Tetris History

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Tetris History

The puzzle video game of Tetris was introduced by Alexey Pajitnov on June 6 1984 in the Soviet Union. He designed and programmed the video game as when he was representing the Dorodnicyn Computing Center belonging to the Academy of Science of the USSR located at Moscow. This game of Tetris makes use of tetrominoes, as the name is derived from prefix tetra for the video game’s pieces that contain four segments, and from tennis, which was the favorite sport of Pajitnov.
There are many variants of Tetris available for the different video game console as well as different computer operating system. The game is also available on devices as that of the mobile phones, graphing calculators, portable media players, Network music players and PDAs. Tetris shot to heights of popularity when the handheld version catering to the Game Boy was launched in the year 1989. This helped establish the reputation of the video game as one the most sought games.

Initial Creation

Alexey Pajitnov had created the Tetris in 1984 on an Elektronika 60 when he was employed at the Soviet Academy of Sciences along with Dmitry Pavlovsky, as Vadim Garasimov had got the game ported to the IBM PC. At the initial burst of this video game, it shot to popularity and was reaching all corners of Moscow.

Way to Budapest

It was then the turn of IBM PC version of Tetris to make its way into the region of Budapest, Hungary, where the game was getting ported to different platforms. It was here that Andromeda, the British software house took note of this video game as they made attempts to get in touch with Pajitnov for acquiring the rights pertaining to the PC version. Even before the deal between the British software house and Pajitnov reached a firm settlement, the rights had already been sold to Spectrum HoloByte. Andromeda, failing to enter into a deal with Pajitnov took efforts to acquire license of this version from that of the Hungarian programmers.

Release in the USA

Before any legal rights could be settled, the IBM PC version pertaining to Tetris of the Spectrum HoloByte inched its way into the USA as it got released here during the year 1986. Tetris became an instant hit at the US as many players were hooked to this video game immediately, as the reviews showered upon the video games sung praises of this game, and the icing on the cake was the instance where it had been referred to as ‘deceptively simple and insidiously addictive’ by the Computer Gaming World.

Further Developments

As when Tetris was luring the attention of the players in the USA in 1986, licensing issues pertaining to this video game were still unresolved ones. But, by the year 1987, Andromeda pulled all the stops and acquired the copyright licensing related to the IBM PC version as well as for other home computer system. With further developments, Amiga from Spectrum HoloByte and Atari ST from Microsoft were released and there was a difference between the two. The Microsoft version did not come with any of the background graphics, whereas the version released by HoloByte came with that of a background picture that pertained to Russian themes that were to be found at each of the levels. The game’s simplicity was reason enough for it to get sold under budget titles. Spectrum with the Apple II package brought out three different versions of this game as the package contained three diskettes, as that was meant for Apple II+, Apple IIe as well as for Apple IIgs. But these versions were not copy-protected and the purchaser was charged on his honor as not to pave way for extra diskettes or copies.

Soviet Government acquires rights

The Soviet Government in the year 1988 started to market the rights belonging to that of Tetris, which was made possible through an organization that was recognized as Electronorgtechnica, or shortly as Elorg. This has become a possibility as the rights had been granted to the Soviet Government by Pajitnov through the means of Computer Center, where he had rendered his services for about ten years. But Elorg failed to realize money from Andromeda, but licensing as well as sub-licensing rights was carried out by Andromeda, which was not held by the establishment at all.

Nintendo and Tetris

The year 1989 saw different companies claiming rights for creating as well as distributing the Tetris software for game consoles, home computers as well as handheld systems. Henk Rogers, the Dutch games publisher picked Tetris at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1988 at Las Vegas, who then had a base at Japan. An agreement that had got brokered with that of Nintendo then paved way for the game to get bundled with that of every Game Boy. When Atari games had been marketing the arcade version, as Nintendo took this case to the courts where the court offered the verdict that Nintendo was the only establishment that possessed rights over Tetris.

Tetris Company

The rights to Tetris had got reverted to Pajitnov from the Russian state in 1996. The Tetris Company was born in the year 1996, which claimed to have the copyright registrations pertaining to Tetris products in the region of the US. They also had taken trademark registrations for that of Tetris for most of the countries across the globe. A number of establishments have also won the license from the Tetris Company. Tetris have gone through several changes since its release in the 1980s, as the newer Tetris games have also made their way into the market.