The game of Tetris has become one of the most widely played and enjoyable games in video game history. With a host of different versions, it is regarded by many to be the greatest game ever created; its roots can be traced back to Moscow in 1985.
Alexey Pajitnov created the game in June of that year on a Elektronika 60. Two programmers, Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov then ported it over to an IBM PC with Pajitnov also credited with naming it Tetris. And such, a phenomenon was born.
Tetris proved to be immediately popular, and spread to other platforms. The British software house Andromeda, were amongst the first to take note, but the first rights were sold to Spectrum HoloByte. Thereafter, Adromeda sought the license from them.
Spectrum HoloByte first released Tetris in the US in 1986, on an IBM PC. The game proved to be a big hit, and the undoubted potential Tetris had was becoming evident to the industry. Mirrorsoft and Spectrum continued the release of Tetris, this time on the Amiga and Atari platforms.
With competition for Tetris rights become increasingly heated, in 1988 Alexey granted rights to the Soviet government via his computer center. An organization known as Elektronorgtechnica was set up to market Tetris rights.
In 1989, a number of companies joined the bandwagon. Atari gained arcade rights while they duly signed over non-Japanese console rights to Nintendo. Tengen (an Atari console software division) unfortunately applied for copyright against Nintendo which lead to some legal disputes over the rights. Nintendo won out and released their first versions for the Famicom and Gameboy. But disputes over rights continued until 1993.
The Nintendo versions proved to be amongst the most popular in the whole franchise with millions of copies sold. The portable Gameboy Tetris became one of the most well known versions.
In 1996, Henk Rogers formed Tetris company. This did gain some trademark registrations on the Tetris game, but the company was later purchased by EA.
In truth, for all the legal matters surrounding the game and the various releases, the basic concept of Tetris has remained pretty much the same throughout. With building blocks to form lines, falling down the screen. But different variations of the game have emerged on the number of platforms. The New Tetris, on the N64 for example, displayed 3 upcoming blocks instead of one and ability to swap blocks.
Undoubtedly, Tetris is a unique game. It's history only serves to underline that the popularity of the title, combined with the fact that no software company was actually behind its creation, turned it into video game gold dust. For this made rights over the game disputable, while its popularity remained high. Nintendo, to a certain extent, have made the most of their game rights on their popular Nintendo gaming platforms. For the Gameboy alone it shifted 33 million copies but taking into account all the other versions (not always figured) it is probably the best selling video game in history.
