
Tetris: The Soviet 'mind game' that took over the world (2019) - Tomte
https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/tetris-video-game-history/index.html
======
AndrewKemendo
I have played NES Tetris something on the order of 14 hours per week for the
last 7 or so years. I can consistently get to level 29 (kill screen) and put
700,000 on the board with the rare 800,000. However I don't know if I'll ever
hit 999,999 with the kill screen.

Typically I'll do this while listening to other things like technical talks or
tutorials. I found in college that I was able to better focus on the lecture
if I was playing Tetris. In fact for some people, having something that is
"distracting" to do while listening, has been to be effective in improving
recall [1]. It's been pretty huge in helping me make it through a lot of stuff
I would have otherwise found dull.

Beyond that, it's an amazingly hard game to master. You can't "Win", you can
just do better and there is something hard to describe about how you play
"Clean vs Dirty" "High Risk vs Low risk" etc...that wouldn't seem obvious if
you're just looking at it as a silly game. I'm certainly attaching more
significance on it than others would, but I think Tetris is a really great
metaphor for life in a lot of regards.

[1][https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-thinking-benefits-
of...](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-thinking-benefits-of-
doodling-2016121510844)

~~~
tda
What is it about nes tetris that makes it so much better? I have never enjoyed
any other tetris implementation but I played nes tetris many hours as a kid
and also for a bit in my twenties. Still have that nes, but haven't touched it
in a decade. But even if it still works I don't have a screen for it anymore
:(

~~~
Wowfunhappy
At least for me, it's the lack of (1) a Hold function and (2) EasySpin.

IMO those break the game and I wish the Tetris Company wouldn't keep insisting
on their inclusion!

Part of the fun of Tetris is, sometimes you have pieces that just don't go
well anywhere, or which you just couldn't maneuver in time, and you have to
find a way to recover from those errors.

~~~
sincerely
Personally it feels like without a "Hold" mechanic the battle mode isn't very
well balanced

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Oh, that's an excellent point! Let me clarify: I think both Hold and EasySpin
are great mechanics in _multiplayer_ Tetris.

Multiplayer Tetris is a very different game. Speed is paramount regardless of
how quickly pieces fall, and players need to deal with garbage blocks. Thus,
it makes sense for players to have more options and maneuverability.

However, when you put these mechanics into traditional singleplayer marathon
mode, they become a problem.

~~~
sincerely
Thanks for explaining, I see where you're coming from now

------
xkapastel
I have a hard time liking Tetris due to the fact that it's basically illegal
to make a clone. The Tetris Company is very aggressive about shutting down any
popular clones. It seems pointless to invest energy in Tetris when they simply
do not want any nonlicensed implementations to exist. The author of an older
clone expresses this sentiment:

> More importantly, the lead developer of LOCKJAW is a fan of free software,
> or software that the public can improve and share, as a means to protect the
> rights of users of computing devices. He does not share the belief expressed
> by Alexey Pajitnov, co-founder of The Tetris Company, that free software
> "should never have existed" because it "destroys the market." (Mr. Pajitnov
> explained further in a 2015 interview with Matt Barton.) But what really
> destroys the market is monopoly.

> In fact, though Mr. Pajitnov and his partner Henk Rogers want Tetris to
> become an internationally competitive sport, as Mr. Pajitnov mentioned in
> earlier in the same interview, a policy against free software makes it that
> much harder. Imagine if there were a Basketball Company LLC that could sue a
> city or school district for copyright infringement for putting a basketball
> court with correct dimensions into a city park or school gymnasium. There
> are multiple competing suppliers of basketball and chess equipment, unlike
> software for playing Tetris. This is why Chess is a sport and Tetris is not:
> Chess has no owner.

[http://pineight.com/lj/](http://pineight.com/lj/)

~~~
TuringNYC
I'm pretty curious about this -- how are clones illegal? Is it via patents or
trademarks? If trademark, what if someone renames the clones? If patent, how
has it continued for 30+ yrs? Also, did they get global IP protection on this?
If they have indeed managed this, i'm surprised they are not being cited as a
case study of "what to do" in business schools and consulting firms!

~~~
DivisionSol
I was working on a reply and wanted to do some research into verifying some
things, but here is an article (there may be better articles out there):

[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/defining-tetris-
how-c...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/defining-tetris-how-courts-
judge-gaming-clones/)

But the courts have ruled that making a game with the exact elements
(tetronimos, ghost pieces, next-piece, 8x10 rows) infringes copyright. You
cannot make a Tetris-clone without saying Tetris, without infringing on those
elements. EVEN if you add additional functionality (the game in the article
had powerups, etc,)

~~~
anthk
Every BSD except MirBSD has tetris(6) in games.tgz.

If tetris(1) get purged I suppose a sudoku clone would fit

the gap, or some ncurses Arkanoid clone.

~~~
cat199
and since we are talking operating systems, also emacs :)

------
chrisma0
Whenever I read about Tetris, the "Complete History Of The Soviet Union,
Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris" immediately starts playing in my head:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8)

~~~
bitwize
The "Tetris song" is Коробейники, a popular Russian folk tune. Here is the
original version being sung:

[https://youtu.be/qFsZbpc3xvg](https://youtu.be/qFsZbpc3xvg)

Despite being in the public domain, The Tetris Company still asserts and
defends IP rights to the song: specifically, the song is _trademarked_ to The
Tetris Company when used as video game music.

~~~
drran
Коробейники (text: Nekrasov 1861, music: Prigozhyj 1898) is not a folk song,
because Russian language is not folk language. (Russian language is official
language of Great Russian Empire, which was created to replace various folk
languages used. Folk language AKA "народная молва" now known as Ukrainian
language "украинская мова").

IMHO, descendants of Nekrasov, if any, should contest this copyright claim and
collect damages.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
What is the official definition of a 'folk language' in Russia? Any language
traditionally spoken in Russia which isn't an official language (or which
isn't Russian itself)?

And, second question, does this mean there can't be 'folk songs' in Russian?
(I mean, English, despite being an official language in several countries,
certainly has folk songs, for instance.)

~~~
int_19h
It's nationalist pseudohistory. Russian language evolved, same as any other.
Now, for some languages, the process of establishing the literary standard
leans more on the de facto vernacular, and for others it derives more from the
pre-existing standards previously limited to some niche - e.g. common
liturgical/theological language, or language of science. In case of modern
literary Russian, it's derived more from Church Slavonic than Ukrainian or
Belarusian, which emphasized vernacular - but it doesn't mean that it's not a
"folk language".

~~~
_emacsomancer_
Questions about language evolution and the relation of 'vernaculars' and
'standards' is in my wheelhouse, in fact. (Church Slavonic is South Slavic and
Russian is firmly East Slavic, like Ukranian and Belarusian, at least in terms
of its descent, but as both Church Slavonic and Russian have been 'standards',
its not surprising that Russian (at least the standardised, formal versions of
Russian) would have been influenced by (the standardised) Church Slavonic).)

But in this case, I was just wondering about which languages (in the
pseudohistory) are considered 'folk languages'. Does Ukrainian count as a
'folk language'? Are all Slavic languages in Russia that aren't Russian 'folk
languages'?

~~~
drran
Ukrainian language IS the folk language. It was known as "folk language"
("народная молва") previously.

~~~
int_19h
By Ukrainians, sure. It's pretty common for people to refer to their own
speech simply as "the speech", and have more specific labels for _other_
people. Ukrainian (and Russian, and most other Slavic languages) also uses a
word for Germans that literally means "mute", for similar reasons.

~~~
drran
Ukrainian language is called "folk language" (народная молва) in Russian
language. In Ukrainian, it just "language" (мова).

~~~
int_19h
Ukrainian language is called "украинский язык" in Russian.

And "молва" doesn't mean "язык" in Russian at all - it means "rumors".

------
pkorzeniewski
I play Tetris on a Game Boy Classic quite often (on "hardcore" mode, starts
from level 19), it's an absolutely timeless game, I use the same cartridge
that I've owned for ~30 years now and it still works flawlessly :-)

------
khazhoux
Tetris brain is real! You lie in bed unable to sleep, which an endless stream
of pieces march down...

I predict Tetris-brain will play a key role in unlocking the secrets of human
consciousness sometime in the future... :-)

------
simongray
> The latest, released in early 2019 to coincide with the game's 35th
> anniversary, is an online multiplayer version called "Tetris 99," which can
> be played by up to 99 players simultaneously.

This one came for free with the Nintendo Switch online service and I've put
around 80 hours into it and - frustratingly - still haven't won a single game!
Highest I got was 4th place, though I usually end up in top 20 and
occasionally in the top 10.

It's so much fun.

~~~
toast0
Because it's a battle royale, the difficulty depends on who else is playing. I
was playing in January and would tend to place significantly better in the
mornings than the evening, but when the maximus cup event was going on, I
placed poorly throughout the day.

I don't know what patterns are in place these days though.

------
mywittyname
The Gaming Historian has an _excellent_ video on the history of Tetris.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fQtxKmgJC8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fQtxKmgJC8)

~~~
gxqoz
Another excellent source is this 8-part series in The Digital Antiquarian.
[https://www.filfre.net/2017/06/tales-of-the-mirror-world-
par...](https://www.filfre.net/2017/06/tales-of-the-mirror-world-
part-1-calculators-and-cybernetics/)

Basically like a short book on the context of Soviet computing, how Tetris got
to the West, how Nintendo got the rights, what happened afterwards. It's an
excellent read. With all the shady deals and fun period details I almost feel
this would make a great movie.

~~~
gxqoz
By the way, here's just one great quote from that series:

"Yet Stein found the game to be a harder sell than he’d anticipated. For all
that everyone who sat down to play it seemed to have difficulty standing up
again, Tetris was just so different from anything else that marketing
departments didn’t know quite what to do with it. It was all just so abstract.
There was no obvious hook: no starring character, no story line, no
explosions. What would they put on the box? Even Brøderbund, home of The Print
Shop and Carmen Sandiego, whose instinct for selling software to Middle
America was normally unparalleled, took a pass, despite the Tetris Effect
taking place right there in their offices. “I don’t think Brøderbund is going
to publish it,” wrote Mechner in disgust. “The knaves.” A Brøderbund
executive, seeing his programming staff so consumed by the game, had allegedly
called it “a game only programmers could like.”"

------
gryson
One thing not directly touched on in the article concerning Sega:

Tetris initially reached widespread popularity in Japan through the arcade
version made by Sega, which was released at the end of 1988. It was awarded
"best arcade game of the year" by several Japanese magazines. This arcade
version featured a 2-player mode and followed what came to be known as the
"Sega rotation" ruleset due to restrictions on piece rotations.

The Sega version was ported to the newly-released Mega Drive (Genesis) console
and was scheduled to be released in early 1989. It was to be the Mega Drive's
killer title, but when the release day came, stores did not get any shipments
in. It was later discovered that Nintendo had sued Atari over the rights to
the game right before the release of the Mega Drive port in Japan (Atari had
given the rights to its subsidiary Tengen, who had licensed them to Sega in
Japan). Nintendo won, and Sega was left with a huge stock of games that were
eventually repurposed or destroyed.

The Game Boy version wasn't released until mid-1989 in Japan, and the NES
version after that. They became massive hits, but it is less commonly known
that they were preceded in popularity by the Sega arcade version.

Eventually, the Mega Drive port showed up on a bootleg 2-in-1 cart from China,
also featuring Rambo III. Somehow the bootleggers had gotten hold of the ROM.
It turns out the Mega Drive port wasn't a very good one. Last year, in honor
of this legacy, Sega released an updated port with the Mega Drive Mini.

------
sincerely
If anyone wants to play, this is the most full-featured online version I'm
aware of: [https://jstris.jezevec10.com](https://jstris.jezevec10.com)

Free to use, default mode is battle royale, can easily enter 1-player sprint
modes (e.g. 40L) or set up a private room to battle friends

~~~
errantspark
This is also where the world records for 40 line sprint happen. I've probably
put 100's of hours into 40 line sprint at this point, it's exhilarating to
play zero finesse games, or just get into a groove dropping multiple
pieces/second.

------
FpUser
Generally I do not like to play computer games. Still few for some reasons got
me addicted for a while: snake on apple II, Packman, first Doom. All forgotten
now, faded into oblivion. Tetris however is an absolute king. I still play it
every once in a while.

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romanhn
Somewhat off topic, but I was reading up recently on the lives of folks
involved with Tetris early on, and one sad outcome was the murder-suicide of
Vladimir Pokhilko, a friend of Pajitnov and co-founder of a company together.
It seems like the stress of financial difficulties with the company (and who
knows what else) pushed him over the edge, resulting in a brutal killing of
his wife and 12yo son, and then himself, in San Francisco. Just sad all
around.

------
sosuke
Side question: does anyone have tips on how to print or save this CNN article
to PDF? everything seems to get destroyed

~~~
severine
Try this amazing Firefox/Chrome extension: [https://github.com/gildas-
lormeau/SingleFileZ](https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFileZ)

------
anthk
Tetris may be the most ported game ever, and one of the most easiest to
implement :).

The most ported virtual machine is gaming related too: the Z-machine :).

Both are games/envs which can be played (at least up to version 5) under a
"high end" machine with a Z80 processor.

------
dirtydroog
Interview with a former Tetris world champ

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jA53IkHZJg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jA53IkHZJg)

