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Tetris

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This article is about the video game in general. For specific versions, see List of Tetris variants. For other uses, see Tetris (disambiguation).

Tetris
A typical Tetris game screen
Designer(s)Alexey Pajitnov
Platform(s)List of Tetris variants
ReleaseDOS
  • USSR: 1985
  • EU: January 27, 1988
  • NA: January 29, 1988
Genre(s)
Mode(s)

Tetris (Russian: Тетрис[a]) is a puzzle video game created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov, a Soviet software engineer.[1] It has been published by several companies on more than 65 platforms, setting a Guinness world record for the most ported game. After a significant period of publication by Nintendo, in 1996 the rights reverted to Pajitnov, who co-founded the Tetris Company with Henk Rogers to manage licensing.

In Tetris, players complete lines by moving differently shaped pieces (tetrominoes), which descend onto the playing field. The completed lines disappear and grant the player points, and the player can proceed to fill the vacated spaces. The game ends when the uncleared lines reach the top of the playing field. The longer the player can delay this outcome, the higher their score will be. In multiplayer games, players must last longer than their opponents; in certain versions, players can inflict penalties on opponents by completing a significant number of lines. Some versions add variations such as 3D displays or systems for reserving pieces.

Tetris is often named one of the greatest video games. By December 2011, it had sold 202 million copies—approximately 70 million physical units and 132 million paid mobile game downloads—making it one of the best-selling video game franchises. The Game Boy version is one of the best-selling games of all time, with more than 35 million copies sold. Imagery from the game has influenced architecture, music, and cosplay. Tetris has also been the subject of various studies that have analyzed its theoretical complexity and have shown its effect on the human brain following a session, in particular the Tetris effect.

Gameplay

[edit]

Tetris is primarily composed of a field of play in which pieces of different geometric forms, called tetrominoes,[b] descend from the top of the field.[3] During this descent, the player can move the pieces laterally and rotate them until they touch the bottom of the field or land on a piece that had been placed before it.[4] The player can neither slow down the falling pieces nor stop them, but can accelerate them, in most versions.[5]: 4 [6] The objective of the game is to use the pieces to create as many complete horizontal lines of blocks as possible. When a line is completed, it disappears, and the blocks placed above fall one rank.[4] Completing lines grants points, and accumulating a certain number of points or cleared lines moves the player up a level, which increases the number of points granted per completed line.[5]

In most versions, the speed of the falling pieces increases with each level, leaving the player with less time to think about the placement.[4] The player can clear multiple lines at once, which can earn bonus points in some versions.[3] It is possible to complete up to four lines simultaneously with the use of the I-shaped tetromino; this move is called a "Tetris", and along with the fact that its seven different pieces (tetrominoes) are made up of 4 squares, is the basis of the game's title.[5]

If the player cannot make the blocks disappear quickly enough, the field will start to fill; when the pieces reach the top of the field and prevent the arrival of additional pieces, the game ends.[4] At the end of each game, the player receives a score based on the number of lines that have been completed.[5] The game never ends with the player's victory, as the player can complete only as many lines as possible before an inevitable loss.[3]

Game pieces

[edit]
All seven tetrominoes using the standard color scheme

The pieces on which the game of Tetris is based around are called "tetrominoes". Pajitnov's original version for the Electronika 60 computer used green brackets to represent the blocks that make up tetrominoes.[7] Versions of Tetris on the original Game Boy/Game Boy Color and on most dedicated handheld games use black-and-white or grayscale graphics, but most popular versions use a separate color for each distinct shape. Prior to the Tetris Company's standardization in the early 2000s, those colors varied widely from implementation to implementation.

Scoring

[edit]

The scoring formula for the majority of Tetris products is built on the idea that more difficult line clears should be awarded more points. For example, a single line clear in Tetris Zone is worth 100 points, clearing four lines at once (known as a Tetris) is worth 800, while each subsequent back-to-back Tetris is worth 1,200.[8] In conjunction, players can be awarded combos that exist in certain games which reward multiple line clears in quick succession. The exact combo system varies from game to game.[9]

Nearly all Tetris games allow the player to press a button to increase the speed of the current piece's descent or cause the piece to drop and lock into place immediately, known as a "soft drop" and a "hard drop", respectively. While performing a soft drop, the player can also stop the piece's increased speed by releasing the button before the piece settles into place. Some games allow only one of either soft drop or hard drop; others have separate buttons for each. Many games award a number of points based on the height that the piece fell before locking, so using the hard drop generally awards more points.

Easy spin dispute

[edit]

"Easy spin", or "infinite spin",[10] is a feature in some Tetris games where a tetromino stops falling for a moment after left or right movement or rotation, effectively allowing the player to suspend the piece while deciding where to place it. The mechanic was introduced in and drew criticism in reviews of 2001's Tetris Worlds.[10]

This feature has been implemented into the Tetris Company's official guideline.[11] This type of play differs from traditional Tetris because it takes away the pressure of higher-level speed. Some reviewers[12] went so far as to say that this mechanism broke the game. The goal in Tetris Worlds is to complete a certain number of lines as fast as possible, so the ability to hold off a piece's placement will not make achieving that goal any faster. Later, GameSpot received "easy spin" more openly, saying that "the infinite spin issue honestly really affects only a few of the single-player gameplay modes in Tetris DS, because any competitive mode requires you to lay down pieces as quickly as humanly possible".[13]

Henk Rogers told Nintendo World Report that infinite spin was an intentional part of the game design, allowing novice players to expend some of their available scoring time to decide on the best placement of a piece. He observed that "gratuitous spinning" does not occur in competitive play, as expert players do not require much time to think about where a piece should be placed. A limitation has been placed on infinite lock delay in later games of the franchise, where after a certain amount of rotations and movements, the piece will instantly lock itself. This is defaulted to 15 such actions.[11]

History

[edit]
The first version of Tetris, completed in 1985, run on an emulator of the Electronika 60
A screenshot of the 1986 IBM PC version developed by Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov
The version designed by Spectrum Holobyte contained Soviet-related images (Amiga version screenshot, 1988)

Conception and initial creation (1984–1985)

[edit]
Alexey Pajitnov (pictured in 2024) was the creator of Tetris.

Alexey Pajitnov was a speech recognition and artificial intelligence researcher for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences.[14] Pajitnov developed several puzzle games on the institute's Electronika 60,[15] an archaic Russian clone of the PDP-11 computer.[3] In June 1984, Pajitnov became inspired to convert pentomino tiling puzzles to the computer,[16] after buying a pentomino puzzle set from a store and playing with it in his office.[17]

Pajitnov wrote the game using Pascal for the RT-11 operating system on the Electronika 60[18] and experimented with different versions of the game.[19] Because the Electronika 60 had no graphical interface, Pajitnov modeled the field and pieces using spaces and brackets.[19] Pajitnov felt that the game would be needlessly complicated with the twelve different shape variations of pentominoes, so he scaled the concept down to tetrominoes, of which there are seven variants.[16] Afterward, he programmed the basic mechanics of the game, including the ability to flip tetrominoes as they fell in a vertical screen and the clearing of lines.[16][20] Pajitnov titled the game Tetris, a word created from a combination of "tetra" (meaning "four") and his favorite sport, "tennis".[21][22] Pajitnov completed the first version of Tetris c. 1985.[c] This early version of Tetris had no scoring system and no levels,[24] but nonetheless, Pajitnov's peers became captivated with the game.[25][26]

Pajitnov sought to adapt Tetris to the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC), which had a higher quality display than the Electronika 60. Pajitnov recruited colleague Dmitry Pavlovsky and 16-year-old computer prodigy Vadim Gerasimov.[27][28] Using Turbo Pascal,[18] the trio adapted Tetris to the IBM PC over the course of two months, with Gerasimov incorporating color and Pavlosvsky incorporating a scoreboard.[27][29] Floppy disk copies of this version of Tetris were distributed freely throughout the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center, before spreading among Moscow computer circles "like wildfire".[30] Pajitnov kept note of second-hand accounts of Tetris's virality during this time.[31] Tetris reportedly won second place in a Zelenodolsk computer game competition in November 1985,[27] and by 1986, nearly everyone with an IBM computer in Moscow and similar cities had played Tetris.[32]

Spread beyond the Soviet Union (1985–1988)

[edit]

Pajitnov wanted to export Tetris, but had no knowledge of the business world. His superiors in the Academy were not necessarily happy with the success of the game, since they had not intended such a creation from the research team.[33] Furthermore, copyright law of the Soviet Union created a state monopoly on import and export of copyrighted works, and the Soviet researchers were not allowed to sell their creations.[34][35] Pajitnov asked his supervisor Victor Brjabrin, who had knowledge of the world outside the Soviet Union, to help him publish Tetris. Pajitnov offered to transfer the rights of the game to the Academy, and was delighted to receive a non-compulsory remuneration from Brjabrin through this deal.[36]

In 1986, Brjabrin sent a copy of Tetris to Hungarian game publisher Novotrade.[36] From there, copies of the game began circulating via floppy disks throughout Hungary and as far as Poland.[37] Robert Stein, an international software salesman for the London-based firm Andromeda Software, saw the game's commercial potential during a visit to Hungary in June 1986.[38][39] After an indifferent response from the Academy,[40] Stein contacted Pajitnov and Brjabrin by fax to obtain the license rights.[39] The researchers expressed interest in forming an agreement with Stein via fax, but they were unaware that this fax communication could be considered a legal contract in the Western world;[41] Stein began to approach other companies to produce the game.[42]

Stein approached publishers at the 1987 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Gary Carlston, co-founder of Broderbund, retrieved a copy and brought it to California. Despite enthusiasm amongst its employees, Broderbund remained skeptical because of the game's Soviet origins. Likewise, Mastertronic co-founder Martin Alper declared that "no Soviet product will ever work in the Western world".[43] Carlston regretted turning down what he described as "the worldwide rights to Tetris for $50,000 ... People have tried to make me feel better about my decision by telling me about everything Henk Rogers went through to get the rights, but yeah, I should have accepted the game".[44]

Stein ultimately signed two agreements: he sold the European rights to the publisher Mirrorsoft[43][45] and the American rights to sister company Spectrum HoloByte.[46] The latter obtained the rights after a visit to Mirrorsoft by Spectrum HoloByte president Phil Adam in which he played Tetris for two hours.[43][47] At that time, Stein had not yet signed a contract with the Soviet Union.[45] Nevertheless, he sold the rights to the two companies for £3,000 and a royalty of 7.5 to 15% on sales.[48]

Before releasing Tetris in the United States, Spectrum HoloByte CEO Gilman Louie asked for an overhaul of the game's graphics and music.[43] The Soviet spirit was preserved, with fields illustrating Russian parks and buildings as well as melodies anchored in Russian folklore of the time. The company's goal was to make people want to buy a Russian product. The game came complete with a red package and Cyrillic text, an unusual approach on the other side of the Berlin Wall.[49] The Mirrorsoft version was released in Europe on January 27, 1988,[50] and the Spectrum HoloByte version was released on January 29, 1988.[51] The game was first released for DOS PCs, with other platforms, including the Amiga, Atari ST, Apple IIGS, and Mac following over the next year.[52][53] Mirrorsoft created their own ports of Tetris for the Amiga and Atari ST, along with the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC.

Tetris was a commercial success in Europe and the United States: Mirrorsoft sold tens of thousands of copies in two months,[53] and Spectrum HoloByte sold over 100,000 units in the space of a year.[54] According to Spectrum HoloByte, the average Tetris player was between 25 and 45 years old and was a manager or engineer. At the Software Publishers Association's Excellence in Software Awards ceremony in March 1988, Tetris won Best Entertainment Software, Best Original Game, Best Strategy Program, and Best Consumer Software.[53]

Stein was faced with a problem: the only document certifying a license fee was the fax from Pajitnov and Brjabrin, meaning that Stein sold the license for a game he did not yet own. Stein contacted Pajitnov and asked him for a contract for the rights. Stein began negotiations via fax, offering 75% of the revenue generated by Stein from the license.[48] Elektronorgtechnica ("Elorg"), the Soviet Union's central organization for the import and export of computer software, was unconvinced and requested 80% of the revenue. Stein made several trips to Moscow and held long discussions with Elorg representatives.[55]

Stein came to an agreement with Elorg on February 24, 1988.[56] On May 10[57] he signed a contract for a ten-year worldwide Tetris license for all current and future computer systems.[58] Pajitnov and Brjabrin were unaware that the game was already on sale and that Stein had claimed to own the rights prior to the agreement.[45] Although Pajitnov did not receive any percentage from these sales,[58] he said that "the fact that so many people enjoy my game is enough for me".[59]

[edit]
Henk Rogers (pictured in 2010), representing Nintendo, negotiated with Elorg for the rights to Tetris.
Tetris on a Nintendo Game Boy

In 1988, Spectrum HoloByte sold the Japanese rights to its computer games to Bullet-Proof Software, run by Henk Rogers, who was searching for games for the Japanese market.[57] Mirrorsoft sold arcade rights to Atari Games subsidiary Tengen, which then sold the Japanese arcade rights to Sega and the console rights to BPS, which published versions for Japanese computers, including the MSX2, PC-88 and X68000, along with a console port for the Nintendo Family Computer (Famicom), known outside Japan as the Nintendo Entertainment System.[60] The Japanese port was written in C[61] and in 6502 assembly language for Nintendo.[62]

At this point, almost a dozen companies believed they held the Tetris rights, with Stein retaining rights for home computer versions.[60] The Soviet Union's Elorg was still unaware of the deals Stein had negotiated, which did not bring money to them. Tetris was a commercial success in North America, Europe and Asia.[57]

The same year, Nintendo was preparing to launch its first portable console, the Game Boy. Nintendo was attracted to the idea of Tetris as a pack-in for the system by its simplicity and established success on the Famicom.[58][60] Rogers, who was close to then Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, sought to obtain the handheld rights.[58] After a failed negotiation with Atari,[63] Rogers contacted Stein in November 1988. Stein agreed to sign a contract, but explained that he had to consult Elorg before returning to negotiations with Rogers.[64][65] After contacting Stein several times, Rogers began to suspect a breach of contract on Stein's part, and he decided in February 1989 to go to the Soviet Union and negotiate the rights with Elorg.[63][65]

Rogers arrived at the Elorg offices uninvited, while Stein and Mirrorsoft manager Kevin Maxwell made separate appointments the same day without consulting each other.[66] During the discussions, Rogers explained that he wanted to obtain the rights to Tetris for the Game Boy.[67] After quickly obtaining an agreement with Elorg president Nikolai Belikov,[68] Rogers showed Belikov a Famicom Tetris cartridge.[69] Belikov was surprised, as he believed at the time that the rights to Tetris were only signed for computer systems.[70]

The present parties accused Rogers of illegal publication, but Rogers defended himself by explaining that he had obtained the rights via Atari Games, which had itself signed an agreement with Stein.[69] Belikov then realized the complex path that the license had followed within four years because of Stein's contracts, and he constructed a strategy to regain possession of the rights and obtain better commercial agreements. At that point, Elorg was faced with three different companies seeking to buy the rights.[71]

During this time, Rogers befriended Pajitnov over a game of Go. Pajitnov supported Rogers throughout the discussions, to the detriment of Maxwell, who had come to secure the console rights for Mirrorsoft.[63] Belikov proposed to Rogers that Stein's rights would be cancelled and Nintendo would be granted the game rights for both home and handheld consoles.[69] Rogers flew to the United States to convince Nintendo's American branch to sign up for the rights. The contract with Elorg was signed by executive and president Minoru Arakawa for $500,000, plus 50 cents per cartridge sold.[67][72]

Elorg then sent an updated contract to Stein. One of the clauses defined a computer as a machine with a screen and keyboard, and thus Stein's rights to console versions were withdrawn.[73] Stein signed the contract without paying attention to this clause,[67] and later realized that all the contract's other clauses, notably on payments, were only a "smokescreen" to deceive him.[73][74]

In March 1989, Nintendo sent a cease and desist to Atari Games concerning production of their NES version of Tetris.[75] Atari Games contacted Mirrorsoft and were assured that they still retained the rights. Nintendo maintained its position. In response, Mirrorsoft owner Robert Maxwell pressured Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev to cancel the contract between Elorg and Nintendo.[67] Despite the threats to Belikov, Elorg refused to give in and highlighted the financial advantages of their contract compared to those signed with Stein and Mirrorsoft.[67][76]

On June 15, 1989, Nintendo and Atari Games began a legal battle in the courts of San Francisco. Atari Games sought to prove that the NES was a computer, as indicated by its Japanese name "Famicom", an abbreviation of "Family Computer". In this case, the initial license would authorize Atari Games to release the game. The central argument of Atari Games was that the Famicom could be converted into a computer via the Family BASIC peripheral. This argument was not accepted, and Pajitnov stressed that the initial contract only concerned computers and no other machine.[59]

Nintendo brought Belikov to testify on its behalf.[77] Judge Fern M. Smith declared that Mirrorsoft and Spectrum HoloByte never received explicit authorization for marketing on consoles, and, on June 21, 1989, ruled in Nintendo's favor, granting them a preliminary injunction against Atari Games in the process.[59] The next day, Atari Games withdrew its NES version from sale, and thousands of cartridges remained unsold in the company's warehouses.[78][79]

Sega had planned to release a Mega Drive version of Tetris based on their Japanese arcade edition on April 15, 1989, but cancelled its release during Nintendo and Atari's legal battle;[80] fewer than ten copies were manufactured.[81] The Game Boy version of Tetris was released in Japan in June 1989[82] and as a pack-in title in the United States in July 1989.[83] Nintendo's NES version was released the same year. Both versions achieved much commercial success, with the Game Boy version selling more than 40 million sales and the NES version selling more than 7 million.[84]

Post-legal battles and The Tetris Company (1989–present)

[edit]
Main article: The Tetris Company
A-Type game screenshot of the official NES version of Tetris

Through the legal history of the license, Pajitnov gained a reputation in the West. He was regularly invited by journalists and publishers, through which he discovered that Tetris had sold millions of copies, from which he had not made any money. He took pride in the game, which he considered "an electronic ambassador of benevolence".[59] In January 1990, Pajitnov was invited by Spectrum HoloByte to the Consumer Electronics Show, and he was immersed in American life for the first time.[85] After a period of adaptation, he explored American culture in several cities, including Las Vegas, San Francisco, New York City and Boston. He engaged in interviews with several hosts, including the directors of Nintendo of America.[86] He marveled at the freedom and the advantages of Western society, and, upon returning to the Soviet Union, he spoke often of his travels to his colleagues. He realized that there was no market in Russia for their programs.[85] In 1991, Pajitnov and Pokhilko emigrated to the United States.[85] Pajitnov moved to Seattle, where he produced games for Spectrum HoloByte.[87] Several versions were produced during this time, including Spectrum Holobyte's Welltris (1990) and Super Tetris (1991), Bullet-Proof Software's Tetris 2 + BomBliss (1991) and Tetris Battle Gaiden (1993), and Nintendo's Tetris 2 (1993).[88]

In April 1996, as agreed with the Academy ten years earlier and following an agreement with Rogers, the rights to Tetris reverted to Pajitnov.[87] Pajitnov and Rogers founded the Tetris Company in June 1996 to manage the rights on all platforms, the previous agreements having expired. Pajitnov now receives a royalty for each Tetris game and derivative sold worldwide.[89] Since 1996, the Tetris Company has internally defined specifications and guidelines to which publishers must adhere to be granted a license to Tetris, known as the Tetris guidelines. The contents of these guidelines establish elements such as the correspondence of buttons and actions, the size of the field of play, and the system of rotation.[90][11][24]

In 2002, Pajitnov and Rogers founded Tetris Holding after the purchase of the game's remaining rights from Elorg, now a private entity following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Tetris Company now owns all rights to the Tetris brand, and it is mainly responsible for removing unlicensed clones from the market.[87][89] Since the 2000s, internet versions of the game have been developed. Commercial versions not approved by the Tetris Company tend to be purged due to company policy, and the company regularly calls on Apple Inc. and Google to remove illegal versions from their mobile app stores.[91][92] In one notable 2012 case, Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc., Tetris Holding and the Tetris Company defended its copyright against an iOS clone, which established a new stance on evaluating video game clone infringements based on look and feel.[93]

In December 2005, Electronic Arts acquired Jamdat, a company specializing in mobile games.[94] Jamdat had previously bought a company founded by Rogers in 2001 which managed the Tetris license on mobile platforms. As a result, Electronic Arts held a 15-year license on all mobile phone releases of Tetris,[87] which expired on April 21, 2020.[95]

Versions

[edit]
Main article: List of Tetris variants
A 5th generation iPod running Tetris (2006)

Tetris has been released on a multitude of platforms since the creation of the original version on the Electronika 60. The game is available on most game consoles and is playable on personal computers, smartphones and iPods. Guinness World Records recognized Tetris as the most ported video game in history, with over 200 variants having appeared on over 65 different platforms as of October 2010.[96] By 2017, this number had increased to 220 official variants.[97]

Across its multiple versions, Tetris's core gameplay has remained consistent.[98] Since 1996, The Tetris Company maintains standard specifications for authorized versions of Tetris known as the Tetris Guidelines.[24] The guidelines are changed annually, according to Rogers,[11] and Pajitnov considers the guidelines a baseline for different versions and not "set in stone".[99] Several game mechanics of Tetris have been changed over time. For example, the distribution of tetrominoes were completely randomized in early versions, while modern versions opt for a "bag system", in which each individual tetromino is guaranteed to appear in a set of seven.[100][101] Other mechanics have become standarized in modern versions include ability to hold tetrominoes to swap with later pieces, introduced in The New Tetris (1999),[102] and the super rotation system and infinite spin, introduced in Tetris Worlds (2001).[103]

The earliest versions of Tetris had no music.[104] Spectrum Holobyte's version of Tetris in the United States exoticized the game's Soviet origins through elements such as Russian music, including Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "Trepak" from The Nutcracker and Reinhold Glière's "Russian Sailor Dance" from The Red Poppy. This approached differed from other versions of Tetris from other countries at the time: Mirrosoft's Commodore 64 version in Europe used an atmospheric soundtrack, and Sega's arcade version in Japan used a synthesized pop-influenced soundtrack.[105] Nintendo's versions for NES and Game Boy continued the pattern of using Russian music. The NES version uses Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from The Nutcracker as Music A, with the Russian-influenced Music B and the mellow Music C having unclear origins.[106] The Game Boy version consists of the 1860s Russian folk tune "Korobeiniki" for Music A, an original composition by Hirokazu Tanaka for Music B, and the Menuet of Johann Sebastian Bach's French Suite no. 3 for Music C.[107] "Korobeiniki" has become primarily associated with Tetris as its main theme and would be used in most significant versions of the game,[108][105] as mandated by the Tetris Guidelines.[24]

Reception and legacy

[edit]

Sales

[edit]

In January 2010, EA Mobile and Blue Planet Software announced that mobile versions of Tetris since 2005 reached 100 million paid downloads, making it most-downloaded mobile game at the time.[109][110] In April 2014, Rogers announced in an interview with VentureBeat that Tetris totaled 425 million paid mobile downloads and 70 million physical copies.[111][112] To date, the Tetris franchise is the second-best-selling video game franchise of all time, totaling 520 million sales according to the Tetris Company.[113][114] A majority originate from paid mobile downloads, based on Rogers' figure from the 2014 interview.[112][115] As a result, some publications consider Tetris to be the best-selling game of all time, despite variations among the different versions.[113][114] The most successful individual version is the Game Boy version,[116] which at 35 million copies is one of the best-selling video games of all time.[117][118]

Sales of individual versions of Tetris
Year Game Platform(s) Sales
1988 Tetris (Spectrum HoloByte) PC 1 million[119]
1989 Tetris (Game Boy) Game Boy 35 million[117]
Tetris (NES) NES 4 million[120]
1996 Tetris Plus PlayStation 1.53 million[121]
2001 Tetris Worlds Multi-platform 1.81 million[d]
2006 Tetris DS Nintendo DS 2.05 million[124]
2014 Puyo Puyo Tetris Multi-platform 1.4 million[125]
2018 Tetris Effect Multi-platform 4,372[126]
2019 Tetris 99 Nintendo Switch 8,221[e]
2020 Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 Multi-platform 293,000[f]

Accolades

[edit]

Tetris garnered awards from early on. The Spectrum HoloByte version won three Software Publishers Association Excellence in Software Awards in 1989, including Best Entertainment Program and the Critic's Choice Award for consumers.[131] Macworld inducted Tetris into the 1988 Macworld Game Hall of Fame in the Best Strategy Game category. Macworld praised "the addictive quality of the game" and said its "simplicity is bewitching."[132] and Computer Gaming World gave Tetris the 1989 Compute! Choice Award for Arcade Game, describing it as "by far, the most addictive game ever".[133] Entertainment Weekly picked the game as the #8 greatest game available in 1991, saying: "Thanks to Nintendo's endless promotion, Tetris has become one of the most popular video games".[134]

Tetris has been widely ranked as among the greatest video games of all time by Flux (1995),[135] Next Generation (1996 and 1999),[136][137] Electronic Gaming Monthly (1997),[138] GameSpot (2000),[139] Game Informer (2001 and 2009),[140][141] IGN (2007 and 2021),[142][143] Time (2012 and 2016),[144][145] GamesRadar+ (2015 and 2021),[146][147] Polygon (2017),[148] USA Today (2022 and 2024),[149][150] The Times (2023),[151] and GQ (2023).[152] Tetris has also been ranked as among the best computer games by PC Format (1991)[153] and Computer Gaming World (1996),[154] and among the most influential games of all time by GamePro (2007),[155] IGN (2007),[156] 1Up.com (2010),[157] GamesRadar+ (2013),[158] and The Guardian (2017).[159]

Tetris has been inducted into the "Hall of Fame" of the following publications: Computer Gaming World (1999),[160] GameSpy (2000),[161] GameSpot (2003),[162] and IGN (2007).[163] Tetris was listed as part of the game canon, announced at the 2007 Game Developers Conference by Henry Lowood of Stanford University as a list of ten games modelered after the National Film Preservation Board to be considered for preservation by the Library of Congress.[164][165][166] In November 2012, the Museum of Modern Art acquired Tetris, along with thirteen other video games, to display.[167] As part of the 2015 inaugural class, The Strong National Museum of Play inducted Tetris into the World Video Game Hall of Fame for its iconic nature.[168]

Industry impact

[edit]

Due to Rogers and Nintendo's belief in its potential for mass appeal, Tetris was the pack-in title and the primary game promoted for the Game Boy in the United States. The resulting public anticipation led Tetris to become the Game Boy's killer app upon its release,[169][170] with many, including non-gamers, buying the Game Boy specifically to play Tetris. This release simultaneously contributed to both the popularity of Tetris and the Game Boy,[171][172] with the bundle selling out in its initial run of a million copies shortly after release.[169] This success established Nintendo's dominant position in the handheld gaming market, setting a standard that competitors struggled to replicate.[157][173][174]

Tetris is influential in the genre of puzzle video games.[156][175] Commentators have considered Tetris an early example of a casual game,[g] and 1Up.com credits Tetris for establishing a market for puzzle video games with universal appeal.[157] Various common elements of puzzle games, such as managing pieces over a fixed screen, originated from Tetris,[156] and multiple clones have been created to replicate Tetris's popularity to little success.[180] Video games influenced by Tetris include Nintendo's Dr. Mario (1990), Sega's Columns (1990), Compile's Puyo Puyo (1991), Taito's Puzzle Bobble (1994), Capcom's Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (1996), and PopCap Games' Bejeweled (2000).[h]

Cultural impact

[edit]
Jonas Neubauer (pictured in 2010) won the inaugural Classic Tetris World Championship.

Tetris's cultural impact and recognition is widespread, as demonstrated by its continuing commercial success and representation in a vast array of media such as architecture, art, and merchandise.[182][24][88] Tetris has over 200 official variants across 70 platforms to date, a record acknowledged by the Guinness World Records.[183] Tetris has also earned other Guinness records, such as the record for "largest architectural video game display", granted to a version hosted on the side of the 29-story Cira Center in April 2014.[184] "Korobeiniki" has become widely associated with Tetris following its inclusion in the Game Boy version.[105] A 1992 Eurodance cover of "Korobeiniki" by Doctor Spin peaked at number six in the UK single charts.[24][185] Tetris is widely seen as a " simple but addictive" game,[186] and has been the subject of academic research in psychology and mathematics.[187][188][189] Writers such as Dan Ackerman have attributed the enduring success of Tetris to its appeal to casual gamers.[190]

Tetris has a competitive scene, primarily centering around the NES version.[191] Competitor Jonas Neubauer and his victory in the inaugural Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC) in 2010 were the subject of the 2011 documentary Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters,[192] which popularized competitive gameplay of Tetris.[176] Competitors of the CTWC, typically adolescents, have used the CTWC to demonstrate advancements in the gameplay of the NES version. For example, gameplay techniques such as "hypertapping" and "rolling" have been used to help competitors to maximize their scores beyond level 29, which was previously deemed impossible to complete due to its speed.[193][194] The "beating" of Tetris, accomplished by competitor Willis Gibson by playing NES Tetris until it crashed in a 40-minute livestream, received significant media coverage in January 2024.[183][195]

In 2014, it was announced that Threshold Entertainment had teamed up with the Tetris Company to develop a film adaptation of the game. CEO Larry Kasanoff called it an epic sci-fi adventure and the first part of a trilogy.[196][197] In 2016, a press release falsely claimed the film would be shot in China in 2017 with an $80 million budget.[198] A movie titled Tetris, about the legal battle surrounding the game in the late 1980s and starring Taron Egerton as Henk Rogers, premiered on Apple TV+ on March 31, 2023,[199] to positive reviews according to Metacritic and high viewership at 88,000 people according to Samba TV.[200][201]

Research

[edit]

Psychological research

[edit]
See also: Tetris effect

The psychological and addictive effects of Tetris were first scientifically recognized by Soviet clinical psychologist Vladimir Pokhilko c. 1985.[202][186] Pokhilko was a recipient of the IBM version of Tetris in Moscow. Interested in its potential psychological effects based on his experiences playing the game, Pokhilko distributed copies of Tetris to his colleagues at the Moscow Medical Center. Pokhilko regretted his decision after constant gameplay impaired medical research and proceeded to destroy the distributed copies. After new copies were reintroduced to his facility, Pokhilko used Tetris in his testing of patients.[203]

Starting with the research of American psychologist Richard J. Haier in 1992,[204][205][206] Tetris has been frequently used as a form of cognitive assessment and neuroimaging.[207][208] Furthermore, Tetris has been studied as a potential form of psychological intervention such as for PTSD and cravings with promising results.[207][2] The "Tetris effect" refers to the phenomena of perceiving certain patterns in dreams and mental images following engagement in a repetitive activity such as playing Tetris,[202][199] and was first coined by Jeffrey Goldsmith in a 1994 article for Wired, in which he compared Tetris to an "electronic drug".[209][210]

Research in computer science

[edit]

In 1992, John Brzustowski at the University of British Columbia wrote a thesis reflecting on the question of whether or not one could theoretically play Tetris forever.[211] He reached the conclusion that the game is statistically doomed to end. If a player receives a sufficiently large sequence of alternating S and Z tetrominoes, the naïve gravity used by the standard game eventually forces the player to leave holes on the board. The holes will necessarily stack to the top and, ultimately, end the game. If the pieces are distributed randomly, this sequence will eventually occur. Thus, if a game with, for example, an ideal, uniform, uncorrelated random number generator is played long enough, any player will almost surely top out.[212][213]

In computer science, it is common to analyze the computational complexity of problems, including real-life problems and games. In 2001, a group of MIT researchers proved that for the "offline" version of Tetris (the player knows the complete sequence of pieces that will be dropped, i.e. there is no hidden information) the following objectives are NP-complete:

  • Maximizing the number of rows cleared while playing the given piece sequence.
  • Maximizing the number of pieces placed before a loss occurs.
  • Maximizing the number of simultaneous clearing of four rows.
  • Minimizing the height of the highest filled grid square over the course of the sequence.

Also, it is difficult to even approximately solve the first, second, and fourth problem. It is NP-hard, given an initial gameboard and a sequence of p pieces, to approximate the first two problems to within a factor of p1 − ε for any constant ε > 0. It is NP-hard to approximate the last problem within a factor of 2 − ε for any constant ε > 0. To prove NP-completeness, it was shown that there is a polynomial reduction between the 3-partition problem, which is also NP-complete, and the Tetris problem.[214][215]

Thermodynamics simulation

[edit]

During the game of Tetris, blocks appear to adsorb onto the lower surface of the window. This has led scientists to use tetrominoes "as a proxy for molecules with a complex shape" to model their "adsorption on a flat surface" to study the thermodynamics of nanoparticles.[216][217]

See also

[edit]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^ Pronounced [ˈtʲetrʲɪs] or [ˈtetrʲɪs]
  2. ^ The standard spelling in mathematics is tetrominoes, while The Tetris Company spelling is tetriminoes.[2] This article uses the standard spelling for consistency.
  3. ^ The Tetris Company celebrates Tetris's anniversary based on its apparent creation date on June 6, 1984, though various sources, including copyright records, indicate that the original version was completed in 1985.[23]
  4. ^ The Game Boy Advanced version of Tetris Worlds sold 960,000 copies.[122] The PlayStation 2 version sold 850,000 copies.[123]
  5. ^ Sales figure for physical copies.[127] According to President of Nintendo Shuntaro Furukawa, within two months, 2.8 million Nintendo Switch Online accounts played the online version of Tetris 99.[128]
  6. ^ Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 sold 93,000 copies.[129] Puyo Puyo Tetris 2: Special Price sold 200,000 copies.[130]
  7. ^ Attributed to multiple sources:[156][176][177][178][179]
  8. ^ Attributed to multiple sources:[156][157][175][181]

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Bibliography

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Books

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External videos
video icon Presentation by Dan Ackerman on The Tetris Effect, September 12, 2016, C-SPAN

Video documentaries

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Further reading

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