Pokemon Go reminds me of nothing so much as the Macarena in 1995. It's a fad that will run its course. But a game getting that level of cultural penetration will be a real watershed.
I speculate that Tetris (possibly even just the 1989 GameBoy version) was bigger than the Macarena.
Tetris wasn't that big before the Gameboy version. It was "big" in the tiny new computer/tech world, but it was gameboy which brought it into the mainstream.
The difference is that smartphones have a lot higher penetration than Gameboys did.
Yes, but that difference is mitigated by the fact that tetris was the first mobile videogame that was popular or even socially acceptable for the post-college crowd to play.