The Story of Tetris Paul Lonsdale Ron Harrison Dave Taylor

The Story of Tetris
         Paul Lonsdale
          Ron Harrison
           Dave Taylor

What is Tetris?
   Tetris is a puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey
   Pajitnov in the Soviet Union. It was released on June 6, 1984.
   The name Tetris is derived its name from the Greek tetra- (all of the game's
   pieces, known as Tetrominoes, contain four segments) and tennis,
   Pajitnov's favourite sport.
   The Tetris game is a popular use of tetrominoes, the four element special
   case of polyominoes. Polyominoes have been used in popular puzzles since at
   least 1907.

Dave Taylor

The game of Tetris derived its name from the Greek word 'tetra' which
         means four and the word 'tennis' which is its inventor's favourite sport.

         Tetris started as a puzzle video game invented by Russian Alexey Pajitnov
         way back in June 1985. He worked in the Dorodnicyn Computer Centre in
         the Academy of Science of the USSR.

         Tetris is one of the few games that achieves ultimate
         popularity. It is remarkably simple, yet remarkably difficult.
         It's been played on every computer and game console known
         to man, and has sold millions of cartridges, tapes, and disks
         across the land.

         Besides that, it also led to one of the most interesting legal battles in the
         history of video games, leading to the famed Tengen version of Tetris and
         to the downfall of a few companies.

Ron Harrison

Fight for rights
   
   Pazhitnov didn’t receive any rights for his creation
       until very recently, some eleven years after his
       creation.

   
   There were numerous battles and numerous
       programmers who claimed Tetris was their creation.

   
 Due to the Soviet Union communism,
   nobody owned the rights but the
   government. This meant all
   programmers were trying to sell false rights.

Paul Lonsdale

Fight for rights
   
   Robert Stein sold the rights for the PC version before he even
       had access to them, during 1986.

   
   Stein couldn’t get the access to the rights so he decided to steal
       the game. This meant that he claimed it was invented by the
       Hungarian programmers who ported it to the Commodore.

   
   During 1987, Stein gained the copyright but he didn’t have a
       contract with Russia.

   
  However, during 1988, an evening news
   programme interviewed Pazhitnov.

Paul Lonsdale

Fight for rights
   
   During the Game Boy development, the developers
       wanted to include Tetris as its main game. All
       parties involved in the fight for rights flew to Russia.

   
   At this stage, Pazhitnov and Russia were impressed
       by Henrk Rogers.

   
  Rogers gained the handheld game
   rights. Stein gained the arcade rights.

Paul Lonsdale

Fight for rights
 Robert Maxwell, owner of both Mirrorsoft and Spectrum, sides with Mirrorsoft on the matter.
 Atari starts plans to release an arcade and NES game (under the Tengen label). Bullet-Proof
 Software still has the computer rights in Japan; BPS president Henk Rogers successfully gets
 the rights to release a video-game version later in the year. Tetris is released for the Famicom
 in early November 1988; eventually, two million cartridges would be sold.

November 1988
The Game Boy is undergoing development. Nintendo of America head Minoru Arakawa wants to make
Tetris the pack-in game; he enlists Henk Rogers to get the handheld rights to Tetris for him.
so Rogers decides to fly to Moscow to get the rights himself. Stein, sensing why Rogers asked for the rights, flies
to Moscow as well. Robert Maxwell's son, Kevin, also decides to fly to Moscow to straighten out what is by now a
large-scale licensing mess. The three men fly into Moscow at the exact same time.

 February 21, 1989
 Rogers gets to ELORG representative Evgeni Belikov first. He impresses Alexey Pazhitnov and the Russians, and
 signs a contract for the handheld rights to Tetris. Afterward, Rogers shows off the Famicom version of Tetris
 to the Russians. Belikov is shocked. He didn't give Rogers the rights to make a console version! Rogers
 explains that he got the rights from Tengen; Belikov has never heard of Tengen! Rogers, trying to appease the
 Russians, tells Belikov the part of the story Stein did not tell him, and writes him a check for royalties on the Tetris
 cartridges he has already sold, with promises of more checks. He sees that he has a chance to get all the console
 rights to Tetris, but knows that the much larger Atari will fight him. Fortunately, he has Nintendo on his side!

Ron Harrison

Fight for rights
   
   Atari and Nintendo are now involved in
       fighting for their platform rights, from 1989 to
       1993.

   
   Nintendo were given the rights to the home
       version of Tetris during March, 1989.

Paul Lonsdale

Fight for rights
  •Later, Stein makes it to ELORG. Belikov makes him sign an
  alteration to the original contract defining computers as "PC
  computers which consist of a processor, monitor, disk drive(s),
  keyboard and operation system".

  • Stein misses this line defining computers; he later realizes
  that it was all a big orchestration on Rogers' part to get his
  rights from Stein.

  •The next day, he is told that, although he can't get the
  handheld rights at the moment, he can get the arcade-game
  rights. He signs the contract for them three days later.
Ron Harrison

Major Players

Ron Harrison

Communism
   
   The communistic society lead to a fight for
       Pazhitnov to claim royalties and rights to his
       creation.

   
   He didn’t receive any royalties until Henk
       Rogers backed him financially to create a
       company in America. This was 1996 when
       the previous rights expired.

Paul Lonsdale

Current work
   
   Pazhitnov works for Microsoft creating the
       popular games on the XBOX.

   
   Capitalism now exists in Russia.

   
   The government were the key winners from
       the fight for Tetris rights as they gained
       money.

Paul Lonsdale

Popularity
   While versions of Tetris were sold for a range of 1980s home computer platforms, it was
   the hugely successful handheld version for the Game Boy launched in 1989 that
   established the reputation of the game as one of the most popular ever. Electronic
   Gaming Monthly's 100th issue had Tetris in first place as "Greatest Game of All Time". In
   2007, Tetris came in second place in IGN's "100 Greatest Video Games of All Time“. It has
   sold more than 70 million copies.[In January 2010, it was announced that Tetris has sold
   more than 100 million copies for cell phones alone since 2005.

Dave Taylor

References
      Paul Lonsdale & Ron Harrison

      
   http://www.offworld.com/2009/06/weekend-watching-the-story-of.html

      
   http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/tetris.shtml

      
   http://kottke.org/06/10/the-story-of-tetris

      
   http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/special/tetrishist.html

      Dave Taylor
      
   http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5510V020090602

      
   http://vadim.oversigma.com/Tetris.htm

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