|  |
|
The import of Tetris and the influence that it has had on the video game industry are undeniable. In June of 1985, a Russian programmer named Alexey Pajitnov developed a simple geometric puzzle game, and the world of gaming has never been the same. The game stands as one of the most ported games to date; nearly every console since the game's inception has been blessed with at least one version or another of Tetris, if not multiple renderings.
Tetris |
But what was it about this mad Russian invention that made it an international sensation? What was it about this piece of software that made game publishers like Spectrum Holobyte, Atari, and the almighty Nintendo wage legal battles over it for years? Simplicity. Like the abacus, Tetris is simple in form, complex in function. Geometric shapes slide down a rectangular playing field, and you manipulate the shapes to create full "lines" across the width of the playing field, and this causes those lines to disappear. And slowly, bit by bit, the shapes slide down faster and faster, until you just can't take it any more.
While not a concept that would blow away today's gamers, it was certainly enough in 1989, when Tetris was released as the flagship title for Nintendo's handheld video game console, the Game Boy. This maddening killer app sold more than a few Game Boys, cementing itself and Nintendo's pocket prodigy in the minds of gamers everywhere.
Bust-A-Move |
And like any intensely popular video game, Tetris immediately spawned a sea of imitators, which were inspired either by the game's beautifully simplistic design or by the bundles of cash it was making for select people. Either way, when the first wave hit, it looked as though every game company had a product with which to combat the Russian juggernaut, all of them bearing an almost frightening resemblance to Tetris. Sega had Columns, which took the Tetris concept and replaced odd-shaped geometric blocks with different colored gems. Columns didn't enjoy the level of success that Tetris did, but this didn't stop Sega from releasing another Tetris-style puzzle game years later called Puyo Puyo. Atari tried its hand at the puzzle game with Klax, which also dropped the geometric shapes in favor of different colored tiles. Taito has since built a puzzle empire with its Bust-A-Move franchise, which would not have existed without Tetris. One of the more popular puzzle games, Capcom's Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, cribs heavily from Tetris.
La Bastille Sciences Library at Brown University. (Sketch by Nik Lochmatow) |
Almost more impressive than Tetris' pervasiveness in the game industry is its existence outside the conventional world of video games. Watches, calculators, PDAs, are all carriers of the Tetris "virus," and Java- and Shockwave-based versions exist all over the Internet. In an impressive display of ingenuity and Christmas lights, technology students at Brown University wired lights inside a 14-story library building to some home-brewed computing hardware so that they could play a god-sized version of Tetris on the side of the building.
Of course, this is not the venue for a complete list of those inspired by Tetris; there's simply not enough room. But suffice to say, it defined the puzzle genre in its day, and it still defines it to this day: All but a few of the puzzle games released post-Tetris have used it as a design reference of some sort. Tetris set the gold standard.
Check latest prices
|
| 
