Tetris - How it All Began
One of the first video games ever invented is known by the name Tetris and it continues to be a big hit today.
It involves seven Tetriminos or Tetromino (which are geometric shapes) that fall down from the top of the screen.
These shapes are made up of four blocks which is the reason it was eventually given the name Tetris (the Greek word meaning four).
Playing the game is simple but it can be more difficult than it looks especially when the shapes are falling quickly.
The goal of Tetris is to align the shapes as they are falling so they will form a straight horizontal line without any gaps at the bottom of the playing field.
Once you create this line it will disappear to free up more space.
In the event you don't make any (or very few) straight lines, the space on the board will fill up and you'll lose the game.
When playing Tetris on your computer you use the arrow keys to move the falling shapes to place them where you want them to land.
The left arrow moves them to the left, the right arrow moves them to the right, the up arrow rotates them and the down arrow makes them fall faster.
So who invented this classic video game and when.
Tetris was invented by a man named Alexey Pazhitnov (as a science project) for the University of Sciences located in Moscow and it was programmed in 1985.
Originally, it was designed to run on a machine called the Electronica 60 but this didn't last long.
During the same month it was ported and designed to run on an IBM PC.
A month later a programming team located in Hungary ported it again so it could be used on the Apple II and Commodore 64.
In 1986 the game was released in both the UK and the United States by a software company called Andromeda, which was located in the UK.
Despite the fact that Pazhitnov (the original programmer) never agreed to sale his invention and there were no licensing agreements made, Andromeda somehow took copyrights and marketed Tetris.
They called it "The first game from behind the iron curtain" and it was a huge hit.
ELORG was the company that began negotiations on behalf of Alexey Pazhitnov and after some time sold Nintendo licensing rights to the game in the year 1989.
The game was sold for a price somewhere between three and five million dollars.
Knowing what potential this game had, Nintendo forbid all other companies from marketing the game.
However, by this time it was so popular that it was already being sold on all gaming formats.
Throughout the last several years and with all the other games that have been invented, Tetris continues to be one of the hottest video games around.
It's very simple but so addictive that it's hard to stop playing.
It involves seven Tetriminos or Tetromino (which are geometric shapes) that fall down from the top of the screen.
These shapes are made up of four blocks which is the reason it was eventually given the name Tetris (the Greek word meaning four).
Playing the game is simple but it can be more difficult than it looks especially when the shapes are falling quickly.
The goal of Tetris is to align the shapes as they are falling so they will form a straight horizontal line without any gaps at the bottom of the playing field.
Once you create this line it will disappear to free up more space.
In the event you don't make any (or very few) straight lines, the space on the board will fill up and you'll lose the game.
When playing Tetris on your computer you use the arrow keys to move the falling shapes to place them where you want them to land.
The left arrow moves them to the left, the right arrow moves them to the right, the up arrow rotates them and the down arrow makes them fall faster.
So who invented this classic video game and when.
Tetris was invented by a man named Alexey Pazhitnov (as a science project) for the University of Sciences located in Moscow and it was programmed in 1985.
Originally, it was designed to run on a machine called the Electronica 60 but this didn't last long.
During the same month it was ported and designed to run on an IBM PC.
A month later a programming team located in Hungary ported it again so it could be used on the Apple II and Commodore 64.
In 1986 the game was released in both the UK and the United States by a software company called Andromeda, which was located in the UK.
Despite the fact that Pazhitnov (the original programmer) never agreed to sale his invention and there were no licensing agreements made, Andromeda somehow took copyrights and marketed Tetris.
They called it "The first game from behind the iron curtain" and it was a huge hit.
ELORG was the company that began negotiations on behalf of Alexey Pazhitnov and after some time sold Nintendo licensing rights to the game in the year 1989.
The game was sold for a price somewhere between three and five million dollars.
Knowing what potential this game had, Nintendo forbid all other companies from marketing the game.
However, by this time it was so popular that it was already being sold on all gaming formats.
Throughout the last several years and with all the other games that have been invented, Tetris continues to be one of the hottest video games around.
It's very simple but so addictive that it's hard to stop playing.
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