An ingeniously simple, yet absurdly addictive game that is still played by millions of people around the world after almost forty years. This is Tetris, which attracts attention across generations not only with its fun, but also with its story. It included the journeys of Western citizens behind the Iron Curtain as well as dramatic copyright negotiations and the collapsing communist regime.
The history of Tetris began on June 6, 1984, when software engineer Alexei Pazhitnov from the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow became bored at work. The role of an academic worker was not very close to him. “I was still researching, working on serious things, such as improving modern artificial intelligence, automatic speech recognition and the like. But in my heart were riddles and puzzles,” the now almost seventy-year-old developer, who visited Prague on the second weekend of Advent, admits to Aktuálně.cz on the occasion of the 21st Game Developers Session conference.
One day he was given the task of testing the performance of a new type of computer, the Elektronika 60. He approached the task creatively and instead of routine tests, he decided to subject the device to an unusual check. He started developing a game on the computer. Tetris, which will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year, still entertains players all over the world.
Author photography: Shutterstock
What is Tetris?
Developer Alexei Pazhitnov derived the name of the now cult title from the Greek word tetra, which means four, and tennis, which is the developer’s most popular sport. Each part of the virtual puzzle is made up of four cubes that have the shape of the letter I, L, J, O, S, T or Z. The player must then assemble the randomly falling pieces into one row, while each piece can be rotated. When he succeeds in making a row without a single gap in it, it disappears and the other squares placed above it move one bit lower. As you play, the speed of the falling dice increases. When they cross the board, it’s over.
The video game was heavily inspired by the famous puzzle game Pentomino. “It has twelve parts made up of five squares, similar to Tetris. The player has to stack different shapes in a box. Sometimes it takes even forty minutes. I fell in love with this puzzle, I played it a lot. And when I started programming, it occurred to me that time could play a role in it,” Pazhitnov describes the moment in which, according to him, Tetris was born.
Home computers were rather rare in Russia and at the time when Tetris was created. People often only got access to the facility as employees of state institutions. The fact that the video game could one day be a commercial product did not even occur to the developers at first. On the contrary, it was clear to him immediately that it would be a hit. “To be honest, when I tested the first prototype, I knew I had made a game that would be famous. I couldn’t stop myself,” he says with a big smile.
The first version, which the developer prepared on an alphanumeric screen for only two weeks, was initially only allowed to be tested by his colleagues. “At that time, computers had no graphics at all. I just had a monitor with letters and numbers on the screen. So to make squares I used square brackets. It wasn’t easy to make it work and look good,” he says of the challenges he faced to face when making a game. In addition, the computer’s memory size was smaller than today’s calculators.
Acquaintances later asked Pažitnov to create a version of the game that would work on an IBM PC home computer. It became more widespread over time than the Elektronika 60 and had better graphics.
At that time, Pažitnov still did not make money from the game, nor did he intend to. Because the game was created in a state institution, the copyright effectively belonged to the Soviet Union. People played Tetris among themselves on burned CDs.
In 1986, Pažitnov received a teletext message from Robert Stein, a salesman for the Hungarian software company Andromeda. Stein, who came across Tetris in Hungary, wanted to acquire the rights to sell it in the West.
The English of the Russian developer who now lives in America was bad back then. This led to communication noise. “I put together some positive answers, that we are very happy that we accepted the proposal, and that there could be some kind of agreement,” says Pazhitnov. He knew that doing business with a western firm could land him in jail before he even made any money.
Stein interpreted the developer’s response as permission and immediately began producing the game. But as he prepared to launch sales, he received another teletext from the Soviet organization Electronorgtechnica, which oversaw the export of software and hardware from Russia. The message stated that Stein definitely does not have the right to distribute and that his behavior is illegal.
Despite this, Stein eventually convinced the Soviets and Tetris was released as a commercial PC title in the UK and US in 1988. The game referenced its origins through Kremlin-themed illustrations and Cyrillic characters.
Tetris has sparked interest among computer gamers. However, the gaming industry prospered elsewhere in the 1980s – in the area of game consoles. Henk Rogers, a Dutch video game developer and entrepreneur living in Japan, was the first to realize that Tetris was a great fit for the Game Boy, a then-new handheld console released by Nintendo in Japan in early 1989. Rodgers decided to convince the company to make a copy included the games in every console box.
Getting a license was not easy. However, after its success, the company was able to sell an incredible 35 million units of the game for the handheld console. The Game Boy game is still the most popular version of Tetris for many, including Pažitnov.
Despite the success of the game, Pazhitnov still did not make money. He did not want to sue the Soviet Union for ownership, so he decided to leave the rights to the Computing Center of the Soviet Academy of Sciences for ten years. “It didn’t bother me. I made the game for my own pleasure and that of my friends, not for money,” claims Pažitnov.
The legal problems culminated in a fight between Nintendo and Atari over the rights to Tetris for home consoles. In late 1989, a judge ruled in Nintendo’s favor, dealing a fatal blow to Atari, which had already produced hundreds of thousands of copies of its now-defunct version of the game under the slogan “Tetris: The Soviet Mind Game.” Nintendo took a different approach and chose the slogan “From Russia with fun”.
Photo author: Profimedia
The story of the play on the screen
A feature-length film was released this year about the protracted disputes between the USSR and Western companies. The American-British biographical drama also appealed to Pažitnov himself, according to whom, except for a few dramatizing elements, the plot is a very accurate reflection of reality. The drama was written by Noah Pink and directed by Jon S. Baird. Starring Taron Egerton, Nikita Jefremov and Toby Jones.
Pazhitnov left Moscow for Seattle in 1991 with the help of his friend Henk Rogers. And when his rights contract expired in 1995, he finally began to receive proper remuneration for the game. A year later, he even founded his own company called The Tetris Company. “I wouldn’t change anything about my life. I have a very good career. I just succeeded in life,” he declares proudly.
