Tetris Turns 25

teh.f4ll3n writes "25 years ago a Russian (Soviet) researcher thought of one of the world's most popular games. It is now that we celebrate its 25th anniversary. 'Twenty-five years ago, inside the bowels of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, a young artificial intelligence researcher received his first desktop computer — the Soviet-built Elektronika 60, a copy of an American minicomputer called a PDP-11 — and began writing programs for it.'"

Comments

Summary

[Darkness404]

And because the summary doesn't tell you, that researcher was Alexey Pajitnov, who, despite creating Tetris made comparatively little money off of it even though it is one of the most iconic games of all time and helped revolutionize handheld gaming.

Re:Summary

[Millennium]

One of the great travesties of gaming, that. The man got little more than a new computer and a modest bonus.

In America, you get games and play them. In Soviet Russia, you make games and get played!

Re:Summary

[hardwarejunkie9]

He also later made a pretty decent little game called Clockwerx which I enjoyed quite a bit as a kid. I highly recommend it.

Re:Summary

[eldavojohn]

One of the great travesties of gaming, that. The man got little more than a new computer and a modest bonus.

In America, you get games and play them. In Soviet Russia, you make games and get played!

Uh, to be fair, it was really the British and the Hungarians that began the ruination of Pajitnov's rights. From Wikipedia:

The IBM PC version eventually made its way to Budapest, Hungary, where it was ported to various platforms and was "discovered" by a British software house named Andromeda. They attempted to contact Pajitnov to secure the rights for the PC version, but before the deal was firmly settled, they had already sold the rights to Spectrum HoloByte. After failing to settle the deal with Pajitnov, Andromeda attempted to license it from the Hungarian programmers instead.

There's no way you could (at that time) stop the same thing happening to an American. I think this history of litigation and the international scene of respect for software rights had a lot more to do with it than him being Soviet. Also, note that he sold the rights to this game to Spectrum HoloByte in Russia so he got the initial money he was looking for at least for Russian distribution rights it seems. Did he really get played or just fail to realize how great his game was? Sad when someone sells oneself so short but it happens even today, doesn't it?

Re:Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I was under the impression that Alexey was the one who ultimately got credit for the game but it was actually made and devised by someone less senior. I do agree that Alexey and the actual people who invented the game got far less than they deserved. However, Henk Rogers and The Tetris Company did quite well.

Re:Summary

[Waffle Iron]

Gaming? Tetris was no game. It was a highly effective Soviet plot to destroy the productivity of Western nations. This was achieved both by direct diversion of billions of man hours of work time, and by brainwashing: replacing the normal thoughts of the workers by images of falling blocks even when they were not using the program.

Re:Summary

[jellomizer]

Well that is the problem of a Communism and even socialism to some extent. Sometimes people deserve to to be rich, and sometimes people deserve to be poor (sad but true).

Re:Summary

[Andtalath]

Also, he's working for Microsoft.
Talk about lousy rewards.

Re:Summary

[117]

I don't know how reliable it is, but this link mentions that Alexey Pajitnov didn't have anything to do with the making of Clockwerx, he simply "introduces" the game

Re:Summary

[TinBromide]

not quite true. Since the fall of the soviet union, he moved to the united states and formed the tetris company which holds all rights and gets money from every tetris game made since 1991 or so. While the wikipedia says he didn't profit, thats just because he didn't profit from the NES or gameboy versions.

Re:Summary

[adosch]

Agreed. It's a shame he didn't get more rights for Tetris, but I'd say, as a whole, despite the shortcomings with Tetris, he's been pretty well taken care of by the 'Big 2' gaming/computing companies (e.g. Micro$oft and Nintendo); I think he even works for Microsoft (and might still now) doing game design. He's done lots of work on other Nintendo games I know of, too. Happy B-day Tetris. Thanks to you, I'll never throw away my 8-bit NES... ever.

Re:Summary

[hardwarejunkie9]

Well, I can't argue with that, I just hope he actually got paid for it for once.

Re:Summary

[dkleinsc]

Also, Western workers caught by it had a reduced ability to reproduce, thus making future generations smaller and weaker than their Russian and Chinese counterparts.

Re:Summary

[oldhack]

And don't forget its evil twin, the Rubik's Cube.

Re:Summary

[Xaositecte]

Isn't this backwards science? The Western workers caught by it are, on average, smaller and weaker than their non-gaming counterparts. If they don't reproduce, then all that's left to reproduce will be the ones who value things like "outside" and "sunlight" more than video games. Their children will share those traits, and the game-players will die off as befits any evolutionary branch with a poor (nonexistent?) reproductive strategy.

Re:Summary

[harryandthehenderson]

He hasn't worked for Microsoft in 4 years.

Re:Summary

[Jurily]

I think this history of litigation and the international scene of respect for software rights had a lot more to do with it than him being Soviet.

As a Hungarian, I think if we knew he was a Russian, we'd spread it even faster across the globe. (Note this is 1985, before the fall of the Iron Curtain. We didn't like those guys.)

Re:Summary

[LWATCDR]

Why? I doubt that the authors of Adventure, Rouge, and Nethack got even that. Programs should be free.
Actually I do agree with you. He should have been set for life if not filthy rich.

Re:Summary

[bonch]

Even worse, others would make rip-off clones, and he would try to shut them down legally, yet instead of receiving support for his actions, he would get attacked by online idiots such as the ones at Digg. The guy's a perfect example of a developer who had a good idea and got fucked over by piracy.

Re:Summary

[FishWithAHammer]

Programs should be free.

Yeah, it's not like they take any effort to make and it's certainly not like the creators shouldn't be compensated if they so wish.

NetHack's DevTeam doesn't want money for what they do--awesome. Somebody else does--it's their call.

Re:Summary

[asdf7890]

Uh, to be fair, it was really the British and the Hungarians that began the ruination of Pajitnov's rights

It was far more complex than that. The BBC did an interesting documentary about the history and rights issues of the game a few years back (around the 20th anniversary IIRC). They got fairly frank interviews with people involved at the time (including the man himself, some of the developers and business people who were fighting for the publishing rights, and the Russian civil servant whose job it was to play all the suiters off each other). Well worth a watch.

Search for "tetris from russia with love" - if you can't find it to purchase/rent/stream legitimately I'm sure you'll find a copy on your preferred alternative online TV source...

Re:Summary

[Maximum Prophet]

Philo I Farnsworth got screwed out of the rights to Television. Inventors almost always get the short end of the stick, unless they sell out and become businessmen. Who's richer Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak? Edison got rich because he was a great businessman.

Re:Summary

[eldavojohn]

Gaming? Tetris was no game. It was a highly effective Soviet plot to destroy the productivity of Western nations.

Gorbachev: Ah, KGB Agent Pajitnov, how goes Projekt Tetris?
Pajitnov: Uh, not so good.
Gorbachev: Nyet? Why not?
Pajitnov: Yeah you see the Tetris, it did preoccupy them but they have all developed very specialized hand-eye coordination ...
Gorbachev: Meaning?
Pajitnov: Well, they will be better surgeons and ...
Gorbachev: And?
Pajitnov: Well, our superior MIGs may have problems if they figure out how to hook them up to their F-16 fighter jets ... and also ... well ...
Gorbachev: Yes?
Pajitnov: I've read this new American instruction manual called Ender's Game and our problems may be much larger than we initially thought ...

Re:Summary

[Mooga]

The original DOS version is actually available for FREE. It's worth loading up and enjoying old-school style.

Re:Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you disapproved of the Soviet regime so you were prepared to punish those innocents suffering under it? You sound like a real jerk.

Re:Summary

[Jurily]

Wow, you disapproved of the Soviet regime so you were prepared to punish those innocents suffering under it? You sound like a real jerk.

We were the innocents suffering under it, moron.

Re:Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Gaming? Tetris was no game. It was a highly effective Soviet plot to destroy the productivity of Western nations. This was achieved both by direct diversion of billions of man hours of work time, and by brainwashing: replacing the normal thoughts of the workers by images of falling blocks even when they were not using the program.

Uh-oh, this web site resembles that remark!

Re:Summary

[chapstercni]

Hah... I thought I was the only one to ever see the falling blocks. I played it so much that working on equipment, driving down the road, I was putting that stuff together. Addicting!

Re:Summary

[OctaviusIII]

So what you're saying is, Wikipedia is wrong, and rather than correct it there you correct it here? For shame!

No, wait, it's been revised...

Re:Summary

[TheRaven64]

Who's richer Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak?

Jobs, but most of his personal fortune comes from NeXT and Pixar, not from Apple. Wozniak did well enough out of Apple not to need to work ever again.

Re:Summary

[Chabo]

You realize that sometimes Wikijerks prevent people from revising an article to present the truth, right?

Re:Summary

[district]

Yes, I'd heard of the power of the Soviet Block **ducks***

Re:Summary

[SteveWoz]

But who managed to play Tetris on the 14-story sci-library building at Brown University one cold night?

And who was repeatedly the top scorer at Gameboy Tetris in the Nintendo Power lists? It got to where they wouldn't print my name any more so I sent in the photo of my score spelling my name backwards, Evits Kainzow, and they printed it. This was back around 1988.

So many things to measure and remember life by...

Re:Summary

[drinsilence]

Don't forget to mention Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov (http://vadim.oversigma.com/Tetris.htm)

Re:Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

"The man got little more than a new computer and a modest bonus"

witch isn't fair, but...
the people that *make* games in the west, more often than not, are paid similarly by the people that *own* them.
that is: a salary and, in case the game turns up to be a good game, a bonus.
so in this particular case Soviet Russia is equal to most of the west's game industry.

Re:Summary

[timeOday]

I don't think striking it rich by writing a simple but hugely entertaining video game was a road to riches for any citizen of the Soviet Union... was it? Which is the downfall of communism, in a nutshell.

Though he probably wouldn't have got rich in the US either. The school or company would have asserted ownership rights since the computer he developed it on, was theirs. Which is the downfall of capitalism, in a nutshell :)

Re:Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Alexey Pajitnov, who, despite creating Tetris made comparatively little money off of it

So what? Don't most /.'ers complain about evil authors and musicians expecting to continue to make profits long after they finish their work? He got a computer and a bonus. What else should he have gotten? Should he still be earning royalties for every copy downloaded to a phone today?

Make up your minds. If you're for denying creators' rights to their work after they finish it, be consistent.

Re:Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

So you were BOTH innocents, and we have no evidence that HE hated YOU, but evidence that YOU hated HIM. Yup, still a jerk.

Re:Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Edison got rich because he was a great businessman.

Edison was a *horrible* businessman. He nearly ruined almost every business that he touched, and only after he was gently pushed aside did the business he owned do well. He always gets thrown out as an example in management classes.

Re:Summary

[paazin]

So you were BOTH innocents, and we have no evidence that HE hated YOU, but evidence that YOU hated HIM. Yup, still a jerk.

Reply when you get a clue, AC. Unless you've lived under a true totalitarian regime you've really no place to talk - and I'm afraid Obamanation doesn't count.

It's completely understandable that someone would loathe the citizens of the country that invaded and controlled his own, as a puppet state.

Re:Summary

[tepples]

others would make rip-off clones, and he would try to shut them down legally

But Pajitnov never got a U.S. patent, and copyright doesn't apply to game rules.

Re:Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though it's a shame he didn't make the money that others made from his work, he himself has stated that he doesn't think about that; what he did get was out of the Soviet Union as a result of it.

All the FOSS "revolutionaries" out there think they can relate to that, but they can't.

Re:Summary

[E IS mC(Square)]

Wow. What a fascinating history. Thank you for that. I knew Tetris deals had a checkered past, but did not know it was behind rise and fall of mighty companies of 80s,90s and today. And sad story too, how the inventor of the game got almost nothing out of it!

Re:Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Stive!!!

Re:Summary

[ForShizzle]

Tetris is SO unrealisitc

Re:Summary

[roger6106]

Aren't there any games made just for fun. Here's the story of Pac-Man.

Re:Summary

[dkleinsc]

I was referring to "smaller and weaker" as the generation as a whole, not the average of its members. If the average person is stronger, but there are fewer of them, then the other side still has an advantage.

Especially in the case of China, this numbers game obviously completely worked.

Re:Summary

[LWATCDR]

Wow that is scary. Not only can't people tell when your kidding but they can not bother reading more than one line!!!!

Re:Summary

[shutdown -p now]

We were the innocents suffering under it, moron.

All citizens of all countries of the Warsaw Pact were suffering under it. Russians were no exception. In fact, if you go by the numbers of victims, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians took the worst of it.

It is rather sad to see the Soviet oppression - which applied to everyone, regarding of their nationality or ethnicity - being recast as Russians oppressing other nations nowadays in Eastern Europe, and the associated Russophobia.

Re:Summary

[shutdown -p now]

It's completely understandable that someone would loathe the citizens of the country that invaded and controlled his own, as a puppet state.

No, it's not at all understandable, when citizens of the country that invaded you are really not any better off, and are similarly controlled and oppressed.

If the USSR was a democratic state when it took over Hungary, he'd had a point - after all, it could be said then that Soviet aggression against his country was the will of the people of the USSR. But it wasn't; it was the unelected dictators, both when Hungary was occupied, and when the Hungarian Revolution was brutally suppressed.

Re:Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

And chairs get thrown out as Microsoft management style examples.

Re:Summary

[Yvan256]

He should have collected a royalty on each copy sold, up to five years ago.

Re:Summary

[Snarf You]

Tetris is SO unrealisitc

I can't figure out if you were trying to be funny or not, but Tetris (and its "opposite" Jenga) were great practice for many things to be encountered later in life:

• Packing a box or suitcase
• Loading a trunk or truck with items of different shapes and sizes
• Fitting frozen goods of various shapes and sizes into a small freezer, and later, extricating one of them without having all of the others come with it

Re:Summary

[paazin]

As a citizen of the USSR, they did indeed have influence - minuscule, perhaps, but certainly more than the average Hungarian.

If one does nothing, he is still complicit; the leaders of a nation are accountable to those being governed no matter what the government - if that popular base is entirely eroded, the regime cannot last.

Re:Summary

[asdf7890]

And sad story too, how the inventor of the game got almost nothing out of it!

Aye. Though he did end up doing well enough in the end (not as well as he could have done when you consider how much various companies made, but he certainly seems comfortable be all accounts).

Re:Summary

[shutdown -p now]

If one does nothing, he is still complicit

Who's to say that nothing was actually done? If you don't hear about successful uprisings, it's because they weren't successful...

But keep in mind that everyone looking even remotely like a political activist was weeded out during Stalin's purges, and that memory was still very fresh in minds of the people during the whole Hungarian affair.

If one does nothing, he is still complicit; the leaders of a nation are accountable to those being governed no matter what the government - if that popular base is entirely eroded, the regime cannot last.

It is true, but regimes do not fall overnight, either. USSR did fall eventually precisely because of the reasons you describe, but it took time.

In any case, Pajitnov was born one year before the Hungarian Revolution. He definitely didn't have any say in what was happening then.

Re:Summary

[Dutch Gun]

It wouldn't have happened in the US either? Exactly how many counter-examples do you need? Plenty of game developers have created successful games and gone on to start successful companies. Many of those developers would now be classified as "rich" by most standards.

As an employee, you risk less and gain less. The company is paying your wages, and therefore, the company reaps the rewards. In order to strike it big, you must first be willing to risk your *own* capital to finance the chance of such achievement.

Seems reasonably fair to me.

Re:Summary

[drinkypoo]

The joke's on them. I am now an expert box and grocery bag packer.

Re:Summary

[smithmc]

The school or company would have asserted ownership rights since the computer he developed it on, was theirs. Which is the downfall of capitalism, in a nutshell :)

Explain how that constitutes the downfall of anything. Why is a programmer entitled to get rich by using someone else's property, on someone else's paid time? If that programmer wants to strike it rich, he can buy a computer and work on it in his basement. Which is exactly what a lot of programmers did do, who did strike it rich.

Re:Summary

[Jurily]

But keep in mind that everyone looking even remotely like a political activist was weeded out during Stalin's purges, and that memory was still very fresh in minds of the people during the whole Hungarian affair.

Not quite. The Russian people had no expectation of democracy, and a deeply ingrained fear and respect for authority. Before the communist revolution, they had czarism, the most absolute form of monarchy. Even today, Putin's regime tends to gravitate towards that.

USSR did fall eventually precisely because of the reasons you describe, but it took time.

No. The USSR fell eventually because the planned economy did not take the people into account. Just an example: you have a factory that makes locks, and you measure the output by weight, What do the people do? They make big fucking locks. Considering that there was no market for locks to warrant a whole factory, you can imagine how much good that did to the economy. Rinse and repeat for every area of production, and you wonder how this system lasted as long as it did.

It didn't. It was supported by a shadow economy of comparable size: the people recreated a whole quasi-capitalist system of favors, illegally of course. If you worked at a washing mashine factory, you "brought home" parts on a regular basis, and used those to fix washing mashines for a living. Sometimes you even used the tools at your workplace. The system worked because absolutely everyone was doing it.

I don't really think any of you "westerners" can truly understand this mentality without experiencing it, just like I'm having trouble understanding your obsession with contracts and paperwork.

P.S. Tax evasion is still a Hungarian national sport.

P.P.S.

Towards the end of Jimmy Carter's presidency, and continued strongly through the subsequent presidency of Ronald Reagan, the United States rejected disarmament and tried to restart the arms race through the production of new weapons and anti-weapons systems. The central part of this strategy was the Strategic Defense Initiative, a space based anti-ballistic missile system derided as "Star Wars" by its critics. During the second part of 1980s, the Soviet economy was teetering towards collapse and was unable to match American arms spending.

Re:Summary

[smithmc]

"The man got little more than a new computer and a modest bonus"

witch isn't fair, but...
the people that *make* games in the west, more often than not, are paid similarly by the people that *own* them.
that is: a salary and, in case the game turns up to be a good game, a bonus.
so in this particular case Soviet Russia is equal to most of the west's game industry.

Are you seriously comparing Soviet-era vs. Silicon Valley programmers' salaries?

Re:Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

To whomever rated the parent -1 Redundant...I would've given it a +1 Funny...

Re:Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Your name is Stive?

Re:Summary

[shutdown -p now]

Your mistake is assuming I'm a westerner. I am, in fact, Russian, even though I was born in 80s, and so only witnessed the sunset of the Soviet empire. Though I don't live in Russia these days, and I generally tend to disassociate from Russia as a state (I didn't vote for Putin or Medvedev or any of their clique, and I strongly dislike the direction they're taking the country, and their methods).

Now, from that perspective...

Not quite. The Russian people had no expectation of democracy

You're very, very wrong. It was only because of the expectation of, and the desire to defend, the newborn Russian democracy, that the 1991 reactionary Soviet putsch was quashed. It wasn't done just by force of arms - it was done because people wanted it to happen, and openly supported clearly pro-democratic and liberal Yeltsin against the commie old guard. Later on, same thing happened in 1993. In retrospect, seeing TV programs and reading newspapers from 1990-1993 or so, it is very clear that freedom was "in the air", so to speak, and expectations of it were high for the majority.

The reason why Russia reverted to authoritarianism under Putin eventually was because of severe disillusionment with Yeltsin's economic policies, which messed up the country pretty bad, and had set up the unfortunate stereotypes of "democrats/liberals = thieves" in the minds of many. But it didn't have to be that way.

Re:Summary

[Risha]

It's called the Tetris effect, believe it or not. Even people with anterograde amnesia experience it, despite not remembering playing the game!

Re:Summary

[16Chapel]

http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF206-Game_Boy.gif

Re:Summary

[FilatovEV]

Read less of American newspapers. Who does Russia oppress in Eastern Europe? There are lots of guys claiming stuff like that, because they are imbeciles, morons, and can't change their Russophobic mind 20 years since the collapse of the Communism.

Re:Summary

[shutdown -p now]

Read less of American newspapers. Who does Russia oppress in Eastern Europe? There are lots of guys claiming stuff like that, because they are imbeciles, morons, and can't change their Russophobic mind 20 years since the collapse of the Communism.

I'm Russian, so I know things first-hand, thank you very much. I don't need to read American newspapers to know how screwed up things were - why, I've read Soviet ones...

As for who the Soviet Union (which I spoke about in my previous post, and not about Russia) oppressed in Eastern Europe - let me just name a few events: Katyn massacre; Hungarian Revolution; Prague Spring. Enough for starters? 'cause the list is long.

Of course, it's twice as long if one considers all the atrocities that were perpetrated on the territory of, and to the people of, Soviet Union itself - including Russians.

Re:Summary

[FilatovEV]

Okey then. I'm also Russian, and I regard your right to have your view, but I entirely disagree with it.

Re:Summary

[tygerstripes]

Hungarian, not Russian. As is the biro. Both of them fall apart if you twist them too hard.

Re:Summary

[shutdown -p now]

I regard your right to have your view, but I entirely disagree with it.

My views are one thing, but facts are facts. Or are you willing to argue that e.g. Katyn massacre wasn't perpetrated by NKVD?

Re:Summary

[BoothbyTCD]

Makers of rouge do in fact get paid, unless you shoplift their products from the drugstore...

Re:Summary

[FilatovEV]

There are different views on it. One view is exactly, that Katyn massacre was done by NKVD officers. But I didn't dig much into it.

Re:Summary

[alexo]

NetHack's DevTeam doesn't want money for what they do--awesome.

For the record, NetHack's DevTeam has been MIA since December 2003.

Re:Summary

[Maximum Prophet]

You're certainly healthier both physically and mentally.

Re:Summary

[Maximum Prophet]

There's a cartoon in Don Lancaster's "Incredible Secret Money Machine" by b. kliban that shows a bum-like dude on a beach and an accountant at a desk with a clock in the background. The title is "Wasted and Useful Lives".

Perhaps the short end of the stick isn't the worst end. I've been told that amongst the northwest Native Americans, the lowest figure on the totem pole is the chief, the one that carries everyone else. Our culture interprets the "Low Man on the Totem Pole", to be the worst job, perhaps we need a change of view.

Re:Summary

[FishWithAHammer]

Good point. Is there any activity at all?

Me, I've been playing a lot of Sporkhack lately. Also thinking about writing a RL in my free time.

Best of Arcade games

[Anonymous Coward]

Without doubt, the best of all the arcade games ever. Who has not tried to arrange blocks even in real life after getting hooked onto tetris.

Re:Best of Arcade games

[Red Flayer]

Who has not tried to arrange blocks even in real life after getting hooked onto Tetris.

I know, right? I mean, in high school I got a summer job loading hay bales into trucks just to work on my Tetris skills.

It had the unfortunate side effect of sculpting my upper body into the form of Adonis, and all the attention from women prevented me from playing Tetris as much as I wanted -- but man, my fitting-blocks-into-a-confined-space skills really blossomed that summer.

If you graduated from playing Tetris to moving blocks in real life, you may have had a problem.

Or maybe it's me with the problem, as I simply cannot comprehend the depths of your nerdhood. I bow before you, nerdly master.

Re:Best of Arcade games

[teh.f4ll3n]

Most certainly is! Ah, the blisters in my thumbs blaying the hand-held day and night, the "come on, you lazy piece of crap, fall faster" shouts while you're still on low levels (and no, hitting down button still wasn't fast enough)... Those were the days...

Re:Best of Arcade games

[Ethanol-fueled]

Who has not tried to arrange blocks even in real life after getting hooked onto tetris.

Ask Homer Simpson.

Re:Best of Arcade games

[sexconker]

Shit.
Tetris is the best game of all time.

Yes, that includes sports, board games, and sexual games.

Re:Best of Arcade games

[bFusion]

I actually made some shelves with a friend that resemble tetris blocks. Like these only not ridiculously expensive.

Re:Best of Arcade games

[Blakey Rat]

It had the unfortunate side effect of sculpting my upper body into the form of Adonis, and all the attention from women prevented me from playing Tetris as much as I wanted -- but man, my fitting-blocks-into-a-confined-space skills really blossomed that summer.

Wow, I wouldn't have guessed this guy was on Slashdot!

Re:Best of Arcade games

[Chad Birch]

Appropriately referred to as "The Tetris Effect"

Re:Best of Arcade games

[Yvan256]

Either you didn't watch the video or you're the one who made it. In both cases, shame on you.

Re:Best of Arcade games

[hurfy]

Why not? I graduated to stuffing random shaped boxes in the company van for a run across state. Full to the brim and barely a hole left to toss in a lunch box :)

Re:Best of Arcade games

[Ignatius D'Lusional]

Wait... they made ARCADE versions of Tetris?

Re:Best of Arcade games

[tygerstripes]

It can be a problem.

Re:Best of Arcade games

[tygerstripes]

And a film.

who want's frist post?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want fourth for the tetris :D

In Soviet Russia....

[motherpusbucket]

oh, nevermind. Happy birthday Tetris! I continue to lose hours of my life playing this classic!

Re:In Soviet Russia....

[russlar]

In Soviet Russia, puzzle builds you!

Happy Birthday, Tetris. Lots of good memories playing it on my original Game Boy.

In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Tetris turns you 25!

errr.. i never got those jokes...

One Quarter of A Century...

[hardwarejunkie9]

... and still people dress up as tetris blocks for halloween. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUs_IEfRSNQ) Boggles the mind at just how much of a social phenomena that little Russian game is.

Re:One Quarter of A Century...

[MadKeithV]

That's just because you go to parties made up mostly of squares.

Re:One Quarter of A Century...

[Anonymous Coward]

Touche, sir. Inevitably, however, those Z-blocks will always show up at the exact wrong time.

Re:One Quarter of A Century...

[gt6062b]

It's slashdot, the parties are overwhelmingly attaended by a bunch of sticks.

Re:One Quarter of A Century...

[BlindSpot]

Yes but at least at those parties you're guaranteed a foursome in every possible position.

If your browser supports SVG

[MillionthMonkey]

(e.g. Firefox) http://www.croczilla.com/svg/samples/svgtetris/svgtetris.svg

Re:If your browser supports SVG

[drkamil]

very nice! looks good and feels good, but i have a question to you dear slashdotters: do you know a windows version of tetris that is more like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1mvhDVzr7g quite extreme, but i am looking for a challenge

Re:If your browser supports SVG

[brindleboar]

Wow, where did THAT hour go?....

Re:If your browser supports SVG

[gEvil (beta)]

Posted at 11:37AM
(e.g. Firefox) http://www.croczilla.com/svg/samples/svgtetris/svgtetris.svg

Posted at 11:52AM
Wow, where did THAT hour go?....

It clearly went into some sort of timewarp where an hour now equals 15 minutes...

Re:If your browser supports SVG

[just_another_sean]

Just make sure your patched first.

Re:If your browser supports SVG

[Anonymous Coward]

Texmaster is a very good clone of the Tetris the Grandmaster series by Arika.

Sadly, you won't be able to find many videos of tetris clones on youtube because of the takedown notices sent from The Tetris Company.

Re:If your browser supports SVG

[pjt33]

My browser supports the game but doesn't seem to do key repeat, which means that at later levels you have to bash the keyboard. It's an interesting concept, but AFAIC it's not there yet.

Re:If your browser supports SVG

[geekoid]

Since we are talking about Tetris, I suspect that 'hour' was 24 hours and 15 minutes

Oh Great

[sys.stdout.write]

Now I'm going to have the Tetris song stuck in my head all day.

Thanks, Slashdot.

Re:Oh Great

[socz]

Which one? :P

Re:Oh Great

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHA! I've been whistling Theme A for about 10 minutes and didn't realize it until reading your comment. 0_o

Tetris has an amazing effect on the brain.

Re:Oh Great

[sys.stdout.write]

The one that goes "do do do do, do do do, do do do, do do do, do do, do, do, do, do..."

Re:Oh Great

[socz]

oh great, i wasn't sure. i thought it was the one that goes "dan daan, daran dan dan, daran dan dan, daran dan dan, daran dan dan, dadada..."

Grrr blocks

[Niris]

25 years of people waking up screaming in the middle of the night about those god damn Z and square blocks popping up at the most inappropriate times.

I wrote a Tetris game in Java...

[tcopeland]

...seven years ago; JNLP-enabled launcher and code and whatnot are here.

It was a great exercise, and among other things it taught me that just because I had skimmed through Game Programming Gems I didn't really know how to code up a game.

Happy Anniversary

[bagsta]

Happy 25th anniversary Tetris... :)

Ztetris port available?

[ghee22]

Ztetris by Jimmy Mardell for TI calculators is, by far, my favorite version of tetris. I have yet to find another version of tetris that has the option in multiplayer to send scrambled lines to your opponent. If anyone is aware of one, please share! The world of assembly compiled TI-85 tetrising is increasingly becoming lonely.

Re:Ztetris port available?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Gameboy Tetris did in multiplayer. =)

Other versions as well, including the short lived arcade version.

Re:Ztetris port available?

[MightyMait]

Oh, I remember the glee when somebody discovered the magic button sequence to play Tetris on the Tectronix digital oscilloscopes in EE lab.

Re:Ztetris port available?

[shentino]

Statistically speaking, one should have an overage of I pieces if everything is randomly distributed.

To make a 4-line clear, you need 40 squares. Each piece takes 4 squares, so you'd need 1 in 10 pieces to be I pieces. As that's just shy of the 1 in 7 you'd get from random distribution.

Anyone having persistent shortages of I pieces is either astronomically unlucky or is playing an unrandom game.

Re:Ztetris port available?

[klausboop]

For multiplayer where you send garbage to your opponent, what you want is Tetris for the Nintendo DS. As essential on the DS as it was on the earlier Game Boys, this is a tremendous value in that you can do a 10-player local (line of site) game when only one of you has the cartridge. You can also play against three people online.

Ooh, and they released Tetris via WiiWare and its multiplayer lets you send garbage as well.

I always loved Tetris Attack for the SNES (and Gameboy Color), and was disappointed that they didn't include that as one of the modes in Tetris DS. However, Planet Puzzle League plays very similarly.

Re:Ztetris port available?

[ghee22]

I have Tetris WiiWare! I could not find an option for garbage that truly sends scrambled lines with multiple holes. Would you mind spelling out where I can enable that option?

Re:Ztetris port available?

[quincunx55555]

You definitely need to check out http://www.ericjorgensen.com/Eittris.htmlEITTris!

Now...

[NES HQ]

... If only I could get one of those damned long straight blocks to finish my Tetris!

BBC Documentary

[Orome]

I'd highly recommend getting hold of the BBC documentary "Tetris : From Russia with love". Link

Also, there was a game design challenge a few years ago at GDC. Mr. Pajitnov was one of the participants (and the eventual winner I think), and I loved the way he approached the problem

Link

Re:BBC Documentary

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd highly recommend getting hold of the BBC documentary "Tetris : From Russia with love".

Better links:

Torrent 1
Torrent 2 (Big honking file of documentaries, including the Tetris one.)

Re:BBC Documentary

[mcubed]

Cool ... thx for highlighting this.

I am not a gamer. On the plus side, that made it much easier for me to ditch Windows some years ago, since I never cared about this or that beloved game that I couldn't play without Windows. On the minus side, it means I generally skip over a lot of Slashdot articles.

But there are two computer/arcade games I love -- Tetris and PacMan. Pong was fun for about two hours, the first time I played it on my friend's dad's Apple something back in the late '70s. I've never grown tired of Tetris, though -- here's to the next 25 years.

And here is steriogram tetris

[E IS mC(Square)]

Thanks for the link. Here is another interesting version - stereogram tetris: http://3dimka.deviantart.com/art/3D-Stereogram-Tetris-36795242

Re:And here is steriogram tetris

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap, that is bizarre.

Re:And here is steriogram tetris

[Anonymous Coward]

I've NEVER been able to resolve stereograms like that... until today.
Perhaps because it's tetris, it appeared naturally, clear as day.

Hours of tetris.

Falling like the autumn leaves.

My eyes are tired.

25th bday celebration

[Anonymous Coward]

so uh..i hear there's a block party

L-Block's great victory

[Nakor BlueRider]

I still remember L-Block winning the 2008 GameFAQs Character Battle.

Should Tetris be protected?

[Late Adopter]

It seems like one of the more unique situations where protections under some sort of patent law might be justifiable. There's little doubt that the idea was unique and non-obvious, but that upon release, reimplementation was trivial.

Should Alexey Pajitnov be granted exclusive rights to release games with Tetris-like gameplay for limited time? Is it in society's best interest? Or do we benefit more by allowing the knockoffs to continue? After all, there's no clear evidence that lack of rules protection has STOPPED unique and interesting games from coming out.

I'm curious to get people's opinions.

Pajitnov bad man

[heri0n]

This is also a guy who screwed his friends over once he made the big bucks. Vladimir Pokhilko [sfgate.com] eventually killed his family and himself. Vadim Gerasimov [oversigma.com] who ported the original game to MSDOS and was one of the original developers did not receive any credit for his work. I have been playing Tetris a lot lately on Nintendo DS and on Facebook and love it. However, I hate Pajitnov for not making this game more freely available. I used to play Tetris on a Korean gaming site netmarble.com (it was also available on similar site hangame.com). These versions were also highly addictive and had a huge userbase (easily over 10,000 users). They were shut down due to threats of legal action from the Tetris company... If Tetris were only released under the GPL... (Hangame has licensed tetris since)

Re:Pajitnov bad man

[heri0n]

oops forgot links http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1998/09/24/NEWS7742.dtl http://vadim.oversigma.com/Tetris.htm

Re:Pajitnov bad man

[bonch]

Uh, why should he make his game "more freely available?" Why would you hate him for protecting his property so that he can make a living?

Re:Pajitnov bad man

[Leafheart]

Once I heard someone say on a discussion about a game that were leaving free beta and going to payed production:

- Noone should pay for entertainment. It should be free for all.

I have never been so amused and sad when I realized he wasn't a troll.

Re:Pajitnov bad man

[dwpro]

Your sig is evidently not true.

Happy Birthday

[gubers33]

You can now rent a car tetris.

Tetrinet, anyone?

[tlhIngan]

And who can forget the years lost playing Tetrinet?

Nothing like playing with a bunch of friends over a LAN or the Internet... Heck, I still remember some of the crazy cheats that were possible by misusing the text box. (They don't work anymore, and most servers will kick you if you try).

I had some nice Tetrinet themes (a few MIDs of the Tetris music, plus a nice "cheater" skin...).

Tetris is Hard!

[roskoff]

Even serious research were made: http://slashdot.org/games/02/10/24/2251234.shtml?tid=127

Tetristory

[DynaSoar]

Two uses Tetris has been put to over the years:

Training through Neurofeedback (EEG biofeedback) kids with ADD to be able to maintain attention despite distractions.

Preliminary testing of helicopter pilot trainees in the Hungarian air force; testing ability to maintain attention with increased activity. EEG was used to validate the early results, but the after that the game score itself was adequate.

As for Pajitnov not getting his due, it was after all, Soviet Russia. Nobody got, or could even expect, getting something due them across the Iron curtain. This was only a game. There was an complete cyrillic based Apple //e system produced over there for years. The major stimulus for that? AppleWorks 1.3 was being used as the primary inventory data handling app by the Red Army from the unit level up. Version 1.4 was hacked to work on their cyrillic machine. Apple never saw dime one from any of that.

Re:Tetristory

[Anonymous Coward]

so AppleWorks is the real reason for the fall of the Soviet Union.

Another kind of Twilight Zone

[dword]

Wait a minute... are you implying that intellectual property should be considered property? People should get paid for their ideas? On Slashdot? And you're getting modded Informative? *

* the ideas expressed in this post are not my beliefs, they are presented only for their ironic humor

Re:Another kind of Twilight Zone

[Spatial]

Wait a minute... are you implying that intellectual property should be considered property?

Out of curiosity, on what grounds do people say otherwise? Scarcity differences?

Thinking about it offhand, property ownership is just as 'imaginary' as the intellectual variety when it comes down to it. Common to both is that ownership is in the mind, with only a legal construct to back it up. It just so happens that we respect each other's physical property a bit more, probably due to territorial instinct.

[Insert a million comments correcting my ill-thought-out post]

Re:Another kind of Twilight Zone

[vertinox]

Wait a minute... are you implying that intellectual property should be considered property?

Actually if they respected the intellectual property, they would have paid the Soviet Union and not the author simply because all copyrightable works were deemed property of the state who got the licensing fees.

Of course to be fair, the Soviet government still paid you know matter what your performance was after that so its pretty much the same as what the RIAA and MPAA want for their works.... Eternal socialist government guaranteed income regardless of quality.

Re:Another kind of Twilight Zone

[selven]

No, no, no. Individuals are allowed to violate copyright, even if its some indie developer living on $15k/year. Once two individuals formally declare themselves as a corporation, however, it becomes a horrible crime* *Unless the copyright holder is an even bigger organization

Auto Insurance

[jsnipy]

Did Tetris' auto insurance rates go down?

Re:Auto Insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you've never tried playing while driving or I think you'd know the answer to that question.

Tetris predcessor: pentamino

[sw155kn1f3]

Not sure if this game was any popular in US or Europe, but it was quite popular in USSR circa 80s (for small kids of course). I had the game and very much enjoyed it.
I still have it at my mother's.

Here's the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentomino

So it's not very hard to guess where the guy got idea from. Of course this takes a lot of luck and genius to turn into addictive game ;)

Re:Tetris predcessor: pentamino

[TheRaven64]

Pentominos were a prominent plot device in Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth, published in 1975.

Re:Tetris predcessor: pentamino

[radarsat1]

Interesting, I remember playing that when I was younger on my game boy.

Kind of makes sense.. take a board game that is based on pure, off-line (that is, non-timed) thought, make it a bit easier but add a time limit and an element of chance, and you have the recipe for an addictive game.

I guess

[Anonymous Coward]

...This guy has been playing for 25 years then...

Tetris Documentary

[werdnapk]

A documentary was made about Tetris a number of years back... http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/tetris.shtml Very interesting watch. Here's the torrent... http://www.mininova.org/tor/1010798 Enjoy.

Possibly one of the best games ever

[thetoadwarrior]

Tetris is still simply amazing. It's a shame the guy got screwed out of a load of money because you just knew that nothing he'd create afterwards would reach the awesomeness of Tetris.

Verifiability != truth

[tepples]

You realize that sometimes Wikijerks prevent people from revising an article to present the truth, right?

Wikipedia has never cared about the truth but about verifiability. It defines an encyclopedia article to contain information that is verifiable against reliable secondary sources. And yes, the Wikipedia article mentions The Tetris Company (or should I say The TetriSCOmpany?).

Re:Verifiability != truth

[Chabo]

Yes, I know that verifiability is Wikipedia's standard, but there are still power-hungry, freetime-rich jerks who do everything they can to prevent "their" article from being changed from the state they want it to stay.

These individuals, not vandals, are the most frustrating aspect of attempting to contribute to Wikipedia.

Re:Verifiability != truth

[TinBromide]

If only they stopped with the semi-legal wrangling in the late 90's...

But what is his property?

[tepples]

Uh, why should he make his game "more freely available?" Why would you hate him for protecting his property so that he can make a living?

But what exactly is his property? Had Pajitnov patented Tetris, it would have expired by now. Copyright is not intended to protect game rules, and I don't see how trademark would apply to games with names like Lockjaw. The Tetris Company's claim that other tetromino games are copies of Tetris starts to sound like SCO's claim that Linux is a copy of UNIX.

Hum

[KlaymenDK]

I was going to say something witty, but the characters of the two-liner matched up so perfectly that they disappeared in a puff of points.

Bastard Tetris

[domatic]

http://fph.altervista.org/prog/bastet.html

There was a /. article about it a few years back. It always tries to choose the worst possible block for the next block coming up. Need that long 4 square block? You'll get a evilly oriented z-block....

Overrated

[Stormwatch]

Tetris is nice, but I'd take Puyo Puyo or Columns over it any time.

Happy B-day Tetris!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Happy B-day Tetris!!

Tetris fugit

[wrencherd]

Wow.

It seems more like 25 minutes ago when the rows started piling up.

Great keyboard game.

the real reason for the fall of the Soviet Union

[Anonymous Coward]

'nuff said.

Tetris creator playing WoW as a woman.

[Radiant_Zer0]

Wired sez: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/06/tetris-warcraft

it's true what they say

[vesuvana]

Crap. Now I really feel old, even though technically I'm not. So the old adage really does hold!

Re:Summary (Another Take)

[bigredradio]

Funny, I wonder if this works...

don't think striking it rich by writing a simple but hugely entertaining video game was a road to riches for any Free Software developer... was it? Which is the downfall of Open Source, in a nutshell.

I wonder if that same applies?

A dream of Tetris

[NotPeteMcCabe]

When I was working at Merrill Lynch, programming in APL, when Tetris hit. Nobody got anything done for a month or two, until we banned Tetris.

I remember one night I had a dream in which Tetris-shaped blocks of APL characters would come in from the right, and I had to rotate and move them around so that not only would they fill the space, but the resulting program had to run. I woke up in a cold sweat. That was when I knew I had been playing too much Tetris.

Now that I have kids it's probably time to hook them on Tetris. You know -- before they learn APL.

and the guy that wrote Forrest Gump?

[Anonymous Coward]

and the guy that invented FM? the guy who wrote Spongebob, and the guy that invented intermittent wiping... oh screw it, im sure your capitalist fantasy world has workers being rewarded for their creativity instead of being punished for challenging the status quo or upsetting the politicis of the corporation

should verasimov and pokhilko make it free to him?

[Anonymous Coward]

they helped him for free originally,

thats the problem.. you want to apply private property rights selectively.

ie, that goes against the principle that the law applies the same to everyone.

which is the foundation of civilized society not to mention democracy

how many US companies use pirated software?

[Anonymous Coward]

this idea that the soviets 'dont reward work' and the americans do, its just so factually incorrect, its hilarious and sad.

  US inventors get screwed frequently, and US companies and governments 'neglect' to pay for software, frequently.

and the whole system, MS included, just wink.

Compensation on demand?

[jonaskoelker]

it's certainly not like the creators shouldn't be compensated if they so wish

You make it sound like you argue that if software writers want to be compensated for their efforts, someone should.

I wrote `filling', http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/java/filling.html. Where's my money?

I patched Battle for Wesnoth, Nexuiz, Fluxbox, Openbox, slocate, and a buncha' other programs. Where's my money?

I'm not entitled to any money for writing that code. I can ask people to pay me money. I can ask companies to pay me money to write whatever code they want me to write.

If I feel like it, I can even write some code myself, offer it to people in exchange for money, and forbid them from sharing that code with other people.

That's what the world is. Now let's discuss what the world should be.

I think there should be economic incentives to create the software that people benefit the most from in a cost-effective way. (i.e. lots of bang, maximal bang for the buck). Is that by a hands-off free market-esque policy (i.e. copyrights don't cover software)? Is it by short copyright terms? Is it by long copyright terms? Is it by the current restrictions on the freedoms of the masses, or a smaller or a larger set?

I'm not sure. But don't make the mistake of justifying the law because it is what it is at this instant in time. The law should follow, not lead, our collective sense of morality.

No surprise it was Russian who came up with this

[OutputLogic]

It's no surprising it was Russian who came up with Tetris and Hungarian who came up with Rubik's Cube. Russian and Eastern European science education is well-known for its quality and rigor. Russian students usually take first places in ACM programming contests. Too bad so much resources were diverted into military in the Soviet era. Otherwise we'd see more gems like Tetris and Rubik's Cube.

Tetrinet

[zoocey]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TetriNET

How much longer until it's public domain?

[Supergibbs]

I miss Tris...