If you liked King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters, you’ll love Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters, a new documentary showing the world’s best Tetris players as they hone their skills (and talk plenty of smack) gearing up for the Classic Tetris World Championship.
According to the movie’s official website, “From the days of Thor Aackerlund and his historic victory at the 1990 Nintendo World Championships right up to the present and Harry Hong’s perfect max-out score, this documentary expertly chronicles over two decades of Tetris mastery.”
Portland filmmaker Adam Cornelius started making the documentary about Hong, who was the first Tetris player to officially reach a max-out score. He raised a slim $1,610 for that project on Kickstarter.
However, when Tetris master Robin Mihara informed Cornelius that as many as two Tetris players might have actually been better than Hong, the scope of the film changed.
“He took the news well,” wrote Mihara in a blog post, “and from there we fantasized about holding a live contest with all the greats, and having big screens, announcers, spotlights, all like we did [at the Nintendo World Championships] in 1990.
“The next day I got a call from Adam. ‘OK, I want to do it. You’re my star. You put it together.’ I was in my car speeding to his house in 30 seconds.”
Ecstasy Of Order: The Tetris Masters is currently in post production and will be in the festival submission process during the last few weeks of 2011. So far, the documentary is an official selection of the Austin Film Festival and SF Doc Fest.
The producers are accepting donations through the film website via Paypal to help complete the documentary. Go be a nice gamer and give ’em a couple bucks for curiosity’s sake.