Alexey Pajitnov and the creation of Tetris
Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris in his spare time at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences in the Soviet Union. Nintendo later helped popularize the game through its Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System versions, released in 1989. The original work began on an Elektronika 60, with Pajitnov programming in Pascal. Before commercial publishers and console licenses entered the story, it was a game made by a researcher whose professional work involved speech recognition and artificial intelligence. Its path from that workplace to Nintendo passed through collaborators, freely shared disks, and an increasingly complicated series of licensing negotiations.
At the center, Alexey Pajitnov developed more than twenty types of games on the Elektronika 60, a Russian clone of the PDP-11. A pentomino puzzle set bought from a store inspired him to adapt tiling puzzles to a computer after playing with the set in his office. He decided that the twelve pentomino shapes would make the game needlessly complicated and reduced the idea to seven tetromino shapes. The machine lacked a graphical interface, so spaces and brackets represented the field and pieces. The name combined "tetra," meaning four, with tennis, his favorite sport. The design included falling pieces and clearing completed lines.
The exact development date varies between recollections. Some place the beginning in June 1984, while the documentary Tetris: From Russia with Love suggests spring 1985. In a 1993 interview with The Super Famicom, Alexey Pajitnov recalled finishing it in 1985 after about three weeks of development. Henk Rogers reported in 2024 that Pajitnov recalled first developing it in 1984. The initial version had neither a scoring system nor levels, yet it captivated colleagues. Some obtained copies of the completed code and ran it on compatible work computers, giving the game an audience before it had the additions associated with its later computer version.
To move Tetris to the IBM PC and its higher-quality display, Pajitnov recruited colleague Dmitry Pavlovsky and sixteen-year-old Vadim Gerasimov. The three used Turbo Pascal and spent over two months adapting the game. Gerasimov incorporated color, while Pavlovsky added a scoreboard. Floppy disk copies circulated freely at the computing center, then spread through Moscow computer circles. Tetris reportedly took second place in a Zelenodolsk computer game competition in November 1985. By 1986, nearly everyone with an IBM computer in Moscow and several other major cities had played it. A workplace project had become a game moving between computers through informal distribution.
Commercial opportunities arrived while the rights were constrained by Soviet arrangements. Alexey Pajitnov had given the computing center rights to Tetris for ten years to ease possible legal problems and could not sell it for profit. His manager, Victor Brjabrin, sent a copy to Budapest's SZKI Institute of Computer Studies in early 1986. Robert Stein of Andromeda Software encountered it there and contacted the center by telex. Pajitnov's favorable but noncommittal reply was interpreted by Stein as permission to license it. Stein then offered rights to Mirrorsoft in the United Kingdom and Spectrum HoloByte in the United States while negotiations with the center remained unresolved.
The Western releases arrived in January 1988: Mirrorsoft's on January 27 and Spectrum HoloByte's on January 29. Spectrum HoloByte emphasized Soviet imagery and folk music, with red packaging showing Saint Basil's Cathedral. Word of mouth and positive reviews helped the release sell 100 thousand copies within a year. Meanwhile, Elektronorgtechnica, or Elorg, the state-run organization controlling software imports and exports, took over negotiations. Further licensing spread to platforms beyond that agreement. Bullet-Proof Software released Japanese computer and Famicom versions in late 1988, while Elorg remained unaware of the Famicom edition and received no royalties from the game's worldwide success.
Nintendo wanted Tetris for its Game Boy and enlisted Henk Rogers to obtain handheld rights. After attempts through Stein failed, Rogers traveled to the Soviet Union in February 1989 to negotiate directly. Elorg director Evgeni Belikov believed the existing contract covered computers only. Rogers provided a check exceeding $40,000 to remedy the breach and discussed console rights. Rogers later returned with Nintendo's Minoru Arakawa and Howard Lincoln, and Nintendo obtained both handheld and console rights. Competing claims with Atari Games led to litigation. Judge Fern M. Smith granted a preliminary injunction against Atari Games in June 1989, and its Tengen subsidiary's NES edition was withdrawn from sale.
The Game Boy edition arrived in Japan on June 14, 1989, and as a pack-in game in the United States on July 31. It generated $80 million in revenue and helped popularize both the handheld and Tetris; Nintendo's NES edition quickly sold three million copies. In 1991, Alexey Pajitnov emigrated with his family to Seattle with Rogers' help and worked as a freelance game designer. The computing center's rights expired at the end of 1995, returning to him. The Tetris Company was established to manage licensing and created guidelines and minimum specifications for licensed games, with additional features becoming standardized over time.