It's the most popular puzzle game ever made. Since its release in 1984, the series has
sold over 200 million copies, across more than 65 platforms, making it one of the best
selling video games of all time. The GameBoy version in particular is one of the most sold
games period, outclassing games like Skyrim and Mario 64.
This
is the Tetris Iceberg.
The Birth of Tetris
Alexey Pajitnov was a Soviet programmer who had a dream to make people happy with computers.
To quote Alexey: "games allow people to get to know each other better, and act as revealers
of things you might not normally notice, such as their way of thinking.". Occasionally,
when new equipment would be provided to him and his coworkers at the Soviet Academy of
Sciences, they would write small programs in order to test the computing power. In 1984,
inspired by a puzzle game from his childhood, he started work on a game that would allow
players to arrange puzzle pieces in real time as they fell from the top of the screen. Originally,
Alexey was going to use twelve shapes, but found that amount to be much too complicated.
Eventually he settled on the seven that we know. While testing his game, he noticed that
pieces would fill the screen far quicker than anticipated, so Alexey decided that lines
would delete upon completion. Unknowingly, that simple mechanic would lead Tetris to
becoming the phenomenon that it is today. Alexey shared his game with his colleagues
at the Academy and shortly afterward it spread to every office in the academy. Soon, Tetris
had found its way into every institute in Moscow that had a computer.
The Electronika 60
The Electronika 60 was a computer manufactured in the Soviet Union. Most famously, this computer
was where the first version of Tetris was playable on. Since there was no graphics capabilities
on the device, text was used instead to represent the blocks.
Who Owns It?
Due to a combination of Russia lacking any sort of intellectual property law for citizens
and Alexey not having any experience with business, ownership of Tetris was extremely
complicated for years. Even Nintendo and Atari had a legal disagreement over who had home
console rights for the game. Alexey had decided early on that he wanted quote, "everything
to go smoothly", and gave the initial rights to The Soviet Academy of Sciences for 10 years.
After that deal had expired, Alexey was finally making royalties off of the game he made more
than 10 years prior. Now living in Seattle, Alexey founded the "Tetris Company", with
longtime friend and business partner Henk Rogers, and over several years, they finally
accquired worldwide rights to Tetris.
Tetris Piece Names
The Tetris pieces themselves are called "tetraminos", which are named after a term used in mathematics,
"tetrominoes". Tetrominos are defined as polyominoes made of 4 square blocks. Each piece is typically
assigned a letter for their individual names. I, O, T, S, Z, J, and L...
In 2019 though, Twitter user @vecchitto, posted an image of the original instruction booklet
for Tetris and pointed out something interesting. The tetraminos were given strange names like
Blue Ricky and Rhode Island Z.
This led most other users to assume these were the original names of the pieces. It
was later revealed to be a convincing hoax, but not before the game show, "Jeopardy!",
added this misinformation to a question.
Tetris Guidelines
As of 2001, The Tetris Company has strict guidelines that must be followed in order
for a Tetris game to be approved for release. The rules have gone through several iterations,
the most recent set being updated in 2009. The guidelines include things like the colors
that are assigned to each piece, as well as the width and height of the playfield. Some
of the more obscure rules include mandatory control layouts for TV remotes, or older cellphones,
if the version is compatible with those.
A Russian Classic
The main Tetris Theme, "Type A," is actually more than 100 years older then Tetris itself.
In 1861, Russian poet Nikolay Nekrasov wrote, "Korobeiniki," which quickly became a popular
Russian folk song due to its simple and fast tempo. It's easy to understand why Alexey
Pajitnov, a Russian himself, chose this classic song as a track for his game.
Tetris Effect
Tetris Effect is a condition attributed to people who devote so much attention to an
activity, that they are unable to stop thinking about it. The activity will begin to spend
more time in their thoughts, dreams, and even will show up involuntarily in their visual
fields, even though they're not performing it. It's named for the obsession that some
people develop with Tetris, but it is known to occur with Rubik's Cubes, jigsaw puzzles,
and other video games. The name of this condition was given to the 2018 game of the same name.
Made as a sort of celebration of the phenomenon, it combines beautiful visuals and music with
the traditional Tetris gameplay. It even includes a VR mode for players who want a more personal
experience.
Puyo Puyo Tetris
This is a series of games that incorperate the Puyo Puyo characters and gameplay, with
Tetris. You're able to play each game individually or both at the same time in the fusion mode.
In the second game, several enhancements and game modes were added, and Sonic himself even
makes a playable appearence.
Welltris
Welltris is referred to as the first ever Tetris sequel. The familiar Tetris gameplay
is still featured, but the game board has been extended into the 3rd dimension. While
reviews seemed favorable at the time, Welltris slowly fell into obscurity. A game with this
type of gameplay was attempted again with 3D Tetris, but this game was received poorly,
on top of being released as one of the final games on the commercial failure that was the
Virtual Boy.
Hatris
Hatris is another game created by Alexey Pajitnov. The goal of this game is to place hats on
the heads of these men at the bottom of the screen. When you've placed 5 hats of the same
kind in a row on a person's head, they'll fall off onto a conveyer belt and give you
some points. Clearly this puzzle game did not catch on nearly as well as Tetris, because
there are no versions past the initial ones created back in 1990.
Tetris 2
Tetris 2 for the NES, also called Tetris Flash in Japan, is a 1993 game that, despite the
names, isn't really anything like Tetris. Rather than the typical Tetris gameplay, this
game instead plays more like Dr. Mario, which released 3 years earlier. Blocks will descend
from the top of the screen and the objective is to match their colors with the garbage
on the screen, rather than make lines.
Tetris Attack
Tetris Attack is a Super Nintendo game that is not really a Tetris game. It is a puzzle
game originally known as "Panel de Pon" in Japan. You may know of that title from the
item "Lip's Stick", in the Super Smash Bros series. The international version of the game
was renamed to Tetris Attack, and visuals were completely altered to include characters
from 'Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. Reportedly, Tetris Company co-founder Henk
Rogers said that he regretted giving Nintendo permission to use the Tetris name.
Tetris Worlds Combo Pack
Released for 6th generation consoles, Tetris Worlds was another iteration of the puzzle
game. The Xbox version in particular was developed by Radical Entertainment and was included
with the "Star Wars Clone Wars" game on a single disc. This unique game disc was bundled
with the Xbox system itself.
Competitive Tetris
Competitive Tetris can be traced back to 1990, during the Nintendo World Championships, where
one of the games included in the competition was NES Tetris. The modern resurgence of the
competitive scene started back in 2010, when the first Classic Tetris World Championship
was held. Starting in 2012, the competition started being held at the Portland Retro Gaming
Expo in Oregon, until 2020 when it was changed over to an online format. Typically, NES Tetris
is the most played version in competition, due to its lack of newer mechanics and unique
difficulty. Outside of official competition, many players stream high score attempts and
practice on their Twitch channels, constantly pushing each other to even greater heights.
The Current World Record
As of the recording of this video, the NES Tetris high score is a staggering 2,340,240,
by Cheez, achieved at the end of November 2021. This shattered the previous record of
1,676,400, set by Huffuluhfugus. The reason for such an insane jump in the world record,
is due to the advent of a brand new style of play, called "Rolling."
For years, players have either played with "DAS," which is the way that most of you at
home play Tetris, or with "Hypertapping," which requires players to tap their fingers
on the D-pad very quickly, in turn making it faster than holding the button down. Rolling
is a technique that has been theorized for years but finally perfected by Cheez himself.
The idea is to position your hands in such a way where you hit the bottom of the controller
quickly, so the D-pad knocks into your fingers. This allows players to play almost twice as
fast as with Hypertapping. This record may only just be the beginning of a new age of
Tetris World Records, by pushing the boundaries of what is humanly possible.
Jonas Neubauer
Considered by many to be the best to ever grace the competitive Tetris scene, Jonas
Neubauer was a 7 time World Champion. His achievements don't stop there. In 2006, he
became one of the first to max out the game's score counter at 999,999. In 2008 he also
performed one of the first ever max outs, while starting on level 19, the hardest starting
difficulty in the NES game. Most importantly, he was a kind and welcoming figure in the
community at large. Tragically, on January 5th, 2021, Jonas passed away due to a sudden
and unpreventable cardiac uh-rhythmia. Support poured out from the community, and to honor
his memory, the trophy for the 2021 Tetris World Championships was altered to be a Golden
"J" piece, and was renamed to the "Jonas Neubauer Trophy."
Tetris Film
Typically, in order for a game to have a film adaptation, you need to have a recognizable
character like Mario or Sonic, but interest in a Tetris film seems to be higher than you
might think. In 2014, it was announced that Tetris - The Movie, was being developed by
Threshold Entertainment. The film was intended to be the first in a sci-fi trilogy, but nothing
ever came of it. In 2020, a Tetris biopic was announced for the Apple TV+ streaming
service, to be directed by Jon S. Baired. This film is currently in production, and
the premise revolves around the development and eventual release of Tetris.
Easy Spin
The Easy Spin, or Infinity, is a technique in newer Tetris games where the player is
able to delay a tetramino from locking into place by rotating it. You can potentially
keep a piece active forever using Easy Spin. It's infamous among more hardcore players
for being a mechanic that makes the game far easier than normal. It's worth noting that
many of the newer Tetris games incentivize speed by giving extra points, or allowing
you to send extra garbage to opponents if you play faster.
Tetris DX Wall Climb
In the Gameboy Color game Tetris DX, there's an exploit that exists which allows you to
make pieces climb back up the side of the wall. Due to the changes in the rotation system
in this game, if you position any piece other than the "O" piece on a wall and spin it in
the opposite direction, it will slowly gain height.
Mario and Luigi Cameo
When playing in the 2 player mode on Tetris for the Gameboy, players are represented by
small portraits of Mario and Luigi.
Unused Song
In Tetris on the NES, this unused track is found in the game data: [PLAY TRACK] It's
the first track listed, which means that this could have possibly been meant for the title
screen, which is normally silent.
The Heaven Polyomino
This refers to the concept put forth by Randall Munroe in a short web comic on his blog, "xkcd".
In the image, he has drawn what can only be described as a Tetris Heaven. A piece is generated
which is the exact shape and size needed to clear every single line from the lowest opening
to the highest column. Fans refer to this as the "Heaven Block", or the "Heaven Polyomino."
The New Tetris Rants
The New Tetris is a version of Tetris created for the Nintendo 64 by H20 Entertainment.
It's a fairly unassuming game on the surface, but the developers left several secrets in
the game. David Pridie, one of the programmers, was so angry with how development on the game
went, that he slipped in a 1,000 word rant into the code. In the rant, David insults
the producer of the game within the first two sentences of starting. "D*N, my god..
is this guy useless or what?? I don't hate you D*N.. but you SUCK, and I mean SUCK as
a producer. You should go back to testing video games, but I doubt you could even manage
that properly. I feel sorry for you. During this project you just sat around and played
video games.. starcraft and everquest. Don't even deny that.. when you WERE working, it
was making stupid Excel (tm) spreadsheets to try and tell me how many bugs I had left
to fix on a graph.. like WTF is that???"
He goes on to insult other coworkers, but interestingly compliments Nintendo, saying
quote, "It has been nice working with you. a lot of you are great, or were great.". He
ends his tirade by saying goodbye, and that he plans on leaving H20 Entertainment to go
and work at 3DO. This message was one among many left in The New Tetris. Others include
a set of profanity-filled hidden credits and several other shorter rants. David thought
that he could slip some of these in, and they wouldn't be discovered for years to come...
they were found after 3 days of the game's release. He ended up getting both himself
and H20 Entertainment into trouble with Nintendo. Sadly, David passed away only a year and a
half after the release of The New Tetris. He's forever immortalized in Tetris history
as a savage programmer. I think he would've loved that.
Despite it's simple nature, Tetris continues to garner support to this day, even while
the industry standard moves towards more graphically impressive and expansive games. The series
shows no signs of slowing down, and with the recent release of the "Connected" expansion
for Tetris Effect, it's going to be very interesting to see where the series goes from here. Like
and subscribe if you'd like to see more videos like this. And let me know what subjects you'd
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