Tetris
Series of puzzle video games From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tetris (Russian: Тетрис)[a] is a series of puzzle video games created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov, a Soviet software engineer. In Tetris games, falling tetromino shapes must be neatly sorted into a pile; once a horizontal line of the game board is filled in, it disappears, granting points and preventing the pile from overflowing. Different versions of Tetris have introduced altered game mechanics, with some becoming standard over time. More than 200 versions of Tetris have been published by numerous companies on more than 65 platforms. Tetris is the second-best-selling video game franchise, with over 520 million sales, mostly on mobile.
| Tetris | |
|---|---|
| |
| Genre(s) | |
| Creator(s) | Alexey Pajitnov |
| Platform(s) | Various |
| First release | Tetris (Spectrum HoloByte) January 27, 1988 |
| Latest release | Tetris Forever November 12, 2024 |
| Spin-offs | Tetris: The Grand Master |
In the 1980s, Pajitnov worked for the Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences, where he programmed Tetris on the Elektronika 60 and adapted it to the IBM PC with the help of Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov. Floppy disk copies were distributed freely throughout Moscow, before spreading to Eastern Europe. Robert Stein of Andromeda Software licensed Tetris to Mirrorsoft in the UK and Spectrum HoloByte in the US. Both companies released the game in 1988 to commercial success and sold licenses to other companies, including Henk Rogers' Bullet-Proof Software. Rogers negotiated with Elektronorgtechnica, the state-owned organization in charge of licensing Soviet software, to license Tetris to Nintendo for the Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System (NES); both versions were released in 1989. The Game Boy version became the best-selling version of Tetris and one of the best-selling video games of all time, with 35 million sales, which popularized the console. In 1996, after the rights reverted to Pajitnov, he and Rogers formed the Tetris Company to manage licensing.
Tetris has been influential in the genre of puzzle video games and popular culture. It is an early example of a casual game and it is represented in a vast array of media such as architecture and art. It has been the subject of academic research, including studies of its potential for psychological intervention. A competitive culture has formed around Tetris, particularly the NES version. Players, typically adolescents, have competed at the annual Classic Tetris World Championship since 2010. It is often ranked among the greatest video games and was among the first games inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame in 2015. A film dramatization of the game's development was released in 2023.
Gameplay
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Tetris is a series of puzzle video games with a consistent general design across its numerous entries.[1] Gameplay consists of a rectangular field in which tetromino pieces,[b] geometric shapes consisting of four connected squares, descend from the top-center. During the descent, the player can move the piece horizontally and rotate them until they touch the bottom of the field or another piece.[3][4] The player's goal is to stack the pieces in the field to create horizontal lines of blocks.[5] When a line is completed, it disappears, and the blocks placed above fall one row. As lines are cleared, the speed of the descending pieces increase. The game ends if the accumulated pieces in the field block other pieces from entering the field, a process known as "topping out".[4] Common mechanics among Tetris variants include soft drop (the ability to increase the descent of the piece), hard drop (instantly placing the piece as far down as it can go), and holding (reserving a piece for later use).[5]
The objective of Tetris is to collect as many points as possible during a gameplay session by clearing lines.[3] Tetris's scoring system has remained mostly consistent since Tetris DS (2006) with some exceptions. Points gained during gameplay increase with the descent speed. The more lines cleared at once, the higher the score for a line clear; clearing four lines at once using an I-piece is referred to as a "Tetris". The player can also gain points by using hard drops or soft drops.[5] There are advanced techniques that can gain more points than a Tetris, including T-spins (spinning a T-piece into a blocked gap), perfect clears (emptying the field following a line clear), and combos (clearing lines with multiple pieces in a row).[6]
History
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The first version of Tetris, completed in 1985, run on an emulator of the Elektronika 60
A screenshot of the 1986 IBM PC version developed by Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov
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The version designed by Spectrum Holobyte contained Soviet-related images (Amiga version screenshot, 1988)
Creation (1984–1985)
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Alexey Pajitnov was a speech recognition and artificial intelligence researcher for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences.[7] Pajitnov developed several puzzle games on the institute's Elektronika 60,[8] an archaic Russian clone of the PDP-11 computer.[9] In June 1984, he became inspired to convert pentomino tiling puzzles to the computer[10][11] after he bought a pentomino puzzle set from a store and played with it in his office.[12]
Pajitnov wrote Tetris using Pascal for the RT-11 operating system on the Elektronika 60[13] and experimented with different versions.[14] Because the Elektronika 60 had no graphical interface, Pajitnov modeled the field and pieces using spaces and brackets.[14] He 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.[10] Afterward, he programmed the basic mechanics, including the ability to flip tetrominoes as they fell in a vertical screen and the clearing of lines.[10][15] The name Tetris was a combination of "tetra" (meaning "four") and Pajitnov's favorite sport, tennis.[16][17] Pajitnov completed the first version of Tetris c. 1985.[c] This version had no scoring system and no levels[19] but Pajitnov's peers were captivated.[20][21]
Pajitnov sought to port Tetris to the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC), which had a higher-quality display than the Elektronika 60. He recruited his colleague Dmitry Pavlovsky and the 16-year-old computer prodigy Vadim Gerasimov.[22][23] Using Turbo Pascal,[13] the three adapted Tetris to the IBM PC over two months, with Gerasimov incorporating color and Pavlovsky incorporating a scoreboard.[22][24] Floppy disk copies of this version were distributed freely throughout the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center, before spreading quickly among Moscow computer circles.[25] Pajitnov kept note of second-hand accounts of Tetris's spread during this time.[26] Tetris reportedly won second place in a Zelenodolsk computer game competition in November 1985,[22] and by 1986, nearly everyone with an IBM computer in Moscow and similar cities had played Tetris.[27]
Spread beyond the Soviet Union (1985–1988)
Under Soviet law, intellectual rights were not protected, and the state-run organization Elektronorgtechnica (Elorg) had a monopoly on the import and export of software.[28] Pajitnov lacked knowledge of the business world so he 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 to the Academy and was delighted to receive a non-compulsory remuneration from Brjabrin through this deal.[29] In 1986, Brjabrin sent a copy of Tetris to the Hungarian game publisher Novotrade,[30] and copies began circulating via floppy disks throughout Hungary.[31] Robert Stein, an international software salesman for the London-based firm Andromeda Software, saw the commercial potential during a visit to Hungary in June 1986.[32][33] After an indifferent response from the Academy,[34] Stein contacted Pajitnov and Brjabrin by fax to obtain the license rights.[33] The Soviet researchers expressed interest in forming an agreement with Stein via fax, but were unaware that this fax communication could be considered a legal contract in the Western world;[35] Stein began to approach other companies to produce the game.[36]
Stein approached publishers at the 1987 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and signed two agreements: he sold the European rights to the publisher Mirrorsoft[37][38] and the American rights to its sister company, Spectrum HoloByte.[39] Spectrum HoloByte obtained the rights after a visit to Mirrorsoft by the Spectrum HoloByte president, Phil Adam, when he played Tetris for two hours.[37][40] At that time, Stein had not yet signed a contract with the Soviet Union.[38] Nevertheless, he sold the rights to the two companies for £3,000 and royalties of 7.5 – 15% of sales.[41] Before releasing Tetris in the United States, the Spectrum HoloByte CEO, Gilman Louie, asked for an overhaul of the graphics and music.[37] 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.[42]
Tetris was first commercially released in the West on the IBM PC, with other computer systems planned for release in the following weeks. The Mirrorsoft version was released in Europe on January 27, 1988,[43] and the Spectrum HoloByte version on January 29, 1988.[44] Mirrorsoft versions for systems such as the Amiga, Atari ST, and Commodore 64 rewrote the code of the original IBM version.[45] Boosted by word of mouth and positive reviews,[46][47] Mirrorsoft sold tens of thousands of copies in two months,[48] and Spectrum HoloByte sold over 100,000 units in the space of a year.[49] 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.[48]
The only document certifying a license fee was the fax from Pajitnov and Brjabrin, meaning that Stein had sold the license for a game he did not yet own. He contacted Pajitnov and asked for a contract for the rights. Stein began negotiations via fax, offering 75% of the revenue generated by Stein from the license.[41] Elorg was unconvinced and requested 80%. Stein made several trips to Moscow and held long discussions with Elorg representatives.[50] He came to an agreement with Elorg on February 24, 1988.[51] On May 10,[52] he signed a contract for a ten-year worldwide Tetris license for all current and future computer systems.[53] 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.[38] Although Pajitnov did not receive a percentage of these sales,[53] he said that "the fact that so many people enjoy my game is enough for me".[54]
Legal battles (1988–1989)
Following the commercial release of Tetris, Spectrum HoloByte and Mirrorsoft started licensing it to other companies. In 1988, Spectrum HoloByte sold the Japanese rights to its computer games to Bullet-Proof Software's Henk Rogers, who was searching for games for the Japanese market.[52] Mirrorsoft sold arcade rights to the Atari Games subsidiary Tengen, which sold the Japanese arcade rights to Sega and the console rights to BPS. BPS published versions for Japanese computers, including the MSX2, PC-88 and X68000, along with a console port for the Nintendo Family Computer (Famicom).[55] Tetris was commercially successful worldwide;[52] the Famicon version sold two million copies in Japan.[56] Elorg was unaware of the deals Stein had negotiated and received no royalties.[52]
Nintendo was attracted to Tetris for its simplicity and its established success on the Famicom, and considered porting it to their first handheld console, the Game Boy.[53][55] Rogers, who was close to the Nintendo president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, sought the handheld rights.[53] After a failed negotiation with Atari,[57] 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.[58][59] After contacting Stein several times, Rogers began to suspect a breach of contract on Stein's part.[57][59]
In February 1989, Rogers traveled to the Soviet Union and arrived at the Elorg offices uninvited to negotiate the rights. Discussions resulted the next day, when Stein and the Mirrorsoft manager Kevin Maxwell made an appointment with Elorg without consulting each other.[60] Rogers befriended Pajitnov over a game of Go, and Pajitnov in turn supported Rogers throughout the discussions.[57] Rogers explained that he wanted to obtain the rights to Tetris for the Game Boy.[61] After quickly obtaining an agreement with the Elorg president, Nikolai Belikov,[62] Rogers showed Belikov a Famicom Tetris cartridge.[63] Belikov believed that the rights to Tetris had only been signed for computer systems[64] so the Soviets accused Rogers of illegal publication. He explained that he had obtained the rights via Atari Games, which had itself signed an agreement with Stein.[63]
Sympathetic to Rogers' plight, Belikov 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.[65] Belikov proposed canceling Stein's rights and granting them instead to Nintendo for both home and handheld consoles.[63] Rogers flew to the US to convince Nintendo's American branch to sign up for the rights. The contract with Elorg was signed by Minoru Arakawa of Nintendo for $500,000, plus 50 cents per cartridge sold.[61][66] Elorg then sent an updated contract to Stein which he signed without carefully reading it.[61] 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.[67] Stein later realized that all the contract's other clauses, notably on payments, were a "smokescreen" to deceive him.[67][68]
In March 1989, Nintendo sent a cease and desist to Atari Games concerning their production of Tetris for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the North American version of the Famicom.[69] In response, the Mirrorsoft owner, Robert Maxwell, pressured the Soviet Union leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to cancel the contract between Elorg and Nintendo.[70] Despite the threats to Belikov, Elorg refused to concede, highlighting the financial advantages of their contract compared to those signed with Stein and Mirrorsoft.[61][71] 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, which would make Atari Games's port authorized by their license. They argued that the NES's Japanese counterpart, the Famicom, could be converted into a computer with a Family BASIC peripheral.[54] Judge Fern M. Smith rejected this argument and declared that Mirrorsoft and Spectrum HoloByte had never received explicit authorization for marketing on consoles. On June 21, 1989, he ruled in Nintendo's favor, granting them a preliminary injunction against Atari Games.[54] The next day, Atari Games withdrew its NES version from sale, and thousands of cartridges remained unsold in its warehouses. Preference for this version over Nintendo's led to Atari Games cartridges selling for up to $300 on the secondary market.[72]
Game Boy and NES (1989–1996)
The Game Boy version of Tetris was released in Japan on June 14, 1989[73] and as a pack-in game in the United States on July 31, 1989.[74][75] The NES version was released the same year. Both versions achieved commercial success.[76] The Game Boy version was the primary game promoted for the Game Boy, becoming its killer app,[77] generating $80 million in revenue,[78] and popularizing both the Game Boy and Tetris.[75][79] The Game Boy version is the most commercially successful and considered by many to be the best version of Tetris.[80] The NES version appeared on Ninendo's most popular games list for over a year.[81] To date, the Game Boy version has sold 35 million copies,[82] and the NES version has sold 8 million copies.[83]
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".[54] 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.[84] 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.[85] 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.[84]
In 1991, with Rogers' help, Pajitnov and his family emigrated to Seattle, United States, where he worked as a freelance game designer.[86][87] During this time, Pajitnov worked on several sequels to Tetris. Welltris (1990) involved adjusting geometrical pieces descending down one of four walls of a three-dimensional well, and Hatris (1990) and Faces...tris III (1991) replaced descending tetrominoes with hats and faces respectively.[88] Though they generally received positive reviews and commercial success,[87] with Faces...Tris III winning "Best Action/Arcade Program" in the 1991 Excellence in Software Awards,[89] none replicated Tetris's success.[90][91] Other early variants of Tetris developed without Pajitnov's involvement included Spectrum Holobyte's Super Tetris (1991), Bullet-Proof Software's Tetris 2 + BomBliss (1991) and Tetris Battle Gaiden (1993), and Nintendo's Tetris 2 (1993).[88]
The Tetris Company and Blue Planet Software (1996–2014)
The Academy of Sciences' rights to Tetris expired at the end of 1995, reverting back to Pajitnov. Worried that Elorg, which had become a private company under Belikov following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union,[86] would try to claim the rights, Pajitnov recruited Rogers to secure them. Rogers formed The Tetris Company as an equal partnership between Elorg and Rogers' new company, Blue Planet Software. Rogers acquired Elorg and renamed it Tetris Holding in 2005.[92][93] Since formation, The Tetris Company has maintained guidelines for authorized versions of Tetris, and Blue Planet Software has served as an agent for the Tetris brand.[88] The Tetris Company has also enforced its copyright of Tetris against unauthorized clones,[94][95] such as the 2012 case, Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc., where a judge ruled that Mino violated Tetris's copyright based on look and feel.[96]
Pajitnov and Rogers sought to keep Tetris fresh and innovated in new directions. Tetrisphere, developed by H2O Entertainment and released on August 11, 1997 was an example of this innovation.[88][97] Gameplay involved rotating a three-dimensional sphere to place pieces on its surface. It was the first puzzle video game on the Nintendo 64 and garnered a cult following.[98][99] David Crookes of Retro Gamer called Tetrisphere "proof that the concept could be modernised and tweaked, while still being faithful to the original".[88] Another game on the Nintendo 64, the Japan-exclusive Tetris 64 (1998), allowed for four players and was the only game to utilize the Nintendo 64's Bio Sensor, which detected a player's pulse.[88][100] On other platforms around this time, Tetris Plus (1996), Tetris DX (1998), and The Next Tetris added new game modes, and Tetris: The Grand Master (1998) was an arcade game targeted toward experienced players.[88]
According to Rogers, in order to appeal to beginner players, The Tetris Company started to standardize features that were not in the original game.[101] These features included the hold feature in The New Tetris in 1999, the easy spin and the super rotation system in Tetris Worlds in 2001, and the scoring system introduced in Tetris DS in 2006.[5] Critics panned Tetris Worlds for the easy spin mechanic, which allowed players to delay a piece's descent by continually rotating it. Despite the controversy and Pajitnov's reluctance, the mechanic was implemented into the Tetris guidelines.[102][101] Alongside the easy spin, Tetris Worlds introduced the super rotation system which defines how pieces rotate,[103] which most versions have used since.[5]
Tetris was first ported to mobile devices in 2001 by G-Mode.[104] In 2002, Rogers formed Blue Lava Wireless to develop Tetris games for mobile platforms.[88] JAMDAT acquired Blue Lava Wireless in April 2005, granting them a 15-year license of Tetris for mobile platforms.[105] By December 2005 when Electronic Arts (EA) started its acquisition of JAMDAT, Tetris had been consistently selling well on American carrier phones.[106] EA completed its acquisition in February 2006, granting it the mobile license for Tetris.[107] EA Mobile released their first Tetris game as a launch title for the iTunes store on iPod 5G on September 11, 2006,[108][109] and then their version of Tetris on the Apple App Store on iOS on July 10, 2008.[110] By January 2010, EA's mobile versions reached 100 million paid downloads, making Tetris the most popular mobile game of all time.[111] EA's license expired on April 21, 2020, and the game became inoperable.[112]
Maya Rogers' succession and resurgence of popularity (2014–present)
In January 2014, after eight years of involvement, Henk Rogers' daughter Maya succeeded him as the CEO of Blue Planet Software.[d] She began by planning activities for Tetris's 30th anniversary. In an interview with VentureBeat in June 2014, Maya spoke of her desire to expand Tetris's brand, such as through merchandising, and keeping the game fresh.[115] Her theme for the 30th anniversary was "We All Fit Together".[116] Sega released Puyo Puyo Tetris, a crossover between Tetris and Puyo Puyo, in Japan on February 6, 2014, for multiple platforms.[117] Puyo Puyo Tetris sold over 60,000 copies within a week, with the Nintendo 3DS version being the second-highest-selling game of the week according to 4Gamer.net.[118] Ubisoft's Tetris Ultimate was released on the Nintendo 3DS in November 2014 and the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in December 2014.[119] A PC port was released on December 2015, although initial user reviews reported frequent crashes.[120] Tetris Ultimate received mixed reviews but the online multiplayer was generally seen favorably.[121][88]
In the late 2010s, Tetris had a resurgence in popularity with the release of Tetris Effect and Tetris 99.[122][123][124] PCMag credited the resurgence to the 2017 release of Puyo Puyo Tetris in the Western world where it received positive reviews and sold 1.4 copies worldwide by November 2020.[123][125][126] Tetris Effect was developed by Monstars and Resonair and published by Enhance Games.[127] Development began around 2012 following a discussion between Henk and Enhance CEO Tetsuya Mizuguchi about creating a Tetris game set to music using virtual reality to reflect the feeling of being "in the zone" while playing Tetris.[128][129] Tetris Effect was released on the PlayStation 4 on November 9, 2018,[130] and on Windows on July 23, 2019,[131] receiving widespread critical acclaim for its visuals and emotional impact.[122][132][133] Tetris 99 is a battle royale variant of Tetris made available to subscribers of Nintendo Switch Online on February 13, 2019, upon its surprise announcement during Nintendo Direct.[134] It received positive reviews and became Nintendo Switch Online's killer app;[122][123][135] according to President of Nintendo Shuntaro Furukawa, 2.8 million Nintendo Switch Online users played Tetris 99 within a few months of release.[136]
Versions
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Tetris has been released on a multitude of platforms since the creation of the original version on the Elektronika 60. It 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.[137] By 2017, this number had increased to 220 official variants.[138]
Across its multiple versions, Tetris's core gameplay has remained consistent.[1] Since 1996, the Tetris Company maintains standard specifications for authorized versions of Tetris known as the Tetris Guidelines.[19] The guidelines are updated annually,[101] and Pajitnov considers the guidelines a baseline for different versions and not "set in stone".[139] Several game mechanics of Tetris have been changed over time. For example, the distribution of tetrominoes was completely randomized in early versions, while modern versions opt for a "bag system", in which each tetromino is guaranteed to appear in a set of seven.[140][141] Other mechanics that have become standardized in modern versions include the ability to hold tetrominoes to swap with later pieces, introduced in The New Tetris (1999),[142] and the super rotation system and infinite spin, introduced in Tetris Worlds (2001).[103]
The earliest versions of Tetris had no music.[143] Spectrum Holobyte's version of Tetris in the United States exoticized the 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: Mirrorsoft's Commodore 64 version in Europe used an atmospheric soundtrack, and Sega's arcade version in Japan used a synthesized pop-influenced soundtrack.[144] 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.[145] The Game Boy version has 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.[146] "Korobeiniki" has become primarily associated with Tetris as its main theme and would be used in most significant versions,[147][144] as mandated by the Tetris Company guidelines.[19]
Reception and legacy
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Sales
| Year | Game | Platform(s) | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 | Tetris (Spectrum HoloByte) | PC | 1 million[148] |
| Tetris (Famicom) | Famicom | 2 million[56] | |
| 1989 | Tetris (Game Boy) | Game Boy | 35 million[82] |
| Tetris (NES) | NES | 8 million[83] | |
| 1996 | Tetris Plus | PlayStation | 1.53 million[149] |
| 1997 | Tetrisphere | Nintendo 64 | 430,000[150] |
| 2001 | Tetris Worlds | Multi-platform | 1.81 million[e] |
| 2006 | Tetris DS | Nintendo DS | 2.05 million[153] |
| 2014 | Puyo Puyo Tetris | Multi-platform | 1.4 million[126] |
| 2020 | Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 | Multi-platform | 293,000[f] |
In January 2010, EA Mobile and Blue Planet Software announced that mobile versions of Tetris since 2005 had reached 100 million paid downloads, making it most-downloaded mobile game at the time.[156][111] In April 2014, Rogers announced in an interview with VentureBeat that Tetris totaled 425 million paid mobile downloads and 70 million physical copies.[157][158] 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.[159][160] The majority originate from paid mobile downloads, based on Rogers' figure from the 2014 interview.[158][161] As a result, some publications consider Tetris the best-selling video game of all time, despite variations among the different versions.[159][160] The most successful version is the Game Boy version,[162] which at 35 million copies is one of the best-selling video games of all time.[82][163]
Accolades
Tetris quickly began winning awards once it was released in the West. 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.[164] Macworld inducted Tetris into the 1988 Macworld Game Hall of Fame in the Best Strategy Game category. Macworld praised "the addictive quality" and said its "simplicity is bewitching."[165] and Computer Gaming World gave Tetris the 1989 Compute! Choice Award for Arcade Game, describing it as "by far, the most addictive game ever".[166] Entertainment Weekly named it the eighth-greatest game available in 1991, saying: "Thanks to Nintendo's endless promotion, Tetris has become one of the most popular video games."[167]
Tetris has been widely ranked as among the greatest video games of all time by Flux (1995),[168] Next Generation (1996 and 1999),[169][170] Electronic Gaming Monthly (1997),[171] GameSpot (2000),[172] Game Informer (2001 and 2009),[173][174] IGN (2007 and 2021),[175][176] Time (2012 and 2016),[177][178] GamesRadar+ (2015 and 2021),[179][180] Polygon (2017),[181] USA Today (2022 and 2024),[182][183] The Times (2023),[184] and GQ (2023).[185] Tetris has also been ranked as among the best computer games by PC Format (1991)[186] and Computer Gaming World (1996),[187] among the best video game franchises by IGN (2006)[188] and Den of Geek (2024),[189] and among the most influential games of all time by GamePro (2007),[190] IGN (2007),[191] 1Up.com (2010),[192] GamesRadar+ (2013),[193] and The Guardian (2017).[194]
Tetris has been inducted into the "Hall of Fame" of the following publications: Computer Gaming World (1999),[195] GameSpy (2000),[196] GameSpot (2003),[197] and IGN (2007).[198] 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 to be considered for preservation by the Library of Congress, modeled after the National Film Preservation Board .[199][200][201] In November 2012, the Museum of Modern Art acquired Tetris, along with thirteen other video games, to display.[202] 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.[203]
Industry impact
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 main draw,[77][204] 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,[205][79] with the bundle selling out in its initial run of a million copies shortly after release.[77] This success established Nintendo's dominant position in the handheld gaming market, setting a standard that competitors struggled to replicate.[192][206][207]
Tetris is influential in the genre of puzzle video games.[191][208] Commentators have considered Tetris an early example of a casual game.[g] Wired deemed Tetris unique for its time given its appeal to players regardless of gender and age,[210] and 1Up.com credits Tetris for establishing a market for puzzle video games with universal appeal.[192] Various common elements of puzzle games, such as managing pieces over a fixed screen, originated from Tetris,[191] and multiple clones have been created to replicate Tetris's popularity.[213] 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), and Capcom's Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (1996).[h]
Cultural impact
Tetris's cultural impact and recognition is widespread with representation in a vast array of media such as architecture, art, and merchandise.[215][19][88] Tetris has 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.[216] "Korobeiniki", a Russian folk song, has become widely associated with Tetris following its inclusion in the Game Boy version.[144] A 1992 Eurodance cover of "Korobeiniki" by Doctor Spin peaked at number six in the UK single charts.[19][217] Tetris is widely seen as a " simple but addictive" game,[3] and has been the subject of academic research in psychology and mathematics.[218][219][220] Writers such as Dan Ackerman have attributed the enduring success of Tetris to its appeal to casual gamers.[221]
Tetris has a competitive scene, especially around the NES version.[222] 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,[223] which helped popularized competitive gameplay of Tetris.[209] Competitors at 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.[224][225] Willis Gibson "beat" Tetris by playing NES Tetris until it crashed in a 40-minute livestream in January 2024, receiving significant media coverage for his achievement.[226][227]
The DIC Entertainment animated series Captain N: The Game Master incorporated elements of Tetris, depicting "planet Tetris" in two different episodes as a distant, square-shaped world composed of angular humanoids.[228] In 2014, it was announced that Threshold Entertainment had worked with the Tetris Company to develop a film adaptation. Threshold Entertainment CEO Larry Kasanoff called it an epic sci-fi adventure and the first part of a trilogy.[229][230] A different film, Tetris, about the Tetris legal battles in the late 1980s, starring Taron Egerton as Henk Rogers, premiered on Apple TV+ on March 31, 2023,[231] to positive reviews according to Metacritic and a viewership of 88,000 people according to Samba TV.[232][233]
Research
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Perspective
Psychological research
The psychological and addictive effects of Tetris were first scientifically recognized by Soviet clinical psychologist Vladimir Pokhilko c. 1985.[234][3] 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 so he proceeded to destroy the distributed copies. After new copies were reintroduced to his facility, Pokhilko used Tetris while testing patients.[235]
Starting with the research of American psychologist Richard J. Haier in 1992,[236][237][238] Tetris has been frequently used as a form of cognitive assessment and neuroimaging.[239][240] Furthermore, Tetris has been studied as a potential form of psychological intervention such as for PTSD and cravings with promising results.[239][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.[234][231] The term was coined by Jeffrey Goldsmith in a 1994 article for Wired,[241] in which he compared Tetris to an "electronic drug".[242]
Computer science research
In 1992, John Brzustowski at the University of British Columbia wrote a thesis on the question of whether or not one could theoretically play Tetris forever.[243] He reached the conclusion that Tetris 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 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.[244][245]
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 field 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.[246][247]
See also
- Brain Wall and Blokken, game shows based on Tetris
- Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters, a 2011 documentary about the 2010 Classic Tetris World Championship, featuring interviews with Pajitnov and Richard Haier as well as Tetris players Thor Aackerlund and future seven-time Classic Tetris World Championship champion Jonas Neubauer
- Game Over (Sheff book), a 1993 book covering Nintendo history, including interviews with Pajitnov and others regarding Tetris licensing
Notes
- Pronounced [ˈtʲetrʲɪs] or [ˈtetrʲɪs]
- The standard spelling in mathematics is tetrominoes, while The Tetris Company's trademarked spelling is tetriminoes.[2] This article uses the standard spelling for consistency.
- 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.[18]
References
Bibliography
Further reading
External links
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