, however, is not solid; at least one geometric pattern - a letter, or in most cases, shadow representations of standing, squatting or seated human figures - has been carved out of the wall, so that a correctly positioned human could conceivably pass through.

Suddenly - and hilariously - the wall begins to move pretty darn swiftly towards the preposterous contestant, who tries vainly to assume the exact position shown on the wall, and therefore avoid falling ass-over-teakettle (as my late father used to say) into the suspiciously urine-colored liquid, thereby winning points for his or her team. Needless to say, very few contestants make it through the wall, resulting in guffaw-inducing slapstick of truly epic proportions.

It's easy to explain the show's popularity in Japan, as it combines two of that country's favorite pastimes: video games and watching clueless people endure public humiliation. The show's appeal is so simple and universal that it has been cloned in multiple countries, and Fox (of course) has ordered a U.S. version for this fall. So, if you're ever in a bad mood and need a good, solid belly laugh, Human Tetris is a safe bet.

watch human tetris