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Tetris Turns 25

Posted by timothy on from the where-were-you dept.

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.'"

3 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. BBC Documentary by Orome · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  2. Re:Summary by TinBromide · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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  3. Tetristory by DynaSoar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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