BLOCK 89 / GUIDES / THE 1989 LOOK

Retro LCD games, and getting 1989 right

1989 is the year the falling-block puzzle went into every pocket. Handheld LCD "brick games" spread across the world by the million: grey plastic, a green-grey screen, blocky pieces, a tinny speaker. Block 89 is named for that year, and the whole game is built to honour how those screens actually looked.

What a real LCD looks like

A dot-matrix LCD is not black pixels on white. It is dark segments on grey-green glass, with three tells that Block 89 reproduces pixel by pixel:

• The inactive matrix. Unlit pixels are faintly visible, a ghost grid behind the game. Look closely at the display: it is there.
• Pixel bleed. A lit LCD pixel has a dense core and a soft halo. Every pixel in Block 89 is rendered as a core with a bleed ring, not a flat square.
• Shades, not colours. Three levels of darkness on the glass. Each of the ten shapes has its own dither pattern, so a settled stack reads like a mosaic instead of a blob.

Period-correct to the file format

Even the replay files keep the year: game recordings are encoded as GIF89a, the GIF revision standardised in, yes, 1989.

The full story of the game's making, from photographed keyboard plastic to the 2026 rebuild, is in the story section. For more of the maker's retro work, see Snake '97 and the stories on willem.com.

Play Block 89 in your browser, free and instantly. Or take it with you: App Store · Google Play.

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