Tetris
Tetri (Russian: Тетрис) is a puzzle video game created by Alexey Pajitnov, a Soviet software engineer. In typical Tetri gameplay, falling tetromino shapes must be neatly sorted into a pile. Once a horizontal line of the game board is filled in, it disappears, granting points and preventing the pile from overflowing. Since its initial creation, this gameplay has been used in over 220 versions, released for over 70 platforms. Newer versions frequently implement additional game modes, features, and mechanics, expanding on the original line-clearing concept.
Mechanics, some of which have become standard over time. As of December 2024, these versions collectively serve as the second-best-selling video game series with over 520 million sales, mostly on mobile devices.
In the mid-1980s, Pajitnov worked for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences, where he programmed Tetri on the Elektronika 60 and adapted it to the IBM PC with the help of Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov. Floppy disk copies were distributed freely throughout Moscow before spreading to Eastern Europe. Robert Stein of Andromeda Software saw the game in Hungary and contacted the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center to secure a license to release the game commercially.
Stein then sublicensed it to Mirrorsoft in the UK and Spectrum HoloByte in the US. Both companies released the game in 1988 to commercial success and sublicensed it to additional companies, including Henk Rogers’ Bullet-Proof Software. Rogers negotiated with Elektronorgtechnica, the state-owned organization in charge of licensing Soviet software, to license Tetri to Nintendo for the Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System (NES); both versions were released in 1989.
With 35 million sales as of June 2024, the Game Boy version is the best-selling version of Tetri and among the best-selling video games of all time. Its commercial success upon release contributed to the Game Boy’s success and popularized Tetris. At the end of 1995, Dorodnitsyn Computing Center’s rights to Tetri, arranged ten years prior, reverted to Pajitnov. He and Rogers subsequently formed The Tetris Company to manage licensing. Guidelines for authorized releases were established, with certain features not in the original games becoming standard only if approved.
Standardized over time, versions of Tetri were released on mobile devices starting in the 2000s, with Electronic Arts (EA) holding a license for these ports from 2006 to 2020, achieving widespread commercial success. Tetri received renewed popularity in the late 2010s with the release of the critically acclaimed Tetri Effect (2018) and Tetri 99 (2019).
Gameplay
Across its numerous versions, Tetri generally has a consistent puzzle video game design. Gameplay consists of a rectangular field in which tetromino pieces, geometric shapes consisting of four connected squares, descend from the top-center. During the descent, the player can move the piece horizontally and rotate them until they touch the bottom of the field or another piece. The player’s goal is to stack the pieces in the field to create horizontal lines of blocks. When a line is
When a line is completed, it disappears and the blocks placed above fall one row. The speed of the descending pieces increases as lines are cleared. The game ends if the accumulated pieces in the field block other pieces from entering the field, a process known as “topping out”. Common mechanics among Tetri versions include the queue (viewing the pieces that are next to appear), soft drop (increasing the descent of the piece), hard drop (instantly placing the piece as far down as it can go), and holding (reserving a piece for later use).
The objective of Tetri is to collect as many points as possible during a gameplay session by clearing lines. Tetri’s scoring system has remained mostly consistent since Tetri DS (2006) with some exceptions. Points gained during gameplay increase with the descent speed. The more lines cleared at once, the higher the score for a line clear. Clearing four lines at once using an I-shaped tetromino is referred to as a “Tetri“. Furthermore, the player can also gain points by using hard drops or soft drops. Advanced techniques, often used in competitive play, include T-spins (spinning a T-shaped tetromino into a blocked gap), perfect clears (emptying the field following a line clear), and combos (clearing lines consecutively).
History
Alexey Pajitnov was a speech recognition and artificial intelligence researcher for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences. Pajitnov developed several puzzle games on the institute’s Elektronika 60, an archaic Russian clone of the PDP-11 computer. In June 1984, he became inspired to convert pentomino tiling puzzles to the computer after he bought a pentomino puzzle set from a store and played with it in his office.
Pajitnov programmed Tetri using Pascal for the RT-11 operating system on the Elektronika 60 and experimented with different versions. Because the Elektronika 60 had no graphical interface, Pajitnov modeled the field and pieces using spaces and brackets. He felt that the game would be needlessly complicated with the twelve different shapes of pentominoes, so he scaled the concept down to tetrominoes, of which there are only seven shapes.
Afterward, he programmed the basic mechanics, including the ability to flip tetrominoes as they fell in a vertical screen and the clearing of lines. The name Tetri was a combination of “tetra” (meaning “four”) and Pajitnov’s favorite sport, tennis. Pajitnov completed the first version of Tetri around 1985. This version had no scoring system and no levels, but it nonetheless captivated Pajitnov’s peers.
Pajitnov sought to port Tetri to the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC), which had a higher-quality display than the Elektronika 60. He recruited his colleague Dmitry Pavlovsky and the 16-year-old computer prodigy Vadim Gerasimov. Using Turbo Pascal, the three adapted Tetri to the IBM PC over two months, with Gerasimov incorporating color and Pavlovsky incorporating a
scoreboard. Floppy disk copies of this version were distributed freely throughout the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center, before spreading quickly among Moscow computer circles. Pajitnov kept note of second-hand accounts of Tetri’s spread during this time. Tetri reportedly won second place in a Zelenodolsk computer game competition in November 1985, and by 1986, nearly everyone with an IBM computer in Moscow and several major cities had played Tetri.
The Tetri Company and Blue Planet Software (1996–2014)
The Dorodnitsyn Computing Center’s rights to Tetri expired at the end of 1995, reverting back to Pajitnov. Worried that Elorg, which had become a private company under Belikov following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, would try to claim the rights, Pajitnov recruited Rogers to secure them. Rogers formed The Tetri Company as an equal partnership between Elorg and Rogers’ new company, Blue Planet Software.
Rogers acquired Elorg and renamed it Tetri Holding in 2005. Since its formation, the Tetri Company has maintained guidelines for authorized versions of Tetri, and Blue Planet Software has served as an agent for the Tetri brand. The Tetri Company has also enforced its copyright of the Tetri game against unauthorized clones, such as in the 2012 case Tetri Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc., where a judge ruled that the iOS game Mino violated Tetri’s copyright based on look and feel.
Pajitnov and Rogers sought to keep Tetri versions fresh, and innovated in new directions. Tetrisphere, developed by H2O Entertainment and released on August 11, 1997, was an example of this innovation. Gameplay involved rotating a three-dimensional sphere to place pieces on its surface. It was the first puzzle video game on the Nintendo 64 and garnered a cult following. David Crookes of Retro Gamer called Tetrisphere “proof that the concept could be modernised and tweaked, while still being faithful to the original”.
Another version on the Nintendo 64, the Japan-exclusive Tetris 64 (1998), allowed for four players and was the only game to utilize the Nintendo 64’s Bio Sensor, which detected a player’s pulse. On other platforms around this time, Tetris Plus (1996), Tetris DX (1998), and The Next Tetris (1999) added new game modes, and Tetris: The Grand Master (1998) was an arcade game targeted toward experienced players.
Maya Rogers’ succession and resurgence of popularity (2014–present)
In January 2014, after eight years of involvement, Henk Rogers’ daughter Maya succeeded him as the CEO of Blue Planet Software. She began by planning activities for Tetris’s 30th anniversary. In an interview with VentureBeat in June 2014, Maya spoke of her desire to expand Tetris’s brand, such as through merchandising, and keeping the game fresh. Sega released Puyo Puyo Tetris, a crossover between Tetris and Puyo Puyo, in Japan on February 6, 2014, for
Puyo Puyo Tetris sold over 60,000 copies within a week, with the Nintendo 3DS port being the second-highest-selling game of the week. Ubisoft’s Tetris Ultimate was released on the Nintendo 3DS in November 2014 and on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in December 2014. Tetris Ultimate received mixed reviews, though the online multiplayer was generally seen favorably.
In the late 2010s, the Tetris series had a resurgence in popularity with the release of Tetris Effect and Tetris 99. PCMag credited the resurgence to the 2017 release of Puyo Puyo Tetris in the Western world, where it received positive reviews and sold 1.4 million copies worldwide by November 2020. Tetris Effect, developed by Monstars and Resonair and published by Enhance Games, was released on the PlayStation 4 on November 9, 2018, and on Windows on July 23, 2019, receiving widespread critical acclaim for its visuals and emotional impact.
Tetris 99 is a battle royale version of Tetris made available to subscribers of Nintendo Switch Online on February 13, 2019, upon its surprise announcement during Nintendo Direct. It received positive reviews and became Nintendo Switch Online’s killer app; according to President of Nintendo Shuntaro Furukawa, 2.8 million Nintendo Switch Online users played Tetris 99 within a few months of release.
Versions
Tetris has been released on a multitude of platforms since its initial creation. It is available on many game consoles, personal computers, smartphones, and other platforms. To date, Tetris is recognized as the video game with the most ports, totaling over 220 versions across more than 70 platforms. Across its multiple versions, Tetris’s core
gameplay has remained consistent across Tetris versions. Since 1996, the Tetris Company has maintained annual standard specifications for authorized versions of Tetris. Pajitnov considers these guidelines a baseline for different versions and not “set in stone”. Several game mechanics of Tetris have been changed over time. For example, the distribution of tetrominoes was completely randomized in early versions, while modern versions use a “bag system”, in which each tetromino is guaranteed to appear once in a set of seven. Other mechanics that have become standardized in modern versions include the ability to hold tetrominoes to swap with later pieces, introduced in The New Tetris (1999), and the super rotation system and infinite spin, introduced in Tetris Worlds (2001).
Reception
| Year | Game | Platform(s) | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 | Tetris (Spectrum HoloByte) | PC | 1 million |
| Tetris (Famicom) | Famicom | 2 million | |
| 1989 | Tetris (Game Boy) | Game Boy | 35 million |
| Tetris (NES) | NES | 8 million | |
| 1996 | Tetris Plus | PlayStation | 1.53 million |
| 1997 | Tetrisphere | Nintendo 64 | 430,000 |
| 2001 | Tetris Worlds | Multi-platform | 1.81 million |
| 2006 | Tetris DS | Nintendo DS | 2.05 million |
| 2014 | Puyo Puyo Tetris | Multi-platform | 1.4 million |
| 2020 | Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 | Multi-platform | 293,000[g] |