Despite being such a simple game, Tetris, which connects us as if we were hypnotized, actually has a very interesting origin story.
Tetris was developed in 1984 by a computer engineer named Aleksey Pajitnov, working at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, which is affiliated with the Soviet government.
Aleksey Pajitnov did not intend to make money while developing Tetris.
Pajitnov, who is very fond of puzzles, developed Tetris just for fun to see if he could do it.
Inspired by a game called Pentomino.
Pentomino, the inspiration for the development of Tetris, is a puzzle game in which wooden blocks of different geometric shapes are placed in a box by the player.
The origin of the name Tetris: “Tetra” + “Tennis”
The name Tetris is a combination of the Latin word “tetra” meaning “four” and Pajitnov’s favorite game, “tennis”.
It began to be played all over Moscow.
Having completed developing the game, Pajitnov first distributed Tetris to his colleagues. Tetris began to reach all over Moscow, with colleagues who were officially in love with the game, copying Tetris to discs and distributing it to their close circles.
It was the first software product manufactured in the Soviet Union and sold to the United States.
After Pajitnov sent Tetris to a colleague in Hungary, the game went on display at the Hungarian Institute of Technology’s software exhibition.
Robert Stein, who saw the game in this exhibition, licensed Tetris to distributors in England and America, and the game was licensed to be played on computers and started to be sold.
Tetris’ journey from computers to game consoles…
The licensing deal only covered computers, but Stein promised distributors that he had a contract with the necessary rights to consoles and other vehicles soon.
For this reason, distributors have started to make agreements with game companies such as Atari and SEGA, although the necessary rights have not been obtained yet. Of course, at this time, the eyes of Japanese game companies were also on Tetris.
The request for Tetris’ license for Nintendo caused a great uproar in the Soviet Union.
When a software company that wanted to license Tetris for Nintendo went to Moscow and met with the company named ELORG, which is affiliated with the Soviet government, which holds the software, aroused great anger in the Soviets.
After convincing ELROG, Henk Rogers was finally able to license Tetris for Nintendo’s “Game Boy” handheld game consoles and coin operated slots in arcades.
Battle of Atari and Nintendo!
Hearing that the game was licensed for Nintendo, Atari released a game identical to Tetris, and this was followed by a long litigation process that resulted in Nintendo’s favor.
Pajitnov, the creator of the game, did not take part in any of these deals.
Sadly, Pajitnov missed out on almost $40 million in earnings.
Pajitnov continued to work on plays by immigrating to America.
Rogers, who was friends with Pajitnov, helped Pajitnov immigrate to the United States in 1991. Pajitnov first founded his own firm and then moved on to Microsoft, continuing to develop games.
With the end of the Cold War period, negotiations began for the rights of Tetris to be given to Pajitnov.
In 1996 Rogers went to Moscow to negotiate for Tetris’ ownership rights to be given to its developer. Negotiations will have resulted positively, as Tetris currently belongs to Rogers and Pajitnov.
A game that causes hallucinations when played for a long time.
After playing Tetris for a long time, when one closes his eyes, he sees blocks floating from top to bottom, called the “Tetris effect”.
Tetris is the first video game played in space.
The Game Boy, which spent 197 days in space with cosmonaut Alexander Serebrov in 1993, was sold for $1,220 in a Russian Space History auction in 1996.
Although it is a very plain and simple game, Tetris, which has a complex and interesting story with its history starting in the Soviet Union and extending to space, can be said to be a game that has managed to leave a “Tetris effect” on us both with its story and itself.
Bonus: If the story of Tetris caught your attention, let’s give the good news of the movie to be released on March 31 with the trailer below.
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