Tetris,
It’s the perfect game.
I’m going to go to Moscow,
secure worldwide handheld rights.
You’re walking into a communist country
that still considers America enemy numero uno.
If you go, we can’t protect you.
Okie dokie.
The movie is an extraordinary story
set in Soviet Russia in 1989…
about different people from all over the world
pursuing this incredibly hot property.
My character Henk
is a kind of larger than life cowboy figure
that goes out on a limb to make his fortune
and get the rights to Tetris.
When I first found Tetris I was a publisher of
computer games in Japan,
the people who were publishing it had no idea what they had,
I got the console rights in Japan,
and then Game Boy came out.
Gentlemen if you want to sell a couple hundred thousand
Game Boys to little kids, package it with Mario.
But if you want to sell millions of Game Boys...
package it with Tetris.
I made a deal with the president of Nintendo USA,
a month later I was on a plane to Moscow to get
the Game Boy rights
We’re in a room full of eight business people,
there were definitely some KGB guys in the room.
You go home today,
or you stay and face the consequences.
Alexey Pajitnov and I first met in that room.
He’s the original creator of Tetris.
Henk was the first man
Alexey can talk about computers to.
Alexey, your game is brilliant,
I'm going to make you a millionaire.
I do not have right to receive money from my game.
That’s criminal.
No,
it is communism.
Tetris is my main achievement in my life.
It was the only Russian software
coming out of Soviet Union at that time.
There’s lots of corruption there
and people after money and there's this one man
who’s made this thing that everyone wants.
We’ll start by licensing computer games,
then video games, arcade games, board games, everything.
It’s this mad dash,
to secure
the rights to the game.
Get me Tetris.
Don’t sacrifice everything for this.
Get in!
We were living in this two bedroom apartment
supporting this crazy foreigner father,
it’s really a transformational time in our family's lives.
Everything is going to be fine,
because if it isn’t, then we don’t have handheld rights
and we don’t have console rights, and Nintendo will sue us
for fraud and we’ll lose the business and they’ll probably
take our house and I am trying to keep it together
Akemi, really I am but I do not have a backup plan.
It’s strange watching somebody else be me.
It was fun to watch because he does a good job.
I was impressed with the script
and now the actors as well,
they really captured what the real people were like
Personally for my part I always just feel that you
seek to humanize somebody and make them relatable
and three dimensional, then you are
doing them the right service.
I’m sorry hun,
Papa’s got to go and get ready for his business trip,
but I can’t wait to see your show.
Tetris crosses boundaries,
you know it brings people of all cultures together.
Henk & Alexey they’re incredibly different
in terms of their family lives but they love programming.
Partners are what make us great.
Not only is Tetris an amazing game,
but it was only possible through this friendship between
Henk & Alexey that it spread through the rest of the world.
He is the author of Tetris.
play Tetris,
my friends.
When you take a photo,
how do you make the photo have the same emotional impact
as when you were actually there.
I think the movie does that very well.