The ‘Perfect’ Game: How Tetris, created during the Cold War, took over the globe

Tetris – it’s a game most of us have played sometime in our lives. But how many of us know its history? Now Apple TV’s new movie titled Tetris will take us back to the puzzle video game’s origins, which can be traced back to the Cold War era. Let’s take a closer look at the journey of the ‘perfect’ game that remains relevant to date. Tracing Tetris’ origins The game was not meant to make money, but for fun. It was developed by Alexey Pajitnov, a software engineer at Moscow’s Soviet Academy of Sciences, in 1984. This was a time when relations between the USSR and Western nations were particularly sour. During this Cold War era, the Soviet Union decided what will be developed and how it will be distributed for use. Tasked with testing a new type of Soviet computer, the Electronika 60, Pajitnov wrote a game based on pentomino, a classic puzzle game from his childhood, reported CNN. Box Brown, writer and illustrator of a nonfiction graphic novel titled Tetris: The Games People Play, told Live Science in October 2016 that Pajitnov invented the game “for fun”. [caption id=“attachment_12413012” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Tetris was developed by Alexey Pajitnov, a software engineer at Moscow’s Soviet Academy of Sciences, in 1984. AFP File Photo[/caption] “He was doing this just to see if he could do it,” Brown said at the time.

The name Tetris comes from Tetra, a Greek work meaning four, and Tennis, Pajitnov’s favourite sport.

This game which was to become one of the most addictive and successful of all time was relatively easier to play. The puzzle game has geometric shapes called “tetrominoes” that drop onto a playing field. The player has to place these bricks of differing sizes in horizontal lines, which then vanish. As the game proceeds, the speed of these falling blocks increases, raising the difficulty. If these shapes continue to stack up, the player loses. “I couldn’t stop myself from playing this prototype version, because it was very addictive to put the shapes together,” Pajitnov had told CNN in 2019. How Tetris became a global phenomenon? Within a year, Tetris became popular among programmers throughout the Soviet Union, who copied and shared the game on floppy disks. When the game was created for the IBM Personal Computer, which had better graphics than Electronika 60, Pajitnov told CNN the game spread quickly. “It was like a wood fire. Everyone in the Soviet Union who had a PC had Tetris on it,” Pajitnov recalled. He then learnt the game had reached other Eastern bloc countries, including Hungary. Soon after, Robert Stein, a software salesman and owner of Hungary-based Andromeda Software Ltd, came across Tetris and reached out to Pajitnov to sell it as a computer game in the West. However, doing business with anyone in the West was not allowed in the USSR. Due to communication issues, Stein believed he had the nod to sell the game. He started sub-licensing Tetris to distributors in the United States and the United Kingdom. But, Stein was told by Elektronorgtechnica (Elorg), the Soviet organisation that oversaw the foreign distribution of softwares, that he did not have the rights and his planned launch of the game was illegal, noted CNN. Eventually, Stein got the rights and Tetris was released on PCs in the UK and the US in 1988. The New York Times reported in 1988 that Tetris was the first software invented in the Soviet Union to be sold in America. The new Tetris film tells the story of Dutch software entrepreneur Henk Rogers, who brought the game to Japan.

Rogers saw the video game at a trade show in the US in 1988 and was immediately hooked. “My first impression was that this game was too simple, that there was nothing to it,” Rogers told The Guardian in 2009. As per CNN, the Dutch video game developer, who was living in Japan, thought Tetris was perfect to play on Game Boy, a new handheld system released by Nintendo. “I made a handshake deal with Minoru Arakawa, the founder of Nintendo of America, to have Nintendo include Tetris in every Game Boy,” Rogers was quoted as saying by CNN. “He said, ‘Why should I include Tetris? I have Mario.’ And I said, ‘If you want little boys to buy your Game Boy, then include Mario. But if you want everyone to buy your Game Boy, then you should include Tetris.’” However, Rogers realised there were several companies that claimed to own the rights to Tetris. Some were distributing the game on consoles, while others on computers, although none were sanctioned by the Soviet government. ALSO READ: Tetris Royale is bringing a 100-player battle royale game mode   He then went to the USSR to strike a deal with Elorg for the rights of the game. After a prolonged legal battle with its rival company Atari, Nintendo secured the rights to install Tetris on its home consoles. Atari had already created hundreds of thousands of copies of its version of the game, under the tagline “Tetris: The Soviet Mind Game”, reported CNN. While Nintendo opted for the slogan “From Russia with fun.” As per CNN, the version of Tetris on Game Boy sold 35 million units, making it one of the most successful consoles to date. Pajitnov and Rogers, who became friends, formed the Tetris Company in 1996. They currently live in the US. Why is Tetris so addictive? One reason could be that the game is easy to understand and play, which keeps even beginners interested. As per the Tetris Company, the game has been released on more than 65 platforms so far, with over half a billion downloads on mobile phones. As per BBC, video game developer Niels Monshouwer, the co-founder of WeirdBeard Games, said, “It is the prime example of ‘easy to learn but hard to master’. On the most basic level, there’s a pleasure in tidying up. Each time you play, you get better.” [caption id=“attachment_12413032” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Tetris remains relevant to date. AFP File Photo[/caption] Explaining the game’s popularity, Professor James Newman, co-director of the Playable Media Lab at Bath Spa University, told BBC: “By responding to the never-ending supply of blocks, organising them, tactically parking some to worry about later while strategically adding and combining others into shapes and structures ripe with the potential for future removal, Tetris offers the seductive potential of agency and control in a sea of apparent chaos.” Rogers told Business Insider in 2014 that “Tetris is a simple geometric game. There is no such thing as a person who does not like squares or circles”. “On the other hand there are people who are not into Mickey Mouse or Mario. The basic pleasure of putting blocks together to make something is a universal basic pleasure centre. ‘Tetris’ hits that pleasure centre right in the centre.” With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.