Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstuff Loauren
Speaker 1: Bobblebaum here. For almost four decades, through the Cold War
Speaker 1: and its thawing, through the fall of the USSR and
Speaker 1: the rise of globalism, through diplomatic strains and years of
Speaker 1: touch and go Russian American relations, people all over the
Speaker 1: world have remained mesmerized by a Soviet invention, a computer
Speaker 1: game of all things, that somehow has both persevered and prospered.
Speaker 1: Tetris and its ever quickening trickle down of four block
Speaker 1: shapes is immediately identifiable to just about anyone who's ever
Speaker 1: used a digital device with the screen. When it was
Speaker 1: conceived in nineteen eighty four by a puzzle happy programmer,
Speaker 1: though Tetris was little more than an in house diversion
Speaker 1: designed to break up serious minded twelve hour days at
Speaker 1: the Russian Academy of Sciences. From that of Soviet controlled software,
Speaker 1: Tetris has evolved into maybe the most famous computer game
Speaker 1: the world has ever seen. It's a seemingly simple electronic
Speaker 1: escape that's enjoyed in more than two hundred countries on
Speaker 1: more than fifty separate platforms by millions of people playing
Speaker 1: billions of games every year, and Tetris has been downloaded
Speaker 1: on mobile devices alone more than four hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: five million times, and keep in mind that download capable
Speaker 1: mobile devices didn't really exist when creator Alexei Pajidov unveiled
Speaker 1: the game to his coworkers in nineteen eighty four. Tetris
Speaker 1: has also sold some seventy million physical copies for the
Speaker 1: article this episode is based on how Stuffworks. Spoke with Pagidov,
Speaker 1: he said, well, Tetris is a really good game, one
Speaker 1: of the best. That's not very modest of me, but
Speaker 1: that's the fact. Pasidov was born in Moscow in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five. He was helping to develop early speech recognitions
Speaker 1: at the Russian Academy of Sciences in nineteen eighty four
Speaker 1: when he began building a computer game in his spare time.
Speaker 1: The game featured tetronimos, that is, playing pieces made up
Speaker 1: of four blocks like dominos, but Tetra is the prefix
Speaker 1: for four. The tetronomos came in seven different shapes, from
Speaker 1: straight lines to squares, and the object was to arrange
Speaker 1: them as they fell into the playing field. He called
Speaker 1: it Tetris after Tetra meaning four and his favorite sport, tennis.
Speaker 1: The game was built on and initially played on, an
Speaker 1: early Soviet computer, the Electronica sixty, which had no graphic capabilities.
Speaker 1: Its monitor could only display text, still with letters serving
Speaker 1: as the blocks of each Tetronimo. It was an instant
Speaker 1: hit with Pachatov's colleagues. Pachatov said, the Computer Center was
Speaker 1: a pretty serious kind of institute, very solid and very serious.
Speaker 1: Nobody ever thought about creating a computer game. Basically, all
Speaker 1: this was just an excuse for having fun among the programmers.
Speaker 1: The game lingered for months inside the cavernous rooms at
Speaker 1: the Center until Pajidov, pushed by his coworkers to make
Speaker 1: it more accessible, assigned someone to port the game to
Speaker 1: the much more popular IBMPC. Pajidov said, on the PC,
Speaker 1: it starts its own life. It was like a forest fire.
Speaker 1: It went everywhere. Eventually the game was saved onto floppy
Speaker 1: disks and leaked into other countries. What followed were years
Speaker 1: of legal and sometimes extra legal maneuvering outside of the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union. People were eager to get their hands on
Speaker 1: the game and to start selling it. The Soviet government,
Speaker 1: which held all rights to Pachtov's work resisted. For example,
Speaker 1: at one point a Hungarian software company thought that it
Speaker 1: had secured the rights from Pajetov to sell the game
Speaker 1: in the West, but that turned out to be a miscommunication.
Speaker 1: A mere programmer in these bureaucracy didn't have the power
Speaker 1: to authorize his creations licensing, and the Soviets declined to
Speaker 1: give up control. By nineteen eighty eight, though, the Soviet
Speaker 1: Ministry responsible for the export of computer hardware and software
Speaker 1: gave its blessing and Tetris made its way onto PCs
Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom and the US. But the real
Speaker 1: Tetris explosion came a year later when the new handheld
Speaker 1: gaming computer made by the Japanese firm Nintendo, the game Boy,
Speaker 1: promised to include a Tetris cartridge with every Game Boy
Speaker 1: sold in America if the Soviets agreed. One Hank Rogers,
Speaker 1: a Dutch video game producer living in Japan, wound up
Speaker 1: brokering the deal. He'd run across the game on PC
Speaker 1: at the Consumer Electronics Show and saw its potential. Today
Speaker 1: he's the president of the Tetris Company, which controls the
Speaker 1: Tetris license. Rogers told CNN in twenty nineteen, I made
Speaker 1: a handshake deal with Minoru Arakawa, founder of Nintendo of America,
Speaker 1: to have Nintendo include Tetris in every game Boy. He said,
Speaker 1: why should I include Tetris? I have Mario, And I said,
Speaker 1: if you want little boys to buy your game Boy,
Speaker 1: then include Mario. But if you want everyone to buy
Speaker 1: your game Boy, then you should include Tetris. But the
Speaker 1: Soviets were not yet convinced. Again, this was still in
Speaker 1: the middle of the Cold War, and they were suspicious
Speaker 1: of anything to do with the US. The KGB supposedly
Speaker 1: got involved. Soviet leader Mikhel Gorbachev might have had to
Speaker 1: say Rogers, with the lucrative deal hanging by thread, flew
Speaker 1: to Moscow to try to convince the Soviets to sign
Speaker 1: in on the agreement. He reportedly spent hours being questioned
Speaker 1: by Soviet officials. The whole thing was so dramatic that
Speaker 1: Apple Studios produced a feature length thriller about Rogers and
Speaker 1: pachetobs or Deal. It debuted in twenty twenty three and
Speaker 1: is called Tetris But Yes, the game that worked. The
Speaker 1: Soviets agreed to a deal, perhaps as an exercise of
Speaker 1: soft power. The original Tetris packaging included the slogan from
Speaker 1: Russia with fun. It became part of the North American
Speaker 1: game boy launch in nineteen eighty nine. Nintendo sold thirty
Speaker 1: five million game boys that year, and Tetris boomed into
Speaker 1: a worldwide phenomenon. The goal of conventional Tetris is to
Speaker 1: control where and how the tetronomos fall so that they
Speaker 1: fill up entire horizontal lines in the playing field. The
Speaker 1: completed lines are eliminated from the field, clearing more space
Speaker 1: to play. The more lines a player can completely fill
Speaker 1: and eliminate before the blocks pile up to the top
Speaker 1: of the playing field, the higher the score. It sounds simple,
Speaker 1: and on the most basic level it is, but that's
Speaker 1: part of the beauty of Tetris. Pajanov thinks of it
Speaker 1: more like Chess than say Minecraft or Grand Theft Auto,
Speaker 1: which are also in the top three be selling video
Speaker 1: games of all time. Patchidov said Tetris is very deceptive.
Speaker 1: It creates lots of illusions in the player's minds. You
Speaker 1: have an extremely long learning curve. The normal video game,
Speaker 1: you have thirty to forty hours learning curve. Tetris, to
Speaker 1: my kind of thinking is one hundred and twenty hours.
Speaker 1: In many ways, the game is so simple that it's
Speaker 1: nearly mystical. It's so easy that it's seldom mastered. Tetris
Speaker 1: is now one of the most awarded games in history,
Speaker 1: and has had numerous spin offs over the years, all
Speaker 1: of them now licensed by the Tetris Company. The game,
Speaker 1: in its various forms, is played on smartphones, tablets, computers,
Speaker 1: and basically every video game system, including virtual reality headsets.
Speaker 1: An annual tournament featuring the nineteen eighty nine version of
Speaker 1: Tetris on the original Nintendo Entertainment System began in twenty ten.
Speaker 1: The Classic Tetris World Championship now hosts over twenty live
Speaker 1: events around the world, ending in the champion every summer.
Speaker 1: Through all these years Pastadov has missed out on potentially
Speaker 1: millions of dollars in royalties, but he said that he's
Speaker 1: content with what is created because of its lasting worth. Quote.
Speaker 1: At some moment, I had a choice either start to
Speaker 1: fight for my rights and spend the rest of my
Speaker 1: life fighting. I decide that if God gave me such
Speaker 1: a gift to create such a game, I will create
Speaker 1: another game and go about it another way. The most
Speaker 1: important thing is to give this game to the people.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article how Tetris went
Speaker 1: from Soviet mindgame to smash Hit on HowStuffWorks dot Com,
Speaker 1: written by John Donovan. Brain stuff It's production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com, misproduced by Tyler Klang.
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