Enjoy various types of games available online. - Four decades of Tetris: The journey to the legendary game
Willis Gibson's eyes widen as he smacks his palms against his face. He leans forward and back, gulping for air. "Oh my God," he breathes repeatedly. The 13-year-old American boy from the US can scarcely believe what he has just pulled off. As the first person ever, he has conquered Tetris. It was through a novel finger technique that he managed to advance to level 157, reaching the "kill screen," the point when the hardware and software cannot perform any further. Historically, the speed from level 29 onwards has been unsurmountable for players.
Henk Rogers, the CEO of the American Tetris Company, was one of the first to congratulate Gibson on a video call at the beginning of the year. Rogers calls his achievement "remarkable," and is flabbergasted by his "incredible technique" and lightning-fast speed. Tetris, though, was actually never intended to be played; it was merely a means of testing the computing power of early personal computers.
Back in the 1980s, the Soviet Academy of Sciences' computer center, where Alexey Paschitnow worked, was witness to the first personal computer-like devices. Paschitnow programmed games as a hobby to test the capabilities of these devices. Inspired by his childhood memories of the puzzle game Pentomino, he simplified the game from five squares to four blocks to make programming easier. The name Tetris is a combination of the Greek word tetra (four) and tennis, another one of Paschitnow's favorite sports.
The iconic game consisted of these four blocks sliding across the screen. Although graphics cards were still unavailable back then, the blocks were displayed using brackets. As Paschitnow recalls, he was determined to keep the game as uncomplicated as possible. "I thought back then that any wrong decision could ruin the game entirely," he states.
Paschitnow had no idea his creation would become a global sensation. It began as a hit within his circle of colleagues, who shared it amongst themselves. However, its true reign began several years later when Western game publishers took notice. The struggle for ownership of the game's rights in the late 1980s became an actual economic crime, eventually inspiring a film in 2023.
After Mirrorsoft, a company owned by British media mogul Robert Maxwell, scored the computer rights using a middleman named Robert Stein, they went on to sell sub-licenses in Europe and Asia without consulting the Soviet Union. This deception led to Paschitnow never seeing any money from his invention for the first decade. This was because his rights had been transferred to the Soviet state in the form of the foreign trade company, Elektronorgtechnika (Elorg), who then handled negotiations.
In the early 1990s, Henry Rogers, a Dutch game developer residing in Japan, encountered Tetris at a computing exhibition. Eager to secure the rights for mobile phones, he went to Moscow alone, up against Stein and representatives from Mirrorsoft. His ultimately successful efforts netted him not only mobile but also stationary console rights. Despite Maxwell's pleas to President Mikhail Gorbachev, by whom he had a personal relationship, the Russians had not expected to receive any payment, and Rogers's victory for Nintendo was not reversed.
Tetris then became a Game Boy hit, launched by Nintendo in 1989. The handheld device benefited from Tetris's presence, selling an impressive 70 million units. This Tetris iteration is regarded as one of the most famous computer games of all time, with around 500 million copies sold globally. Today, almost everyone who has ever used a computer has likely played it.
Even in space, Tetris has been a fixture. In 1993, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian cosmonaut Alexander Serebrov brought a Game Boy to the Mir space station. During his limited free time, Serebrov enjoyed playing it, making Tetris the first-ever computer game played beyond Earth.
In 1993, Paschitnow, too, had managed to flee the country. Having grown disillusioned with the Soviet Union, which he considered a "terrible nation" where people were utilized like cogs in a machine, he decided to leave. Now, Paschitnow cautions against the reemergence of imperialistic ambitions in contemporary Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Putin.
He established the Tetris Company together with his friend Rogers, creating variations of his game. For a few years, he also worked for Microsoft, which he described as the greatest time of his life. Despite the fact that others made a fortune with Tetris and he only received pennies for his invention in 1996, he never held a grudge. According to him, it was essential to release the game in its best possible state.
This goal was achieved. Tetris remains captivating for many people even 40 years after its creation. Therefore, it's probable that Gibson's "world record" won't last forever. His adversaries have already declared their intent to intentionally avoid the "kill screen" to reach higher levels.
