IBM PC

Lore & Background

Pajitnov created Tetris in his spare time while working at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences. He initially programmed it in Pascal for the Elektronika 60, then ported it to the IBM PC using Turbo Pascal with help from Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov. Floppy disk copies were distributed freely throughout Moscow before spreading to Eastern Europe. Robert Stein of Andromeda Software saw Tetris in Hungary and contacted the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center to secure a license.

Stein sublicensed it to Mirrorsoft in the UK and Spectrum HoloByte in the US. Both companies released Tetris in 1988. Henk Rogers' Bullet-Proof Software negotiated with Elektronorgtechnica to license Tetris to Nintendo for the Game Boy and NES; both versions were released in 1989. The Game Boy version is the highest-selling version with 35 million sales as of June 2024.

At the end of 1995, Dorodnitsyn Computing Center's rights reverted to Pajitnov. The Tetris Company was established to manage rights and licensing. Versions were released on mobile devices starting in the 2000s, with Electronic Arts holding a license from 2006 to 2020. The popularity of Tetris was renewed with Tetris Effect (2018) and Tetris 99 (2019).

Reader's Guide

Gameplay consists of a rectangular field in which tetrominoes descend one at a time from the top-center. The player can move the piece horizontally and rotate it until it touches the bottom or another piece. The goal is to create horizontal lines of blocks; when a line is completed, it disappears and blocks above fall one row. The speed increases as lines are cleared. The game ends if pieces block others from entering (topping out). Common mechanics include the queue, soft drop, hard drop, and holding. Scoring increases with descent speed; clearing four lines at once (a 'Tetris') awards the highest score. Advanced techniques include T-spins, perfect clears, and combos.

Did You Know?

• Tetris is frequently cited as one of the greatest and most influential games.
• It was among the inaugural class inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame in 2015.
• A competitive culture has formed around the NES version, with players competing at the annual Classic Tetris World Championship.
• A film dramatization of its development was released in 2023.