Tetris syndrome software#
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Tetris syndrome license#

But first, Rogers had to get the rights to a handheld version of Tetris from Elorg. Just to add to the intrigue, Henk Rogers had brokered a deal with Nintendo to create a version of Tetris for the company’s forthcoming handheld console, the Game Boy. If all this sounds confusing, that’s because it was. Meanwhile, Spectrum HoloByte sub-licensed its rights to Henk Rogers’ company, Bulletproof Software, which planned to sell Tetrisin Japan, without realizing that Mirrorsoft had also sub-licensed the game to Atari, who planned to sell it not only in America but also in Japan. The UK company Andromeda was forced to negotiate a proper licensing deal with Elorg when the latter’s director, Alexander Alexinko, noticed that Andromeda was selling on rights that it didn’t actually own. It’s here that the rights issue surrounding Tetris became somewhat fraught. Because Pajitnov and his colleagues had created Tetris while working for the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Tetris effectively belonged to the state, and by extension, Elorg. The problem was, so did several other influential industry figures across America, Europe, Japan, and the Soviet Union.īehind the iron curtain, a state-owned company called Elektronorgtechnica (or Elorg for short) had taken over the responsibility of selling the rights to Tetris overseas. He first saw Tetris at Las Vegas’ Computer Electronics Show in January 1988, and he immediately recognized its huge potential. One of the key people to fall under Tetris‘ spell was Henk Rogers, a Dutch video game designer and publisher. The story of its western licensing deal would make a great Cold War thriller The game’s fame was spreading, but as Tetris‘ name became ever more valuable, the tussle over who should own the rights to it would soon intensify. Nevertheless, Tetriswas an immediate hit, earning ecstatic reviews and selling in healthy quantities.

Tetris syndrome license#

But Mirrorsoft’s right to publish Tetris were suspect at best: it had purchased the license to make the game from another British company, Andromeda, yet Andromeda – and its president Robert Stein – hadn’t reached a proper deal to publish Tetris, either from Pajitnov or the Soviet government. Mirrorsoft’s Tetrispackaging and background graphics made much of the game’s Russian origins (one version even claimed that Tetris was banned in the USSR because of its addictive qualities). It was Mirrorsoft (and its American affiliate Spectrum HoloByte) who published the first commercial versions of Tetris in 19, with ports developed for such computers as the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and Commodore 64. Its founder members were Jim Mackonochie and Robert Maxwell, the latter being the flamboyant publishing tycoon whose empire collapsed following his death in 1991.

Tetris syndrome software#

Mirrorsoft was one of many computer software companies started up in the British computer boom of the 1980s. Subscribe Robert Maxwell was vaguely connected to its appearance in the UK

Tetris syndrome Pc#

Like a virus, Tetriswas spreading its addictive properties from computer to computer.įurther Reading: 25 PC Games That Changed History Tetriswas smuggled out of the Soviet Union and into Hungary a short while later, and it was from here that Pajitnov’s game began to head across Europe. You can buy tons of versions of Tetris and a lot of swag here! Pajitnov and Gerasimov began distributing the PC version of Tetris among friends in 1985, and it was through sharing that the game’s fame began to spread. With the PC version able to support color graphics, the true value of Tetris as a puzzle game became apparent. Gerasimov helped develop some of the ideas and rules present in the finished game, and equally importantly, he ported Tetris across from the bulky and obscure Elektronika 60 to the more commonly-owned PC. Nevertheless, Pajitnov continued to develop Tetriswith the help of a colleague, Dmitry Pavlovsky, and a 16-year-old computer programmer, Vadim Gerasimov. With private business illegal in the Soviet Union, Pajitnov was nervous about what his superiors might do if he attempted to make Tetris into a commercial piece of software.

Sharing and smuggling contributed to its initial popularity Over the next few years, Tetris‘ strange, addictive allure resulted in one of the weirdest stories in video game history – a story which ropes in such unlikely 80s and 90s faces as Robert Maxwell, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Join us as we look at some of the strange stories from the game’s past…