As a brief overview before we get into the real meat of this article – which is the real reason why the popular Arcade game Tetris was invented – Tetris was created by a Russian Artificial Intelligence researcher who goes by the name of Alexey Pajitnov. This is the reason why Tetris is a Russian game – because it was created by a Russian scientist. Now, is that all? Is the only interesting thing about Tetris the fact that it was created by a Russian scientist? Not by a long shot. Along with the research done on this article came a few very interesting facts about the history of both the game and it’s creator.
Video of Tetris gameplay
History
With its birth being on June 1984, Tetris was created by Alexey Pajitnov(mentioned above). At the time, Alexey was working as an AI researcher for the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The game actually came about as a result of one of the tasks given to Alexey by his job. Hst entire job at the Soviet Academy of Sciences was to develop small games that would test the capabilities of the new hardware they developed (simple isn’t it). It’s funny that while the game was developed due to his realization that creating a game based on pentominoes (a puzzle game that he played in his younger years) would have too many variations is what led to him basing the design of the game off of Tetrominoes (a game that has 7 different variations).
At the time of the creation of Tetris, the game only had a display that could display text. This meant that the game (or tetrominoes) had to be formed from letters – which ended up working very well for what Alexey needed to accomplish. A key element of the game got incorporated into its development when they realized that the game ended much too quickly when the lines were allowed to stack up to the top of the ceiling – this is what led to full lines being deleted.
It got to be popular
While the game was initially created to test hardware capabilities it soon got to be very popular with Alexey’s colleagues and was ported to the IBM personal computer. Obviously, once the game became popular with his colleagues and was ported to the IBM PC it was only a matter of time before it blew up in all of Moscow. Since the game started picking up speed in several different countries it was also sought by big companies – because they knew exactly what they had – like Andromeda and Spectrum HoloByte. Inevitably Spectrum ended up getting the rights to the PC version but, Andromeda didn’t stop trying to get rights to the game. There was a small power struggle over the game that resulted in quite a bit of confusion occurring as to who actually owned the game.
*there are quite a few different “owners” of the Tetris game. This is what happens when deals are made for the licensing of the game without any real money exchanging hands.
At one point about 6 companies (as well as the soviet union, the people who actually owned the game’s rights) claimed the rights to game but no one – and Elorg (a company that the Soviet Union used to market the game) attested to this fact.
*due to Perestroika, Alexey’s associate (who, along with a buddy of his, were the ones to upload the game to the IBM PC) decided to give the rights to Tetris away to the Soviet Union for 10 years.
What Inevitably happened to Tetris – the start of the Tetris Company
While there ended up being many owners of the Tetris game it was inevitably returned to Pajitnov who, shortly after receiving the rights started the Tetris Company. When the Tetris Company was started, Pajitnov immediately went on the offensive. He laid claim to copyright registrations for all Tetris products in the US as well as took out a trademark registration for Tetris in nearly every country on the globe. The game of Tetris has literally been licensed to dozens of companies – at certain points, illegal copies of the game were seized by US court of international trade and US customs. In addition to this, a few years after the start of the 2000s (2006, I believe) the TTC (Tetris Company) sent out cease and desists letters to a number of websites that’ve developed illegal versions of Tetris and hosted them on their domains. They didn’t stop there either, they also stopped clones of the Tetris game from being placed on the Android market.
What Tetris was meant to mean
The name Tetris came from the greek prefix, Tetra– (or better known as 4. This explains why each of the game’s pieces contain only four different blocks) as well as the remaining two letters in the word tennis. So, that’s it. The name of the game is supposed to be a combination of the number four and Tennis.
Variations of Tetris:
*Explains a bit about the story mentioned above
Tetris: Created in the year 1989 by Bullet Proof Software
Welltris: Created in 1989 by Spectrum HoloByte
Hatris: Created in 1990 by Bullet Proof Software
Faces….Tris III: Created in 1991 by Spectrum HoloByte
Super Tetris: Created in 1991 by Spectrum HoloByte
Tetris 2 and Bombliss: Created in 1991 by Famicom
Tetris 2: Created in 1993 by Nintendo
Tetris Battle Gaiden: Created in 1993 by Bullet Proof Software
Tetris and Dr. Mario: Created in 1994 by Nintendo
Super Tetris 3: Created in 1994 by Blue Planet Software
V-Tetris: Created in 1995 by Bullet Proof
Tetris II: Created in 1996 by Renegade, Artic Soft, and Microtec
Tetris Blast: Created in 1996 by Nintendo/ Bullet Proof
Tetris Attack: Created in 1996 by Nintendo, Intelligent Systems
3D Tetris: Created in 1996 by Nintendo
Tetris Plus: Created in 1995, 1996, and 1997 by each company respectively; Jaleco, Jaleco, and Nintendo
Tetris Plus 2: Created in 1997 by Jaleco
Tetrisphere: Created in 1997 by Nintendo
Tetris DX: Created in 1998 by Nintendo
Tetris 4D: Created in 1998 by Blue Planet Software
Tetris 64: Created in 1998 by Seta Corporation
Tetris: The Grand Master: Created in 1998 by Arika/ Capcom
Kids Tetris: Created in 1999 by Hasbro Interactive
The New Tetris: Created in 1999 by Nintendo
The Next Tetris: Created in 1999, 2000, and 2001 by Hasbro Interactive and Crave Entertainment
Magical Tetris Challenge: Created in 1999 and 2000 by Capcom Activision and SCEE
Sega Tetris: Created in the year 2000 by WOW entertainment
And many more.
To play the game online you can go here
Fun Facts about Tetris
- Tetris is a combination of 2 different words
- It was inspired by Pentominoes
- Tetris was first made to be shareware
- Tetris was said to have caused actual hallucinations because people were spending so much time in front of screens playing the game
- Mathias Rust, a man who illegally crossed the Soviet Border and was convicted of doing so had artwork featured on the cover of the game
- The theme music for Tetris was a Russian love song called Korbeiniki
- Tetris has been said to make our brain’s cortex thicker (not proven) and to improve cognitive efficiency
- Tetris was acquired by the MoMA in NY as a new exhibit they wanted to include
- Tetris was quite literally the first-ever video game to go to space
- The playing area where Tetris takes place is called the Matrix
- Tetris was supposed to make the idea of computers less intimidating
Conclusion
So there you have it, a bit about Tetris, why it was created, and where it came from. Now that you know this information, you probably know a lot more about the amazing game of Tetris than most people do. And if this information isn’t enough – i’m sure it will be, don’t forget to check out the attached resources at the bottom of this page.
The information in this article was sourced from WIkipedia
Resources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris#Nintendo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tetris_variants
https://www.livescience.com/56481-strange-history-of-tetris.html