Seventeen Years of Tetris

thefalconer writes "It all happened 17 years ago on a whim and an addiction of sorts. Alexey Pazhitnov created the one game that has caused so many people around the world to just about go nuts trying to win a game that has the ability to slowly drive you to insanity one small misshappen block at a time. Since the creation of the original Tetris game on an Electronica 60, there have been dozens of different incarnations of Tetris that have dazzled the eyes, boggled the mind, frustrated the emotions, and fried more than their fair share of braincells. There is also a very interesting history of tetris online that details its evolution from innocent game to insane addiction. Plus it's one of those games that never grows old. :D"

Comments

Re:17 years...

[madcow_ucsb]

...and 17 years of NOT getting the long skinny one when you've filled the entire screen with blocks except for that one-block-wide stripe up the entire right-hand side because you *just knew* that the next one would be the skinny one...

Tetris - a Metaphor for Communism?

[Anonymous Coward]

All the different shaped pieces come together to (hopefully) form perfect, straight, uniform lines. Individualism of each piece fades as it becomes part of the whole.

However, the longer it goes, the more pieces that come, and the faster they go. Pretty soon, the system begins the breakdown! Things are out of control, and lines stop forming, until you just can't continue any longer.

Game over.

After 17 years of tetris.......

[Mattygfunk]

.....I think everything is starting to fall into place. ;)

IP Rights

[MeowMeow Jones]

Tetris has had one of the most agressive lawsuits to protect IP rights in software history.

See here and here among other places

Although the game is pretty simple, it is innovative, considering the crack-like nature of the game.

Are the KDE, Gnome, and Emacs versions in good standing with the Tetris Company?

Re:Tetris? Where's my pong history?

[(outer-limits)]

You've finally figured it out, all those years of silence at the chess club, when what we really needed was blasting techo track (with light effects) to get the punters in.

Interesting quote

[jcsehak]

I just was flipping through this old gaming mag today. They had a quote from Alexey, which went something like:
"I remember the first time I saw those shapes coming down the screen. I had no shape acceleration or point system, and I couldn't program them in because I was having too much fun playing the half-finished game."

Apparently the shapes looked like this then:

[][][][]
[]

and I mean, exactly like that. Simple text brackets. How beautiful is that? One of the best games ever made, nothing but text brackets; still addictive.

I gotta say though, half of the fun was the music. Where did all the good video game music go anyway? Tetris, Super Mario Bros, Frogger, Zelda. I can't remember the last time a game's theme music was stuck in my head all day.

Re:Lets start a bragging war!!!

[guttentag]

Steve Wozniak is a hard-core Tetris addict:

I was listed with high Tetris scores many times in Nintendo Power magazine. I also sent letters showing how I'd given GameBoys to Gorbachev and Bush. The latter was seen playing one shortly thereafter on TV in a hospital after a heart problem. It got to the point that Nintendo Power wouldn't list my name again so I sent in a score photo and used the name "Evets Kainzow" which is both my names backwards. When I got the next issue and flipped to see if anyone had beaten my high score, I saw this name but forgot having sent it in. I was worried that someone was close to me. I noticed that he had a foreign sounding name and that he lived in Saratoga, the next city over. Then I realized that it was my own trick.

His high score is 710,000 (beat that, Mr. Nintendo World Championships!) and he was invited to play "King-Sized Tetris" at Brown.

love is like tetris...

[red_crayon]

My freshman year at college, the campus paper did a survey on love/sex/etc.

This was 1989 and Tetris was quite the late-night procrastination tool before looking for MP3s, etc.

Included was a series of anonymous quotes about the stare of love on campus. I'll never forget, one female student said:

Love here is like Tetris. You never get the long piece when you need it.