Obtaining the Tetris license in Moscow: Nintendo's victory strategy
The process of playing Tetris might be straightforward, but the story behind it is far more intricate: Tetris celebrates its 40th birthday. Let's delve into a space mission, a monetary crime concerning game ownership, and the challenge of completing a game that technically shouldn't end.
A boy named Willis Gibson opens his eyes wide and slaps his hands against his face. He bends forward and backward and gasps for air. "Oh my God," he mutters repeatedly. The 13-year-old American cannot believe what he has just accomplished. As the first person to do it, he has beaten Tetris at Level 157, before the dreaded "kill screen." It's a moment when the game's speed becomes so high that nobody can proceed further. The conventional wisdom is that, after Level 29, it's beyond players' abilities.
Alexey Pachitnov, CEO of the American Tetris Company, is among the first to congratulate him via video call in the early years. He calls Gibson's achievement "astonishing" and is astounded by his "incredible technique" and quickness, he claims. Interestingly, Tetris wasn't initially designed for play; Pachitnov, a Soviet Academy of Sciences computer center employee, created the game to test the newly-emerging personal computer technology. It was more of a pastime for him.
Pachitnow would've scarcely imagined 40 years ago how Tetris would develop. In the 1980s, he developed the game in the USSR when the country had only its first computer-like devices. He developed games to test these systems' capabilities.
Inspired by childhood memories of the puzzle game Pentomino, Pachitnow simplified the game to four blocks, mainly because it made programming more manageable. Predictably, the name Tetris is a blend of the Greek word for four (tetra) and tennis - Pachitnow's favorite sport. Since then, the blocks have been sliding across the screen. Due to the lack of graphics cards at that time, the blocks were denoted by simple brackets. "I kept everything as simple as possible," Pachitnow says. "Back then, I thought any wrong decision could ruin the game."
He wasn't wrong. Tetris was an instant hit, especially within his colleagues who shared copies among themselves. Its worldwide fame started a few years later, as Western game publishers took an interest.
Moscow negotiations
The legal scuffle over the game's license escalated into a genuine economic crime in the late 1980s and became the subject of a 2023 film. Initially, Mirrorsoft—a company owed by British media tycoon Robert Maxwell—acquired the computer rights through an intermediary, named Robert Stein. Maxwell's team misconstrued the agreement and sold sub-licenses in Europe and Asia without the Russians' involvement.
Tetris' voyage to the West didn't go without complications. In 1989, the Soviet government attempted to stop the distribution of Tetris in the West, asserting that the game had been stolen. However, its popularity had already spread worldwide, and it continued to thrive.
In 1996, Nintendo bought the rights to Tetris and released it for their Game Boy portable system, cementing its status as a timeless title. Today, Tetris can be found on numerous platforms and is enjoyed by millions worldwide.
For the decade following Tetris' inception, Pachitnov didn't receive any monetary reward for his hit since he had to transfer the rights to the Soviet state—in the form of the foreign trade company, Elektronorgtechnika, or Elorg. Elorg managed the ensuing discussions, leading to increasing tensions when Dutch game developer Henk Rogers, then based in Japan, and Nintendo Corporation became involved.
Rogers initially saw Tetris at a computer expo and was promptly entranced. To secure mobile device rights, Rogers traveled alone to Moscow—at the same time as Stein and Mirrorsoft reps. There, he left a great impression on both Moscow officials and Pachitnov, who kindly welcomed him, introduced his family, showcased other games he had programmed, and even served Russian vodka.
Eventually, Rogers gained the Tetris rights, not just for mobile devices but also for home consoles. Even Maxwell's plea to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet head of state, fell on deaf ears—in part because the Russians hadn't seen any money for ages.
Tetris then landed at the Game Boy, which Nintendo released in 1989. It played a crucial role in the console's phenomenal success. Seventy million units were sold. Tetris stands as one of the world's most popular computer games with nearly half a billion copies sold. Almost everyone who played a computer has heard of Tetris.
Even Tetris reached space: in 1993—after the Soviet Union's dissolution—Russian cosmonaut Alexander Serebryakov took a Game Boy to the Mir space station. In his sporadic moments of leisure, he enjoyed playing it. Thus, Tetris became the very first computer game in space, according to the Guinness Book of Records.
In 1993, Paschitnov managed to flee from the Soviet Union. He'd left the country two years prior, viewing it as a "horrible place" where people were simply pawns in the empire's existence. Now, he cautions against similar imperial aspirations in Russia, led by Kremlin's Vladimir Putin.
In America, he established the Tetris Company with his friend Rogers, creating spin-offs of his famous game. Additionally, he spent some years at Microsoft, considering those the best times of his life. Despite not receiving royalties until 1996 while others made a fortune from Tetris, he was never resentful. He remained focused on creating the best version of the game. It's apparent this goal was achieved, as Gibson's "world record" might not stand the test of time. His competitors have already declared they aim to circumvent the "kill screen" to reach new levels.
