4 ms·

The Story of Tetris

85 points by cpncrunch 10y ago

ganeshkrishnan 10y ago
Henk Rogers now stays in Hawaii and runs an incubator BlueStartups. I spoke to him at one of his launch parties in Honolulu and he is an amazingly warm guy to speak to. It was a welcome change compared to the VCs here in Australia who sit high on their iron throne and sneer down at startups
ensiferum 10y ago
Funny story and a great game.
- xchaotic 10y ago
  Am I right that the original programmers didn't make a lot of money on that, instead, various western corporations did? A bit like Kalashnikov guy.
  - konart 10y ago
    Well, Kalashnikov's case is a bit different - there wasn't and couldn't be a private company of the sort, he was working for the state.
    - lucio 10y ago
      In the Soviet Union, everybody was working "for the state".
  - whatever_dude 10y ago
    Yes, you are correct. The article talks about that briefly. They got no royalties, because the game basically belonged to the Russian government. It was licensed in various ways (some of them not completely legitimate). Pajitnov only got the license to the game in 1996.
dspillett 10y ago
BBC4 did a good documentary on this a few years ago called "Tetris: From Russia With Love". Recommended if you can find a copy on your preferred streaming/download option.
sengork 10y ago
You may enjoy an interview with the tetris man himself: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzsTvqyBRGv0-uyjDuQD1v1MUmRIf9TEk https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzsTvqyBRGv0-uyjDuQD1... Some of the technological history he mentions is quite interesting.
bluedino 10y ago
The licensing/legality of Tetris clones has always amused me. Could someone have made a NES Tetris clone and called it 'Block Puzzle', or would Nintendo have never approved it? Obviously the Atari version was called Tetris so they got shutdown (plus Tengen was making unlicensed NES cartridges...) There aren't even many tetris clones on the iPhone. You've got the 'official' version (thanks, EA) but lawyers have jumped on so many small-time developers.
JoeDaDude 10y ago
Not mentioned in the article is how the work of Solomon Golomb in his book "Polyominoes" inspired the design of Tetris. https://www.fi.edu/laureates/solomon-w-golomb https://www.fi.edu/laureates/solomon-w-golomb
Kristine1975 10y ago
If reading about Tetris made you want to play it (again), here's a BSD-licensed implementation of a falling-blocks game that might be similar to Tetris: https://github.com/zeromeaner/zeromeaner https://github.com/zeromeaner/zeromeaner (Zeromeaner is a fork of NullpoMino since the latter hasn't been updated for several years.)

85 points by cpncrunch 10y ago

Henk Rogers now stays in Hawaii and runs an incubator BlueStartups. I spoke to him at one of his launch parties in Honolulu and he is an amazingly warm guy to speak to. It was a welcome change compared to the VCs here in Australia who sit high on their iron throne and sneer down at startups

ensiferum 10y ago

Funny story and a great game.

xchaotic 10y ago
Am I right that the original programmers didn't make a lot of money on that, instead, various western corporations did? A bit like Kalashnikov guy.
- konart 10y ago
  Well, Kalashnikov's case is a bit different - there wasn't and couldn't be a private company of the sort, he was working for the state.
  - lucio 10y ago
    In the Soviet Union, everybody was working "for the state".
- whatever_dude 10y ago
  Yes, you are correct. The article talks about that briefly. They got no royalties, because the game basically belonged to the Russian government. It was licensed in various ways (some of them not completely legitimate). Pajitnov only got the license to the game in 1996.

dspillett 10y ago

BBC4 did a good documentary on this a few years ago called "Tetris: From Russia With Love". Recommended if you can find a copy on your preferred streaming/download option.

sengork 10y ago

You may enjoy an interview with the tetris man himself: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzsTvqyBRGv0-uyjDuQD1v1MUmRIf9TEk https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzsTvqyBRGv0-uyjDuQD1... Some of the technological history he mentions is quite interesting.

bluedino 10y ago

The licensing/legality of Tetris clones has always amused me. Could someone have made a NES Tetris clone and called it 'Block Puzzle', or would Nintendo have never approved it? Obviously the Atari version was called Tetris so they got shutdown (plus Tengen was making unlicensed NES cartridges...) There aren't even many tetris clones on the iPhone. You've got the 'official' version (thanks, EA) but lawyers have jumped on so many small-time developers.

JoeDaDude 10y ago

Not mentioned in the article is how the work of Solomon Golomb in his book "Polyominoes" inspired the design of Tetris. https://www.fi.edu/laureates/solomon-w-golomb https://www.fi.edu/laureates/solomon-w-golomb

Kristine1975 10y ago

If reading about Tetris made you want to play it (again), here's a BSD-licensed implementation of a falling-blocks game that might be similar to Tetris: https://github.com/zeromeaner/zeromeaner https://github.com/zeromeaner/zeromeaner (Zeromeaner is a fork of NullpoMino since the latter hasn't been updated for several years.)