Tetris is an essential play for everyone.
This is stipulated here, and pretty much everywhere else too: Tetris is a game everyone must play.
That’s not surprising, or at least it shouldn’t be to anyone currently breathing air. This puzzle game — in which different shapes fall out of the sky and one must arrange them so that you can fill in a line to clear out more room for still more falling blocks — is widely considered the best puzzle game in existence, if not the best video game … period.
Again, so stipulated.
What’s kind of fun about Tetris is that its roots account for some of its pervasiveness. This game has been ported an astounding 65 times and been purchased an even more astounding 202 million times. This fact, that there are dozens of versions of this game and it really doesn’t matter which version you play (unless it’s the Genesis version; that version sucks), is unique in this industry.
Also unique is its backstory, which involved a Russian programmer, the U.S.S.R. government, several gaming companies, and — for some reason — Hungary.
It’s one of the most popular games of all time. And yet, would it have been so popular if its licensing rights hadn’t become so bizarrely entangled?
Possibly not.
It got ported and ported and ported again, because no one knew enough about who owned the thing to be scared enough not to pirate the thing.
And thusly, Tetris spread like a disease.
Tetris
Genre: Puzzle
Released: 1987
Platform: PC (and everything else)
EGM’s No. 1 game of all time
The story of Tetris, the real honest-to-God story, is really interesting. I can’t recommend this documentary enough, as it goes into all of the fascinating twists and turns, and it does it in an engaging way.* But for anyone who doesn’t want to invest the time in that, the short version goes something like this…
* Did I just recommend an hour-long YouTube documentary on Tetris? Why yes, yes I did. And I meant what I said: watch the documentary.
A Russian programmer by the name of Alexey Pajitnov developed the game out of the inspiration of a kids game involving toy blocks (“pentominoes”) he had played with as a child. But, this being Soviet Russia, he didn’t have a way of monetizing his invention, let alone distributing it.
Somehow or another, the game ended up being shown at a tech expo in Hungary, where it was “discovered” by Robert Stein, who recognized immediately the addictive nature of the game. He spearheaded efforts to get the thing to as wide an audience as possible (whilst making money for himself), and that caught the eye of yet another distributor … and so on and so on until Nintendo eventually caught wind of it.
Tetris, by now a huge international phenomenon, was correctly identified as being the perfect app for their new portable gaming system, the Game Boy. The problem was the rights to the game by this point were a tangled labyrinth that couldn’t be easily untangled.
Ultimately, Nintendo brokered a deal directly with the Russian government, got the game on their systems, and sold a gazillion Game Boys, establishing Nintendo as the industry leader in portable gaming.
The happy ending in this is that eventually, after becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen, Pajitnov got the rights to his game back, and now whenever the game is ported to a new platform, he receives a cut of the profits.
And the game (and all of its sequels and crossovers) keeps getting ported to new platforms. Why? Because the initial design is so flawless, that the game has taken on a timeless quality.
Think back to other puzzle/strategy games of the era.
You might struggle to come up with any! But if you do, you’ll probably think of two things: A Tetris derivative, involving falling objects that must be arranged a certain way (Dr. Mario, Puyo Puyo, Columns, etc.), or a puzzle game that is very much of its era, like Bubble Bobble, Lemmings or the Adventures of Lolo.
Don’t get it twisted: many of those games are great. But they HAVE aged. In terms of their graphical representation, or the ideas present, or both, you’re just dealing with something that has a specific time period attached to it. Those games are retro AF.
Tetris, on the other hand, has never stopped feeling relevant or present. I was playing Tetris on my dad’s PC in the late 80s, on friends’ Game Boys in the early 90s, on my flip phone in the 00s, and on my kids’ Switch a few days ago.
It never lost its appeal.
The gameplay accounts for a lot of that, but the basic, simple, clean design can’t be discounted in that either. The look of the game can’t help but continue to be relevant, because there’s not a lot of “updating” that needs to occur to pretty up falling blocks. Maybe you mix up the backgrounds a little, or make the colors pop some more, but that’s about it. Blocks are blocks. The graphics are minimalist by design, and that intentionality keeps the game feeling of our current time.
As do the mechanics of the game itself, naturally. There’s something elementary, almost primal, to the desire to fit objects into a matching space. There are jokes to be had about the sexual undertones within that, but honestly, is there a more satisfying feeling, even as a young child, to finding (for example) the star-shaped block and matching it to the star-shaped opening? It’s just intrinsically enjoyable.
And thusly, as the game rewards the user by clearing rows every time the user “matches shapes” correctly, the incentive is clear. Keep playing and you’ll keep being rewarded. That the challenge ramps up – through the speed of the blocks falling increasing – is more fuel for the fire.
How much better can you do the next time you play?
Again, this is at the very essence of good gaming. Finding the fun and joy in the game is step one, but then being encouraged to get better and return to the game over and over is step two.
Tetris is perhaps better than any game in history at distilling these two things to their purest possible form.
So what makes it worth playing today?
At the end of the day, I do enjoy certain puzzlers more. And I would never call myself a Tetris afficionado. I don’t have the skill, intelligence or patience to ever rank among the best players in the world.
But Tetris is the most important puzzle game in history.
If by some miracle you’ve never sat down and played it, you have to. You just have to.
And that makes it essential.
Dave’s Score: 10/10
Check out the whole Retro Gaming Essentials list here!
How to play
Walk out your front door and you’ll trip over a copy. This thing is everywhere.