When it comes to the world of video games, the Soviet Union doesn't typically come to mind, but at the height of the cold war there was one simple yet addictive game that was conceived in Moscow, bringing the collective nations together to agree on one single goal. Slotting together falling shapes before they stack to the top of the screen.
The game was called Tetris, created by computer programmer and gaming enthusiast Alexey Pajitnov while working as a programmer at the Academy of Science of the USSR in 1984.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Tetris we had the chance to sit down with the minds behind the games success, creator Alexey Pajitnov and the man responsible for getting Tetris out to the mass market, Henk Rogers.
"Tetris was my whole idea." Alexey reminisces, "I did it on spare time. I was Sirius programmer working on all kind of artificial intelligence, mostly automatic speech recognition…but I loved all kinds of riddles, puzzles, mathematical diversions.
"As soon as I got the very first kind of desktop machine in my possession, that was an Elektronika 60, Russian PDP Clone. Then I started to put all my riddles and puzzles and board games…into computer. Tetris was born into this kind of amazing sessions."
The PDP (Programmed Data Processor) was a line of 16-but computers designed for business, computer and science labs. The Elektronika 60 was a clone of the PDP sold in Russia. While the ease of programming was ideal for industry and technology applications, how did Tetris go from a pet project in the computer lab, into a fully fledged video game?
Alexey explains "I did the game on this strange PDP clone which didn’t even have graphic on it. So when I realized this was a very good game because I can’t stop playing it myself without even finishing the program, I decided it should be ported to PC. As soon as this port was done, versions spread up all over the world like a forest fire.
With Tetris ported to the PC, the game could go from the lab and into homes "Robert Stein, who was agent for game industry. He saw it in Hungry and thought it was good stuff to publish, and he addressed the computer center (at the Soviet Academy of Sciences) to license the game."
As the Soviet Union was highly limited in trade with outside nations, there were numerous challenges in legally distributing the game around the world.
Alexey continues "Russia was not very advanced country in computers at the time, especially in intellectual properties and licensing, so it took about three years before the very first agreement was done; and the first publishing was even done before the agreement was finalized.
"He (Stein) sold the right to several publishers in Europe and the United States, and the game was published for the computer at the very beginning of ’88."
However the rights that Robert Stein licensed were only for PC versions of the game, and while popular, during the mid-to-late '80s gamers were turning to home consoles for their fast paced gaming needs. One industrial businessman, Henk Rogers, saw the potential Tetris had for console gaming and made the journey from his home in Japan to behind the Iron Curtain, seeking out a deal to bring Tetris to consoles.
