The Final Match, 2016 Classic Tetris World Championship

This year's Classic Tetris World Championship was a real barn-burner. This is a competition in which the world's best old-school Nintendo Tetris players go head-to-head at a tournament inside the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. 2016 was the CTWC's seventh year, and going into the finals, we had Jonas Neubauer, a five-time world champion, versus Jeff Moore, who has been putting up increasingly high scores over the past few years.

I refereed during the early rounds (not the finals) of this competition, and was impressed by Moore's performance. He ended up as fourth seed (in a 32-seed bracket), with a qualifying score of 964,823 (the game maxes out at 999,999). Neubauer was third seed with a score of 972,651. Based on qualifying scores, these players were extremely close, and the resulting best-of-five match was intense.

So, my friends, settle in for a bit of intense Tetris nerdery. (If you want more of this, there's tons more on YouTube.) If you just want to skip ahead to the moment of extreme tension, skip to 30:00 in and watch for a few minutes (listen for the audience—people were flipping out).

(Note: I volunteered as a referee; my only compensation was a free tee-shirt.)