''Tetris'' (styled ''TETЯIS'') is a puzzle video game developed by

Atari Games Atari Games Corporation was an American producer of arcade video games, active from 1985 to 1999, then as Midway Games West Inc. until 2003. It was formed when the coin-operated video game division of Atari, Inc. was transferred by its owner Wa ...

and originally released for arcades in 1988. It is based on Alexey Pajitnov's ''

Tetris ''Tetris'' () is a puzzle video game created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov, a Soviet software engineer. In ''Tetris'', falling tetromino shapes must be neatly sorted into a pile; once a horizontal line of the game board is filled in, it disa ...

'', and has the same gameplay as the computer editions. Players must stack differently shaped falling blocks to form and eliminate horizontal lines from the playing field. It has several difficulty levels and two-player simultaneous play. In 1989, Atari Games released a

port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Hamburg, Manch ...

of its arcade version for the

Nintendo Entertainment System The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on 15 July 1983 as the and was later released as the redesigned NES in several test markets in the ...

, under its Tengen brand, though not licensed by Nintendo. Issues arose with the publishing rights for ''Tetris'', and after much legal wrangling,

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles. The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi ...

gained the exclusive rights to publish console versions, leaving Atari with only the rights to arcade versions. As a result, the Tengen game was at retail for only four weeks, with fewer than 100,000 copies sold, until Atari was legally required to recall and destroy any remaining inventory of its NES version. Nintendo produced its own version of ''

'' for the NES and a version for the handheld

Game Boy The is a handheld game console developed by Nintendo, launched in the Japanese home market on April 21, 1989, followed by North America later that year and other territories from 1990 onwards. Following the success of the Game & Watch single-ga ...

. Both versions were commercially successful and Nintendo held the ''Tetris'' license for many years. The Tengen release has since become a collector's item due to scarcity. Various publications have since described Tengen's ''Tetris'' as superior in some ways to Nintendo's official NES release, especially because of its two-player simultaneous mode.

Development and history

In 1987, Soviet Academy of Sciences researcher Alexey Pajitnov (who invented the original game in 1984-1985) alongside Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov developed a two-player version of ''

''. Andromeda Software executive Robert Stein approached Pajitnov with an offer to distribute ''Tetris'' worldwide, and secured the rights to license the game. He in turn sub-licensed the rights to Mirrorsoft for the European market and Spectrum HoloByte for the North American market. After seeing the game run on an

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

, programmer Ed Logg petitioned

to license it for an arcade version, and approached Stein. With the rights secured, Atari Games produced an arcade version, and under its Tengen subsidiary began to remake it for the

(NES) in June 1988. It was released in May 1989. Mirrorsoft later sub-licensed the rights to Henk Rogers of Bullet-Proof Software to distribute ''Tetris'' in Japan. Around then, Bullet-Proof Software gave Nintendo a proposal of developing ''

'' for the Game Boy, and Rogers traveled to Moscow to secure permission to distribute ''Tetris'' for the Game Boy. However, because Stein had secured the rights from Pajitnov directly and not from the

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

authorities, the Ministry of Software and Hardware Export stated that the console rights to ''Tetris'' remained unlicensed, and that Atari Games had only an arcade license. In April 1989, Tengen, which had previously filed an

antitrust Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust l ...

suit against Nintendo, sued Nintendo again claiming rights to distribute ''Tetris'' on the NES, and Nintendo counter-sued citing infringement of trademark. In June 1989, one month after the release of Tengen's ''Tetris'', U.S. District Court Judge Fern Smith issued an injunction barring Tengen from further distributing the game, and further ordered all existing copies destroyed. As a result, 268,000 ''Tetris'' cartridges were recalled and destroyed after only four weeks at retail. The Tengen cover has an airbrush painting by well known illustrator Marc Ericksen featuring St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square, Moscow, with a falling stone concept at its base that mirrors the gameplay. Atari used the same art when advertising the new release, adding a fireworks motif. Ed Logg said that the Tengen version of ''Tetris'' was built from scratch, using no

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

or assets from the original. After presenting the game at the

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...

(CES) in

Las Vegas Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

, Tengen president Randy Broweleit requested improvements. He wanted the black-and-white pieces to be colorized, and Logg complied prior to the next CES. When asked which version of ''Tetris'' he liked the most, Logg stated the Nintendo version for the NES "wasn't tuned right" due to a lack of logarithmic speed adjustment, yielding overly steep increases in difficulty.

Reception

By the time of the court order demanding Tengen cease distribution of the game and destroy all remaining copies, roughly 100,000 copies of the game had been sold, and it has since become a collector's item. It has been called superior to

's own release for the NES, with 1UP.com noting its termination as a loss for players, citing its gameplay and two-player mode, but in another article, it noted that without the hype surrounding the game during the lawsuit, Tengen's ''Tetris'' would have likely been forgotten. GamesRadar stated similar sentiments, praising Tengen's version and noting that the Game Boy version was also superior to Nintendo's licensed NES version.

IGN ''IGN'' is an American video gaming and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa district and is headed by its former e ...

placed the Tengen version at #48 on its list of the Top 100 NES games, noting its superiority to the official Nintendo version, which is not on the list.

References

External links

* {{Tetris 1988 video games Atari arcade games Nintendo Entertainment System games Tetris games North America-exclusive video games Tengen (company) games Unauthorized video games Video games scored by Brad Fuller Video games developed in the United States Multiplayer and single-player video games