“Mainly I’ve used an x-acto knife and three tiny screwdrivers to do most of the carving,” ceemdee said in an email. “I used some wood carving tools to scrap out the bigger areas on a few of the pumpkins and a needle is used to trace the image. They were all carved in the last four weeks. It’s actually only four pumpkins (one a week) with three carvings on each. :)”

You can check out unlit views of the pumpkins here.

Got any more? Send pictures of ‘em my way!

Just when you think Tetris has been done to death, a bunch of skateboarders turn up in the middle of the night with neon lights strapped to their heads and roll down a street.

[via Neatorama]

But, I’m going to take a stab at it anyway with the upcoming downloadable instalment of Tetris on the PSP Go.

What Is It?
Tetris on the PSP Go is a downloadable game that includes all the classic gameplay modes plus 12 common variations.

What We Saw
I saw the game I fell in love with 20 years ago. The colours were different and so was the music, but it felt pretty much the same for the 15 minutes I spent with it.

How Far Along Is It?
Tetris will be available when the PSP Go launches October 1.

What Needs Improvement?
That’s…it? You can find Tetris almost everywhere these days — mobile phones, flash game websites, the Wii, maybe even your dishwasher. You might even have a copy of it for Gameboy lying around you could still play. So to justify spending more money on a game I’ve 1) already paid for and 2) could probably program in Java for free, I’m going to need more incentive than just new music, some variations to gameplay and a different colour scheme to the interface.

No Korobeiniki: Boo!

What Should Stay The Same?
Potential DLC Stuff: The 12 variations included at launch are good ones to have—clear 40 lines, treadmill mode where the playing field moves horizontally one space at a time as you play—but there are so many variations in the history of Tetris that the developer would have their pick for downloadable content in the future. Hey, they could even come up with something new if such a thing is possible.

Master Replays: For each mode, there’s a video you can watch of a developer completing the mode in record time or with a maximum score. It’s amazing to watch and can inspire you to develop new approaches to an old favourite.

Final Thoughts
I take Tetris for granted because it’s been in my life so long. I expect the Korobeiniki song or some remix thereof and I don’t expect to pay to play the game. You could say that I’m spoiled—or maybe that I’ve become a crotchety old person—and I’d have to say you’re right. But it doesn’t change the fact what makes Tetris special is nostalgia. And at the very least, the PSP Go version has that.

Or at least the brains of adolescent girls, who were the subject of the study, funded by Tetris marketer Blue Planet Software. Adolescent girls’ brains are still developing, as any adolescent boy can tell you, so their brains are more susceptible to the sort of change Haier was looking for, and change he indeed found. The girls were given MRI scans before and after three months of Tetris, and after the testing period it was found that certain areas (in blue above) showed greater efficiency, while others (in red) showed thicker cortexes, indicating more brain matter.

Future benefits of this study, says co-investigator Dr. Richard Haier, might be to “demonstrate that a player of Tetris does see lasting effects that generalize to other activity,” showing for example that engaging in activities like playing some games might help fight off the mental decline that occurs with aging.

The full study is being published in Thursday’s BMC Research Notes, but we get the general gist. Adolescent girls who play Tetris on a regular basis grow up to be completely awesome.

How Tetris Changes Your Brain [Wired]

OK, sure, the answer’s probably yes, as pretty much every new console port of Tetris has a multiplayer option. But are you able to play that version right now during your lunch hour?

I didn’t think so.

So play this one. There’s a bunch of modes, including a 6-player battle (pictured) that I totally won at my first attempt and a port of the original black-and-white Game Boy version.

Tetris Friends [official site]