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Terminal Tips: Play Tetris in Terminal


Terminal boasts some cool, but hidden features that we like to call "Easter eggs." These "eggs" are hidden features that the developers build in (mostly for fun or laughs), that don't have anything to do with the functionality of the program.

One of these "eggs" is the ability to play Tetris in Terminal. Here's how to do it. First, open a new Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities) window and type "emacs," then hit enter. After the screen loads, press "escape," then "x." Type "tetris" (lower-case) and hit enter. There you have it, a fully playable game of Tetris. Use the arrow keys to control the blocks.


Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 and Terminal Tips sections.

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Terminal Tips

Terminal boasts some cool, but hidden features that we like to call "Easter eggs." These "eggs" are hidden features that the developers...
 

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Wotever

Yeah yeah yeah, but can anyone tell me if it's possible to resize the game - it's kinda narrow which makes it less playable.

December 06 2008 at 6:42 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Steve

Gawd, I thought Mac users were bad in the attitude department. Please have all your compadre's come here and complain I have not seen a snark fest like this in years. I jump for joy. Oh and thanks for the ctrl-x ctrl c hint. Emacs seemed a little sluggish dishing up the commands in the buffer. Seems like other things work faster in my simpleton exercises from my Unix for absolute morons.

October 04 2008 at 12:29 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jeremy

In case someone doesn't know emacs, press ctrl-x ctrl-c to quit.

October 02 2008 at 2:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Richard

Windows XP's Start Menu has a similar easter egg that lets you play minesweeper.

October 01 2008 at 11:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Luigi193

You can play doctor, another "Easter Egg...(lol)" by doing the same thing the article says, but replacing tetris with the word doctor.


October 01 2008 at 6:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Bjorn Nitmo

It appears that TUAW has blogged themselves retarded.

October 01 2008 at 6:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
kb

This made my day. :-D Emacs - the operating system disguised as a text editor disguised as a Terminal Easter Egg...

http://soi.kd6.us/2008/10/01/so-i-had-to-laugh/

October 01 2008 at 2:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Hunter

*pathetic*

October 01 2008 at 2:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
.Trashes

I prefer my 338 lines of python :P

October 01 2008 at 1:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tape

/headdesk

October 01 2008 at 1:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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