This Magazine Cover Is a Playable Tetris Game

Imagine picking up a magazine and playing Tetris on its cover without pulling out your phone or console.

Red Bull Media House made that reality with its gaming edition of The Red Bulletin magazine. A limited run of 150 copies features a paper-thin, fully playable version of Tetris bonded directly into the magazine's flexible cover.

The mastermind behind this innovation is Kevin Bates, who's spent a decade reimagining portable gaming. In 2014, he created a Tetris-playing business card that went viral, and later launched the Arduboy, a credit card-sized handheld game system that built a thriving developer community.

His latest creation, officially called the GamePop GP-1 Playable Magazine System, took most of last year to develop. The display uses 180 tiny RGB LEDs mounted on a flexible circuit board just 0.1mm thick, sandwiched between two sheets of paper that wrap around the magazine.

Instead of physical buttons, the game uses seven touch sensors printed directly into the circuit board's copper layer. Bates tuned the sensors to work through the paper and glue, making them surprisingly responsive to play.

The entire device flexes and bends like paper because flexible circuits bond everything together. These circuits have existed in flip phones and laptops for decades, but they've only become accessible to smaller creators in the past five or six years.

Bates didn't just make it thin. He made it tough, even hitting it with a hammer during durability tests to prove it could survive real-world handling far better than today's fragile folding phones.

The game runs on a 32-bit ARM processor with four rechargeable coin-cell batteries and even includes a deconstructed USB-C charging port. Players get sound effects and a snippet of the classic Tetris theme when starting each game.

The Ripple Effect

This collaboration between Red Bull and Bates shows how existing, affordable technology can create entirely new experiences when someone thinks differently about what's possible. Flexible circuits that once only connected laptop components now power gaming devices you can fold into a magazine.

The gaming magazine also connects to Red Bull's larger Tetris partnership, which included turning Dubai's 150-meter Frame landmark into the world's largest playable Tetris display using over 2,000 drones as pixels. These projects prove gaming can break out of traditional screens and controllers to surprise us in everyday objects.

While only 150 people will own this particular magazine, Bates has consistently made his innovations accessible and affordable throughout his career. His previous Tetris handhelds cost under $30, and the Arduboy sold for just $39.

A decade of tinkering with flexible circuits led to a magazine that plays video games, proving the most exciting innovations often come from creators willing to experiment outside the workshop.