You heard right. This is a "Tetris the Absolute: The Grand Master 2" arcade cabinet in Tokyo modified into the signature Hit Box layout. As you can see in the video below, the ergonomic layout works very well for stacking Russian blocks at high rates of speed!
Competetive Tetris is something that few people still know about, but is a growing fierce scene of hard core puzzle masters. During the Tetris 'block' at the Awesome Games Done Quick marathon, KevinDDR mentioned, "Pads are almost unplayable because of the motions you have to do. Keyboards are very playable, like a Hit Box would actually be extremely playable; some might even argue that it gives you an advantage." Later in the demonstration he explained some of the heavy circular motions required to place each block with perfect precision at grandmaster speeds.
Currently outside of fighting games there have been many speedrunners, bullet hell fanatics, racing fans, Beatmania DJs, and Tetris grandmasters who play on Hit Box and push the limits of what can and can't be done in video games, but not many of them have been in the lime light and officially demonstrated their personal bests. If you have a PB or know a friend who has the need for speed on their Hit Box, send us an e-mail at support@hitboxarcade.com or give us a shout at @Hit_Box: We'd love to see what you can do!!