Tetris Still Has the IT Factor

Thirty five years ago Tetris launched and instantly proved that electronic addiction didn’t need fancy graphics. Not really. Tetris had a still birth and was resuscitated by accident. But once resuscitated, Tetris ruled.

Tetris contains one rule – destroy the nasty puzzle pieces that endlessly fall by organizing them into a row. Like golf, no matter how good you get against the endless geometric rain, you could do better. Can we explain Tetris longevity because it’s like a Buddhist metaphor for life? Perhaps that’s why back from the dead Puma will be debuting a Tetris inspired sneaker this October. This combination of dated brands should be called retro soled retro.

 In 1984, a Russian computer programmer named Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris. It seems quaint now, with Russian hackers making coin attacking websites, elections and bank accounts, but this game was built for old fashioned capitalism. The name Tetris is a mash up of the Latin word tetra, and tennis. Tetra means four sided, since all those falling shapes are built from squares, and tennis, well that was Mr. Pajitnov’s favorite game.  

Caught in the end game of the USSR, Pajitnov tried to convince some Soviet committee to allow him to sell Tetris in a bundle with other games. As they so often do, the bureaucrats couldn’t see the point. There it may have lain, but for the funny thing about the early internet.

Before we ever heard of a computer virus, people considered the internet a safe space to share files and silly games like Tetris. Pajitnov and his team shared the game with friends. Pajitnov’s team shared other games too, but those sucked. However, Tetris jostled the internet like the cutest cat video ever. The game spread across time zones solely through file sharing, and quickly ended up in the US. There Tetris found it’s way into the lap of Henk Rogers. Henk took the unusual path of manufacturing game cartridges for Nintendo before acquiring the rights to Tetris from the Soviets. He nearly lost his shirt before giving the Russians a shit ton of money. After court battles in the US between game companies trying to corner the market on this simple little game, Tetris made gazillions for Microsoft through its Game Boy franchise. Remember Pajitnov? He made diddily on Tetris.

People played so much Tetris they saw the falling shapes when they closed their eyes and dreamed about it when they slept, giving rise to the term Tetris Effect. More recently, since a spectrum of electronic gaming is reshaping minds, medical science broadened the term to Visual Game Transfer Phenomena (VGTP). Tetris Effect sounds much cooler. One study found that playing Tetris thirty minutes a day increases connections in the brain. Nice.

In the late 90s, displaced by fancier and bloodier games, Microsoft just threw in Tetris as a freebie with its operating systems. That’s how a certain member of my family discovered it, and if playing three hours a day qualifies, was addicted. She needed a few Tetris interventions or she might still be playing the game nearly two decades later.

Even after 35 years, people still play the game enough for companies to invest time and energy developing new versions. Though today’s graphics are fancier and the new iterations have names like “Tetris Effect” (A geeky attempt at humor) and “Tetris 99” – the basic destroy the puzzle theme is relatively untouched.

Tetris remains relevant enough that Hollywood’s planning a TRILOGY of Tetris themed movies. Ye Gods! One seems like far more than enough for a franchise that has no story and no characters.

Thirty five years after beginning its peripatetic launch, simple little Tetris still has that IT factor.