Tetris

This game is a russian puzzle game that involves placing geometrical shapes called Tetronimos in a certain way so that they fit each other to cover rows without an empty space between these shapes.There are seven different shapes that will fall increasingly faster from the top of the screen, each shape composed of four squares. the player will then be able to move these shapes right or left and also rotate these shapes 4 times by 90 degrees.If a row gets filled up by ten squares the row disappears and the player gains points. However as soon as these Tetronimos touch another one they stop moving, this means that if the shapes reach the top of the screen the player looses.

History of Tetris

Like I said before, Tetris was made in Russia, it was created by Alexey Pajitnov in 1985. After playing a pentominoes game he decided to create Tetris on an Electronica 60 at the Moscow Academy of Science's Computer Center. After it's release the game began being ported into other systems like the IBM PC increasing it's popularity. After while the PC version spread to other places like Hungary where Hungarian programmers ported it into the Apple II and the Commodore 64 in 1986. This game attracted the attention of Robert Stein, the president of the British software house Andromeda, who had the intent of getting the rights of Tetris. However, without telling Pajitnov, he sold the rights of Tetris to Mirrorsoft UK and its USA affiliate. Stein later asked the Russians for a signed proof of the transaction of the rights but they refused so he decided that he needed to steal this game from them by claiming that it was made by the Hungarian programmers.

While this was happening Tetris just keept getting more and more popular as was able to be played by almost any home computer. Months go by and more and more companies get their hands on Tetris, wether it's on computer, arcade, handheld or even console. Not only it was the most popular computer game at the time but it also had a huge hit on the arcade version in Japan by gaining the Game of the Year award from Gamest Award. But Stein could not get his hands on legitimate Tetris rights, even the Soviet government got the rights for ten years. Still a lot of companies like Sega or Nintendo had different rights on Tetris like arcade rights or home console rights, however this just created a big dispute between these companies. But this is just a brief summary of the whole story because it is actually very long and a lot more intricate and consists mainly of the fight between companies to get their hands the a signed right of Tetris from the authors.

The competition

Since a dozen of companies had their hands on Tetris, this game became extremely popular generating a lot of money, but because of how much money they could make off of Tetris, companies began competing with each other on different hardwares. Big companies like Nintendo, Sega or even Atari Games had rights over Tetris and created their own version of it on handhelds, arcades or consoles. These companies fought over the rights to this game, for the right of the home console, arcade or handheld. They all wanted to have control over this game because of it's fame. However there were big hits in certain hardwares like the Game boy's Tetris in 1989 that sold over 33 million copies and is the most popular version of Tetris or the Sega's arcade version which was widely popular in Japan in 1988.

Between these different versions there were unique features to make the game stand out from the rest like new game modes or a particular point counting system. Not only were features added but also the music wasn't always the same for every version. The most popular one was from the Game Boy, it's a Russian folk song called "Korobeiniki" that is featured in almost every game so far. However, other versions had different songs, the NES version had it's soundtrack from the nutcracker while Atari's soundtrack was composed by Brad Fuller. In the end, Tetris became one of the most popular and influential game of it's era that was also featured a large array of different hardwares and owned by many companies even if Alexey Pajitnov is the one that legitimately own the rights to Tetris.