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Tetris
| Tetris | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Designer(s) | Alexey Pajitnov |
| Platform(s) | List of Tetris variants |
| Release | DOS |
| Genre(s) | |
| Mode(s) | |
Tetris (Russian: Тетрис)[a] is a puzzle video game created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov, a Soviet software engineer. Players complete lines by moving tetrominoes, which descend onto the playing field. The completed lines disappear and grant the player points, and the player can proceed to fill the vacated spaces. Different versions of Tetris have introduced altered game mechanics, with some becoming standard over time. Versions have been released for PC, consoles and mobile platforms.
In the 1980s, Pajitnov worked for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences, where he programmed Tetris on the Electronika 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 licensed Tetris to Mirrorsoft in the UK and Spectrum HoloByte in the US. Both companies released the game in 1988 to commercial success and sold licenses to other companies, including Henk Rogers's Bullet-Proof Software. Rogers negotiated with Elektronorgtechnica, the state-owned organization in charge of licensing Soviet software, to license Tetris to Nintendo for the Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System (NES); both versions were released in 1989. In 1996, after the rights reverted to Pajitnov, he and Rogers formed the Tetris Company to manage licensing.
The Game Boy version became the best-selling version of Tetris and one of the best-selling video games of all time, with 35 million sales, helping popularize the Game Boy. More than 200 versions of Tetris have been published by several companies on more than 65 platforms, setting a Guinness world record for the most ports and variants. Tetris is the second-best-selling video game franchise, with over 520 million sales, mostly on mobile.
Tetris has been influential in the genre of puzzle video games and popular culture. It is an early example of a casual games and is represented in a vast array of media such as architecture and art. It has been the subject of academic research, including studies of its potential for psychological intervention. A competitive culture has formed around Tetris, particularly the NES version, following the inaugural Classic Tetris World Championship in 2010. It is often ranked among the greatest video games and was among the first games inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame in 2015. A film dramatization of the Tetris development was released in 2023.
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