Tetris is a puzzle game invented and developed by Alexei Leonidovich Pajitnov in June 1985. The name of the game is obtained by adding two words: the Greek prefix "tetra", meaning "four", and the name of the sport - "tennis", which was the favorite of the author of the game.
Creation of Tetris
"Tetris" appeared in June 1984 on the Elektronika-60 computer, thanks to the work of Alexei Pazhitnov. At that time, the developer worked at the Computing Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences and specialized in the problems of artificial intelligence and speech recognition. To test his ideas, he used all sorts of puzzles, including the pentomino, which became the prototype of "Tetris".
Pentomino is represented by five flat figures, each consisting of five identical squares connected to each other by sides. The essence of the game lies in the fact that these figures must be laid in different shapes, ranging from simple (rectangle, trapezoid, etc.) and ending with complex images.
Alexey Pajitnov tried to automate the packing of pentominoes into the necessary shapes. But the computing power of the equipment of that time was not enough to rotate the pentomino, and the developer had to use tetrimino. This determined the name of the future game.
Then Pajitnov came up with the idea that the figures should fall from top to bottom, and the filled rows should disappear.
Game rights disputes
"Tetris" quickly became known not only in the USSR, but also in other countries. When the game got to Budapest, Hungarian programmers executed it on different platforms. So the game attracted the attention of the British company Andromeda. She tried to buy the rights to the PC version from Pajitnov, but the deal never materialized. And while negotiations were underway, Andromeda dishonestly sold the rights (which, in fact, it did not have) to Spectrum Holobyte.
In 1986, Spectrum Holobyte released a version for the IBM PC in the US. In no time, the game gained popularity all over the world and became an instant bestseller.
The further development of events is unclear, but in 1987 Andromeda announced its rights to "Tetris" for PCs and any other home computers. In 1988, the government of the USSR declared its rights to the game through the organization "Electronorgtechnika" (or "Elorg"). By 1988, neither Pajitnov himself nor the Elektronorgtekhnika organization had received any money from Andromeda. While the company itself was quite successful in selling licenses for the game to other organizations. As a result, by 1989, about 6 companies had announced their rights to different versions of the game for different types of computers, game consoles and pocket electronic toys.
Elorg reported that all of these organizations have absolutely no rights to the slot machine versions. Elorg later granted these rights to Atari Games, and the rights to versions for handheld electronic toys and game consoles were given to Nintendo.
