Tetris was the first true computer casual game. It became a hit and is still played frequently today. Its history was rather tumultuous however, as several companies fought over the right to sell it.
Tetris was invented in 1985 by Alexey Pazhitnov in Moscow. He got part of his idea from a pentominoes game.
He only received a small amount of fame for his work, however, as the game didn’t spread far from the city initially, and that was only after it was ported to the personal computer from the Electonica 60 he had programmed it on.
The following year, Hungarian programmers ported it to Apple and Commodore computers. The Commodore was a very popular game machine at the time in Hungary. Everything seemed to be going well so far.
That started to change when Robert Stein of Andromeda wanted to get the rights to Tetris. This may have worked out fine, however, he started to sell the rights, before he legally owned them himself, to Mirrorsoft and Spectrum Holobyte.
Robert Stein traveled to Moscow to sign a deal with Tetris inventor, Alexey Pazhitnov, but the deal never went through. He then tried to claim the game belonged to the Hungarian programmers and not to Pazhitnov to gain rights to the game.
This marked the start of a rough part of Tetris' history.
Mirrorsoft and Spectrum Holobyte proceeded to published Tetris to sell on personal computers worldwide unaware of the serious legal issues Robert Stein had created. The game became wildly popular and was extremely addictive.
It was also the first game from the U.S.S.R. which has long since disappeared from world maps. Robert Stein did finally get a copyright license for Tetris, but not with the permission of inventor Alexey Pazhitnov.
In 1988 CBS Evening News interviewed Alexey Pazhitnov and got the public's attention. Robert Stein was unable to proceed with plan to credit the Hungarian programmers. He did not have legal rights and now the world knew it.
Later, the Soviet government started ELOR and got involved with licensing Tetris. Mirrorsoft and Spectrum started to sublicense Tetris to video game makers including Nintendo.
Robert Stein's license was for computer games only and not video consoles. A licensing mess was starting to unfold in rapid fashion. This ultimately led to a fight between Nintendo and Tengen for video game rights.
Tengen is a division of Atari games. Nintendo was victorious in the case and sold millions of games for their Entertainment System and Game Boy. Another battle between Nintendo and Atari went on until 1993.
Finally in 1996, Alexey Pazhitnov formed the Tetris Company and Blue Planet Software. They did make money with console games, but not with computer versions. Electronic Arts now owns Blue Planet Software.
Tetris is still played today and is found on many game websites. Fortunately, these versions are properly licensed. We hope you enjoy this tremendously popular game even with its tumultuous history.
About the Author
Timothy Sharkey works for Softgame Company, maker of
card games, video poker and puzzles. He writes articles for the
casual games web site.
