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Games Entertainment

Seventeen Years of Tetris 379

Posted by michael from the thumbs-hurt-just-thinking-about-it dept.
thefalconer writes "It all happened 17 years ago on a whim and an addiction of sorts. Alexey Pazhitnov created the one game that has caused so many people around the world to just about go nuts trying to win a game that has the ability to slowly drive you to insanity one small misshappen block at a time. Since the creation of the original Tetris game on an Electronica 60, there have been dozens of different incarnations of Tetris that have dazzled the eyes, boggled the mind, frustrated the emotions, and fried more than their fair share of braincells. There is also a very interesting history of tetris online that details its evolution from innocent game to insane addiction. Plus it's one of those games that never grows old. :D"
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Seventeen Years of Tetris More

Seventeen Years of Tetris

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  • 17 years... (Score:4, Funny)

    by URoRRuRRR ( 57117 ) on Sunday July 14, 2002 @10:59PM (#3883896) Journal
    17 years of Tetris, 17 years of those damn little Z shaped ones coming at the exact wrong time.

  • Karma Ho (Score:2, Troll)

    by Mattygfunk ( 517948 )
    Play javascript tetris online here [geocities.com].
  • It has been around MUCH longer than that. Just look! http://www.somethingawful.com/inserts/articlepics/ photoshop/classicart/protagonist_christris.jpg

  • The GameBoy's popularity... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Sunday July 14, 2002 @11:06PM (#3883931)
    ...probably owes a lot to Tetris. When I worked at FuncoLand, Tetris was the most bought and sold game we had for that system. It just had this long-term appeal.

    My step mom interrupted my games all the time. The only time she ever apologized for it was when I was playing Tetris. That was the only game she'd play on it, so we finally came to an understanding. Heh.

    • Re:The GameBoy's popularity... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Russ Steffen ( 263 ) on Sunday July 14, 2002 @11:34PM (#3884037) Homepage

      Oh dear god - the music from Gameboy Tetris. I hope there is special spot in hell reserved for the bastard that wrote that tune. One summer during college I worked at the factory that built all the Nintendo in-store displays. I must have built a couple of thousand of these couter top Gameboy displays. They had a modded Gameboy that drove a black and white monitor in addition to the LCD, and amplified speakers. Of course, they all had to be tested before shipping, with the only cart they shipped out with - Tetris. Imagine the Tetris theme spewing from 4 Gameboys, out of sync with each other, and at higher than normal volume, for 8 hours a day. It's enough to drive you up the freaking wall.

  • Tetris - a Metaphor for Communism? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 14, 2002 @11:06PM (#3883933)
    All the different shaped pieces come together to (hopefully) form perfect, straight, uniform lines. Individualism of each piece fades as it becomes part of the whole.

    However, the longer it goes, the more pieces that come, and the faster they go. Pretty soon, the system begins the breakdown! Things are out of control, and lines stop forming, until you just can't continue any longer.

    Game over.
    • With apologies to Yakov Smirnov [yakov.com]:

      In Soviet Union, tetris plays you . . .

      Nick
    • Comunism is as individualistic as liberalism. Comunism focus on abolition of private property of the means of production. The oposite of both these is true socialism: where humans are seen as a society and that is more important than the individuals.

      So, all the blocks coming togheter would be socialism and _not_ comunism. This includes the church view, the "third way" and many other supporters of this view.

      Just a small corretion (I though I could share)!
      • communism has always tried to achieve its goals through centralized control of all resources.

        Tetris is a tolerable metaphor here, though stretched. We can all run a simple game at level 1 for a very, very long time, but one centralized entity can't run the game at level 300 (on the Gameboy ten level scale) for long at all, even if it has the same number of pieces.

        Practical communism has always (and will always) fall down on the impossibility of centralized control over everything. (Unless technology in the far future negates that limitation.) Democracy isn't perfect, but any replacement plans at this juncture in history must also include decentralization (i.e., much of the responsibilities the communist governments take upon themselves, we leave to "the invisible hand of the market", which is also not perfect but is doing a lot better then any communist government to date.).

  • After 17 years of tetris....... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mattygfunk ( 517948 ) on Sunday July 14, 2002 @11:11PM (#3883958) Homepage
    .....I think everything is starting to fall into place. ;)
  • My mom, as with most people's mothers, does not play video games. However, back around 1992-4 after gameboy had hit it off my brother and I both owned one. I remember one day, a saturday afternoon, and my mom, who was the musical director at a local church, was scheduled to play the organ for a wedding that afternoon. She had just recently picked up on the 'tetris' fever, and come 1 hour before the wedding was to start she was still chugging away on one of our gameboys in our living room, despite my brother and I's efforts to remove her. It finally took a phone call from the bride's parents to drag her away from the evil that is Tetris.

    I love video games, and I give my respect to those games out today which strain even the most expensive video games with their high-end graphics. But any game, even that as simple as Tetris, which can hold the interest and delay my mother from a wedding is something that I will always give tribute too.
    • My mother was a Nyet fan, I'm more a Blockout person. I had some links a few hours back, but I couldn't post then.
  • ... I feel obliged to mention the best form of Tetris, IMHO, Tetrinet/Fast. This is a multiplayer form of tetris with specials (Add lines to opponents, clear lines on yourself, etc) and Tetrifast (Changed exe), removes the line delay between drops. Truely an addictive game to play with friends. You can grab the stuff @ http://www.tetrinet.org
    • Hey I was just gonna post this myself.

      Tetrinet is the only multiplayer variation that I've seen that has added something useful and a deeper element of strategy (and luck) to the game. This game ate up hours of time at a previous job, my buddy and I had to finish 'one more game', what felt like two miniutes of gameplay was more like 20. Further development on the Windows client was stopped like 4 or 5 years ago due to the copyright/trademark issues but various compatible clones have popped up, including the tfast variation.

      I gotta get my buddy playing again...

  • Thank you, Alexey, for Tetris... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Artifex ( 18308 ) on Sunday July 14, 2002 @11:14PM (#3883977) Journal
    Without you, the world would have been stuck with its adiction to Pac-Man sequels and clones, at least until Solitaire got packaged with MS Windows...

    (Speaking of which, can anyone give a good accounting for the history of MS Solitaire? I know xsol and other solitaire games came out way before, but wasn't this the first computer game put in the hands of so many people at once?)
    • Looking at the strings in a sOL.EXE binary from windows 98, microsoft claims copyright on Microsoft Solitaire from 1991-1998- leading me to suggest it was developed for windows 3.1 (windows 3.1 being the earliest version of windows that I touched I can attest to the fact that it was there). This makes xsol 3 years older than windows solitaire by my count (source: Solaris manpage)

      Hope that helped.

  • IP Rights (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MeowMeow Jones ( 233640 ) on Sunday July 14, 2002 @11:17PM (#3883984)
    Tetris has had one of the most agressive lawsuits to protect IP rights in software history.

    See here [geocities.com] and here [wired.com] among other places

    Although the game is pretty simple, it is innovative, considering the crack-like nature of the game.

    Are the KDE, Gnome, and Emacs versions in good standing with the Tetris Company [tetris.com]?

    • Re:IP Rights (Score:3, Interesting)

      by proxima ( 165692 )
      Funny, that Tetris can be so effective in removing similar games, but I Hasbro (which now owns Microprose) hasn't seemed to have complained about FreeCiv [freeciv.org].

      Not that I'm complaining. I've played FreeCiv and I still bought Civ III - I don't think sales are suffering because of it - both games are fun in different ways.

    • Tetris has had one of the most agressive lawsuits to protect IP rights in software history.

      The Tetris Company LLC has backed off with respect to Tetris clones that do not use the trademarked name "TETRIS". Such versions include Tetanus On Drugs(tm) [pineight.com] for Windows, Linux, and Game Boy Advance.

  • You can't win, you know... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by billbaggins ( 156118 ) on Sunday July 14, 2002 @11:17PM (#3883986)
    Someone at the U of MN Geometry Center created a proof that if the S and Z shapes alternate for long enough (the ceiling he gave was something like 70,000 pieces) you absolutely must lose (depending, of course, on the exact geometry of the well). Even had a Java applet that allowed you to try it yourself...

    Blindingly obvious? Probably. Just the sort of blinding obviousness that makes this country great...

    You can see the applet and a link to the paper here [umn.edu].

    • But "legal" Tetris there are more than 2 types of pieces. I would venture to say that if you are only given the rectangle and square pieces, you can't possibly lose. The proof's alot easier too. :)

  • gameboy linkup (Score:2, Insightful)

    by merc_sa ( 35777 )

    the gameboy linkup cable probably wouldn't have sold that many units w/o tetris..

    I can't recall any gameboys w/o a tetris cart lying close in ambush. I was still playing tetris on my cell phone to kill time until I got the treo270 :oD (now it's vegas slots..)

    it really goes to show that a good concept will have more longevity and pretty graphics. Now, where's the MULE and a decent Archon update??

  • Ok, Gameboy Tetris (original, I still have my original pak, yah!); max level?

    I have gotten to around 22-23, I think I hit 25 one time. Anybody get up to 30?
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Lets start a bragging war!!! (Score:4, Funny)

      by handsomepete ( 561396 ) on Sunday July 14, 2002 @11:47PM (#3884077) Journal
      22 was my max in my prime. I was fortunate enough to have played in the preliminary Nintendo World Championships on stage (hey - I was young and video games weren't *as* dorky). Tetris was the last of three back to back games that were played, so I did a lot of "training" beforehand.

      *sigh* If I only had time for that sort of stuff now... I still find time to sneak a gameboy round in, though.
      • OMFG, I remember the Nintendo World Championships! I participated in that when I was about 12, at Universal Studios in Los Angeles... I actually did manage to get up on stage at one point, and I had even scored so well that they let me sit in the "throne" seat and simply watch while some other competitors played on the main stage consoles... but when it came time for me to compete with the other second-level winners, I got my ass kicked. Oh well :) As I recall, the three games were Rad Racer, Super Mario Bros., and Tetris. You had to finish the first track in Rad Racer, get 100 coins in SMB, and then complete 30 lines in Tetris... or something like that. Man, that was a fun day.

        Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

      • Re:Lets start a bragging war!!! (Score:5, Funny)

        by guttentag ( 313541 ) on Monday July 15, 2002 @01:49AM (#3884385) Journal
        Steve Wozniak [woz.org] is a hard-core Tetris addict:
        I was listed with high Tetris scores many times in Nintendo Power magazine. I also sent letters showing how I'd given GameBoys to Gorbachev and Bush. The latter was seen playing one shortly thereafter on TV in a hospital after a heart problem. It got to the point that Nintendo Power wouldn't list my name again so I sent in a score photo and used the name "Evets Kainzow" which is both my names backwards. When I got the next issue and flipped to see if anyone had beaten my high score, I saw this name but forgot having sent it in. I was worried that someone was close to me. I noticed that he had a foreign sounding name and that he lived in Saratoga, the next city over. Then I realized that it was my own trick.
        His high score is 710,000 (beat that, Mr. Nintendo World Championships!) and he was invited to play "King-Sized Tetris [macrumors.com]" at Brown.
    • For the original Nintendo version, level 30 is impossible to play since you cannot get any piece to the left or right edge. I suspect the only way to beat it would be to drop three pieces (without moving them) to get 10 lines. I give it a million-one odds that anybody can setup the situation.
    • I wish I remembered my top score/level so I could join in. I remember being able to play pretty much continously on both the original GameBoy version and for at least a whole class or tutorial on a variety of the HP48 calc variations.

      I eventually started playing for points (on the GameBoy) by trying to get as many 4 high completions as possible and restarting my game if I missed one.

      I wish my cell phone had Tetris but I'd be a little scared for fear that I won't be able to stop until I get to the same kind of skill level I had before.
  • I remember when I was 7 years old. I was probably one of the last kids on the block to get a Nintendo. It was Christmas and my parents finally gave in and bought one for me.

    Probably one of my most vivid memories of that time period was not playing the game myself, but my parents addiction to the game. For two people who thought video games were silly, they got very competative, very quickly. All of a sudden my bed time was enforced to the minute and moments after hitting the bed, I could hear the sounds of frustration and rubbing a new high score or number of lines in the spouse's face from my living room downstairs.

    Even a couple winters ago, we went on a trip with some of my younger cousins who had a game boy color. Very quickly heated debates between my mom dad, and myself broke out as to who's turn it was to play that magical piece of purple plastic. I, of course, whooped up on them. Boo yeah!

    The game is great. There are two scores to pay attention to: lines and actual score. There's the A game and the B game. And besides all that it exposed children to great music in the form of blips and bleeps. Too bad my Nintendo died last year. I think the only video games that have brought my family together like that are the old Sierra games like (Space | King's | Police) Quest on our Tandy 1000 and Myst.
  • How many people that have ever picked up any type of game console (and most calculators with power) have never played tetris? The Article is right. There is a version of this game for practically every type of computer that exists today. Anything programmable by hackers (relatively) easily, and there's Tetris.

    And I had the Original Version of Tetris for the PC in Canada. My Dad picked it up in 1988, and my family was hooked. EGA graphics, seeing earth from Mir. That was a game. Level 9 was virtually unachievable. And we played endlessly.

    Then the Game Boy came out. Heaven. Two players! My brother and I played endless matches against each other. On road trips, there was nothing else. Scenery? Whatever. Trying to get a Tetris to send my brother over the top. Winning by completing lines faster wasn't HALF as satisfying as killing the other guy. A non-violent game where you killed your opponent! What could be better?

    And my PARENTS joined in. My Dad was a big computer geek from the get-go, but with Game Boy, even my Mom got in to it. She turned out not-bad for a while too! Occasionally (VERY occasionally) my Dad would even stop driving and let Mom drive, so he could play against us! And in the Family Room at night, playing against each other was often a nightly occurance.

    Then High School. Graphing Calculators. Tetris fever again! Jytris is hands-down the best Tetris clone for the HP48/49. Anybody who's played it would agree. Physics 20/30 was bearable (Easy 90s, but BORING) because of that game alone. And Babal I'll admit, but still, my tetris addiction helped.

    And then Tetris for the N64 (The Next Tetris). Not a bad game at all. Purists would object to being able to "save" a piece (I felt like I was cheating for the longest time), but the look-ahead, and new mono-squares and multi-squares objectives made an enjoyable new twist to my old obsession. And when playing 4-players at parties, I found that me and my friend Simon were always the targets. We completely dominated the competition. It was ALWAYS down to us two. Got so bad that we had to play hot-potato or else we'd get EVERYBODY's garbage. Hmm. Maybe shouldn't have played so much. We were both a little dominant players. Oh well.

    Still, I can't think of any other game I'm still playing from the mid 80s (besides Arkanoid and Rampart the Arcade, but that's another story). I'm always on the lookout for those little pieces made up of four deceptively simple blocks. What other game have you ever actually DREAMED about? What other game do you actually think of scenarios in your head while daydreaming? This happened. Who else will admit it?

    I broke my obsession down to a mere addiction a number of years ago. Who else can just not stop with the blocks? Who has been there since (near) the beginning?

    Erioll
    • And then Tetris for the N64 (The Next Tetris). Not a bad game at all. Purists would object to being able to "save" a piece (I felt like I was cheating for the longest time), but the look-ahead, and new mono-squares and multi-squares objectives made an enjoyable new twist to my old obsession. And when playing 4-players at parties, I found that me and my friend Simon were always the targets. We completely dominated the competition. It was ALWAYS down to us two. Got so bad that we had to play hot-potato or else we'd get EVERYBODY's garbage. Hmm. Maybe shouldn't have played so much. We were both a little dominant players. Oh well.

      Actually, if you want a *really* good time, try out Tetrisphere, published by Nintendo. It's a frenetic game, fast-paced and really fun, with an *AWESOME* techno soundtrack. Seriously, it's a game I'd buy an N64 for.

    • And then Tetris for the N64 (The Next Tetris). Not a bad game at all. Purists would object to being able to "save" a piece (I felt like I was cheating for the longest time), but the look-ahead, and new mono-squares and multi-squares objectives made an enjoyable new twist to my old obsession.

      No, The Next Tetris was for PC and PS1. The New Tetris was for N64. And yes, you described The New Tetris accurately. Recently, The New Tetris has been cloned on Game Boy Advance. The gameplay is almost exactly the same, but with a new twist: the whole screen twists. Pick up Tetanus On Drugs [pineight.com], a GPL'd tetrisclone for Game Boy Advance, Windows, and Linux.

    • Winning by completing lines faster wasn't HALF as satisfying as killing the other guy. A non-violent game where you killed your opponent! What could be better?

      How about a violent game where you killed your opponent? Like with a bazooka or something :)

      GMD

  • was a old EGA version called egaint, which I had on an old 286. Google found me this list of 883 [tripod.com] tetris files.
  • "There is also a very interesting history of tetris online"

    Oh God, my *eyes* - how anyone could read through enough of that bright lavender text on black background to work out that the content is actually "interesting" is beyond me.

    Someone miror it and convert it to something readable, before we blind an entire generation of geeks.

  • Interesting quote (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jcsehak ( 559709 ) on Sunday July 14, 2002 @11:55PM (#3884104) Homepage
    I just was flipping through this old gaming mag today. They had a quote from Alexey, which went something like:
    "I remember the first time I saw those shapes coming down the screen. I had no shape acceleration or point system, and I couldn't program them in because I was having too much fun playing the half-finished game."

    Apparently the shapes looked like this then:

    [][][][]
    []

    and I mean, exactly like that. Simple text brackets. How beautiful is that? One of the best games ever made, nothing but text brackets; still addictive.

    I gotta say though, half of the fun was the music. Where did all the good video game music go anyway? Tetris, Super Mario Bros, Frogger, Zelda. I can't remember the last time a game's theme music was stuck in my head all day.

    • Re:Interesting quote (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Dirtside ( 91468 )
      If you can find it, id Software had a guy named Bobby Prince rerecord much of the music from DOOM and DOOM II with real instruments. It's very listenable, especially if you're familiar with the music (from having spent way too much of your youth playing such games!). I tend to cue up the MP3s of those tracks at least once or twice a week while coding at work.

      The album itself is called, I believe, "Doom Music." Probably eBay is your best bet, or something similar; I doubt you're going to find a copy in stores (maybe in a used music store).

      • Re:Interesting quote (Score:3, Informative)

        by mav[LAG] ( 31387 )
        "Doom Music" is superb - I bought a copy for myself and a friend a few years ago. Easily worth the $15 or so it cost - plus I got a nice personal letter from the Man himself when he shipped my order.
        If you want a nice selection of Bobby Prince tracks, including some from that album you can go here [mp3s.com].

    • Re:Interesting quote (Score:3, Interesting)

      by guttentag ( 313541 )
      Where did all the good video game music go anyway?
      I understand the appeal of a relatively simple tune (like the three Tetris tracks), but I think as the industry has moved toward CD-quality audio, it has found it cheaper/hipper to use existing music than to hire a composer. PlayStation games are notorious for this -- I sometimes wonder if the developers are paying to use the music or if the studios are paying the developers to "push" their music to a captive, impressionable audience.

      Composer Nobuo Uematsu and Final Fantasy's music [ffmusiconline.com] have developed quite a following [gamemusic.com] over the years. The tradition of original soundtracks has survived in the Final Fantasy Dynasty because players have come to expect each new FF to raise the bar for the rest of the industry's music.

      I remember making my own tape of FF2's soundtrack by hooking my SNES up to my tape recorder. FF3 had equally memorable, thematic music. FF7 was a whole new ballgame -- someone in my college dorm reached the game's final battle WAY before the rest of us (he didn't sleep much), and we stood around the TV in awe as we realized the track contained actual singing. It was actually creepy, because we thought it was coming from somewhere else until the voices began chanting the name of the bad guy. In particular, I recommend the orchestral version [gamemusic.com] of the Final Fantasy VIII soundtrack.

      Regardless of the quality of the music, I think one's impression of the associated game influences your appreciation of the music. With that in mind, I'd suggest playing the games before diving into the music.


      • The tradition of original soundtracks has survived in the Final Fantasy Dynasty because players have come to expect each new FF to raise the bar for the rest of the industry's music.

        Well, either that or Miyamoto cringed at the thought of an N'Sync Chocobo remix.
    • and I mean, exactly like that. Simple text brackets. How beautiful is that? One of the best games ever made, nothing but text brackets; still addictive.

      In the past, I made a habit of programming Tetris in each new programming environment I used. One of my first was in C on an Ultrix box - my pieces looked exactly like you showed above and used hard coded ANSI escape sequences for doing screen positioning. I think it was about 200 lines of code, and played very nicely at 2400 baud.

      -josh
    • Where did all the good video game music go anyway? Tetris, Super Mario Bros, Frogger, Zelda.

      Now you want to talk good music in games? Not console games, I am talking the real deal - arcade games. How about these:

      Bubble Bobble
      Spy Hunter
      Galaga
      Gyruss (gotta love Bach)
      Star Wars

      So many others...

    • On my harddrive somewhere I've got a ska version of the Tetris Theme from the days when napster was still kickin'. First time I heard it I laughed for hours. (FWIW, I've also got a ska version of Hava Nagila lying around too)

      Triv
    • For all your entertainment needs a la video game music (MIDI format), try VG Music [vgmusic.com]. Sorted by systems ranging from the Sega Master System to the Atari Jaguar, alphabetized by game.

  • Best version ever: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by x136 ( 513282 ) on Monday July 15, 2002 @12:11AM (#3884150) Homepage
    Tetris for the Game Boy. I have never found a game that equals the Game Boy version. Every other version has some little quirk, which I end up HATING. :)

    I might as well glue the cart into my circa 1989 Game Boy, as it's the only game I play on it anymore. Well, that, and half of the screen is worn out, and Tetris is the only game that I can see well enough to play. :D

    Happy birthday, Tetris!

  • Tetris, Balltris, Blockout, Snood (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Peahippo ( 539266 ) <peahippo@ma i l . c om> on Monday July 15, 2002 @12:13AM (#3884159) Homepage
    I'd done the Tetris thing in the 286 heyday, and considered myself too much into it. However, I'm sure there were people with greater levels of addiction. I mean, I only got to the point where I saw blocks descending in my mind's eye as I drifted off to sleep at night. There must have been people whose minds played Tetris like this during daylight hours.

    I upgraded my needs for Tetris-ing to the Blockout game, which I consider to be the 3D version of Tetris. 3D blocks appear on the screen in wireframe; they drop away from you into a pit, and you can spin them +/- on each x, y and z axis. (In practice, I only use one vector of spin, since the spin rate is so fast, and it avoids confusion of which way to spin the cubes.) The blocks opaque as they settle in the pit, and of course the pit tends to fill up towards you.

    I certainly don't play Blockout as much as I did at first, and I never play Tetris anymore. Rarely, I fire up Balltris -- it is like Tetris but uses groups of balls; the groups fall into a pit, and when they make touching patterns (each level of difficulty increments the number of same-colored balls that must be touching), they disappear and the balls cascade and collapse quite intriguingly. I also play Snood, which is like Bubble Trouble; it's kind of like a table pool type of Tetris.

    But the Tetris, Balltris, Blockout and Snood types of games illustrate the remarkable gulf of difference between gamers. I can't stand the Doom and Everquest type of games; my thing is the blipping of colored bits of light into patterns, producing results, but under increasing difficulty until my dexterity and hand-eye coordination fail me. And they are over within 5 minutes, whereas Doom etc. can go on for hours and hours. The textually-graphic game Dungeons of Moria was as much as I could stand.

    I recall playing Tetris and entering something I called the zone -- the place where you were one with the blocks, the rate of fall, and the clicking of the keys to spin, drop and fit each one as it appeared and hurtled downward. It may be that my understanding of sartori and various Zen statements developed from that feeling of the zone. Tetris as Zen training? Stranger things have happened.

  • Tetrinet (Score:2, Informative)

    by J1a2o ( 526745 )
    For all you tetris people out there, check out TetriNET [tetrinet.org]. It's tetris on the Internet! It has special attack blocks that you can obtain by clearing lines. It also has a pure mode for all you old school people out there. =) Pretty dang addicting.

  • In case anyone here is thinking about switching to The Z Shell [zsh.org], here's the perfect reason:

    Tetris for zsh [zsh.org]. It's a terminal-based version of the game that is implemented entirely in zsh commands.

    Just source the file and then zle tetris (which you could bind to a keystroke) and off you go.

    Try doing that in <your favourite shell>.

  • If you are good at tetris you can play online tournament at WorldWinner.com [worldwinner.com] against a or some opponent.
    The nice part: you bet real money. If you are somewhat good you can make some cash. I really made 25$,around 37$CDN. I stopped since it was too hard to win when I was classified as "intermediate" and I was loosing all my earnings I won "newbie".

    Try it at your own risk.. Very addictive. You get 5$ free when you join. Everything is VeriSign Certified.

  • Tetris arcade machines.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by stevey ( 64018 )

    I don't remember playing this on the computer - I'm probably not old enough. My first real exposure was the gameboy, and later the arcade machine which was inside on of our university buildings.

    The arcade machine rocked! It had a nice two player mode, lovely music, and some fiendishly difficult variations on the original game.

    I played that machine so much that I used to dream of falling shapes!!

  • Was the buggy implementation that MS released. If you went above the 32K mark it would wrap around to -32K mark and start heading back towards zero (which I could never seem to get ~sigh~)

    I even submitted a bug report to MS, however it must have just got swept under the carpet ~sigh~

    Now back to installing XEmacs for Tetris .. off course I do have the VIM one lying around somewhere ... since when did editor's become game *consoles*? :)
  • I was amazed at how marketing could kill a very good simple game. I bought the new tetris (Tetris Worlds) for the Gameboy Advance. I had to return it quickly because it not only failed to live up to the old ones, but was far far worse than those fake lookalikes.

  • Why emacs is better than vim: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wdr1 ( 31310 ) <wdr1@@@pobox...com> on Monday July 15, 2002 @02:43AM (#3884535) Homepage Journal
    emacs -f tetris

    'nuff said. :)

    -Bill

  • The real pre-history of Tetris (Score:4, Interesting)

    by soundman32 ( 147936 ) on Monday July 15, 2002 @03:35AM (#3884637) Homepage
    Some of the 'official' story seems to be incorrect. I was involved in making the C64 version. The original C64 BASIC version was given to a friend of mine who added music and graphics and optomised it so it was playable on a 1Mhz machine.
    I also question the PC version being the first as I was playing it on the '64 in 1985. For a more detailed history see my tetris page [virgin.net] Neil
  • Someone is going to want to kill me for posting a link to this on slashdot... But... What the hell. = )

    See a world class Tetris champ [blowfish-toons.com] in action.

  • Xemacs tetris (Score:3, Interesting)

    by affenmann ( 195152 ) on Monday July 15, 2002 @04:12AM (#3884707)
    Did you ever notice that, when you fire up a new XEmacs tetris, the shapes always come in the same order (The random number generator must be seeded with the same number everytime).
    Damn, I started to memorize half of the play until I realized that.

    So, make sure you always hold down the 'n'-key for a while to make sure you'r not always playing the same game.

  • One thing really bugged me about Tetris clones. That is, many people seem to think that when you hit "down" the piece should just vanish and appear at the bottom of screen.

    Some enlightened souls used to add a bit of functionality so that you could see where that piece would appear when you hit "down".

    Which irked me even more. You've written a version of Tetis, you haven't got the control method right (when you hit down, the movement should speed up) and then you code additional functionality to help people deal with your incorrect implementation!

    Worst offenders for this was nearly every version of Tetris for the Palm Pilot [palmgear.com].

    However after playing nearly all of them, I thankfully come across one [palmgear.com] that does it properly. Definately worth it.

    • No no no. When you hit the drop button, the piece should immediately drop straight down and land on the pile. You hit it when you've got your piece lined up and then you go right on to the next piece. That's how it was on the original IBM PC version with the red title screen and Russian background pictures and that's how God himself intended it.
      • No no no. When you hit the drop button, the piece should immediately drop straight down and land on the pile. You hit it when you've got your piece lined up and then you go right on to the next piece.

        No no no. Talking to my mate (who lives, breathes codes and design computer games) the block should move faster when you hit down. In addition for every frame in which it moves at a faster speed, the player gets extra points. That way, you achieve a bonus for playing faster than the current level speed.

        and that's how God himself intended it

        Maybe, but he was obviously ignored :)

  • love is like tetris... (Score:5, Funny)

    by red_crayon ( 202742 ) on Monday July 15, 2002 @04:28AM (#3884738)
    My freshman year at college, the campus paper did a survey on love/sex/etc.

    This was 1989 and Tetris was quite the late-night procrastination tool before looking for MP3s, etc.

    Included was a series of anonymous quotes about the stare of love on campus. I'll never forget, one female student said:

    Love here is like Tetris. You never get the long piece when you need it.

  • So is it true that the game calculates which block you need the most and then just doesn't give that one?
  • A few months ago I was flying back to the uk from Malaysia. 14 hours in economy class of a 747.

    There was a 10 year old kid in the seat behind me who was puking every half an hour.

    There was a baby in in the seat infront of me soiling itself frequently and the woman holding the baby had her seat so heavily reclined that there was only 2 inches between my nose and the back of her seat.

    The movies didn't work for my seat and so the ONLY thing that stopped me going completly crazy was tetris.
    Apart from take-off and landing I spent the entire 14 hour journey playing that damn game.

    Although i'm thankfull that tetris was there I hope I never EVER see that game again.

  • Programming Tetris (Score:2, Insightful)

    by qurob ( 543434 )
    I've written Tetris clones for every new operating system, computer, or API I've learned. OpenGL, DirectX, WinG, QuickDraw, BGI, SVGALib.....

    It's almost a "Hello World", becuase it's so simple and so many people have done it.

  • my Alexey story (Score:3, Informative)

    by casemon ( 448599 ) on Monday July 15, 2002 @07:46AM (#3885206) Homepage
    working at Microsoft (ugh i know) as a Game Designer in the mid 90's, i had the pleasure of working with Alexey.

    at the time, he was a jovial guy, despite the sorted legal histories, with a thick Russian accent and loud, boisterous laugh.

    i was tasked with designing a game that would popularize Windows as a gaming platform (a concern at the time, Win95 was just released) and was thinking about different ways to achieve this. i asked myself about why certain other games were hugely popular, and of course Tetris was on the list. i'd deemed the reason to be that in Tetris, the player does something that they do nearly every second of their waking life; recognizing and sorting information.

    not long after, a new hire was announced in a separate games division. he was really the only other Game Designer at MS at the time, so naturally i sought a rapport; it was Alexey afterall!. we chatted about various things, men of similar ilk (on paper anyway), when one day, i just flat out asked him...

    "Alexey, why do you think Tetris is so popular?"

    he thought about it for a moment, me in silent anticipation realizing the absurdity of the situation; i'm once again talking with the designer of arguably the world's most popular game, when he finaly answered in his Russian-lined English accent...

    "You know Joe, I think it's because it is...something that people do everyday."

    i've been an even bigger fan of Alexey ever since ;)
  • http://www.chroniclogic.com [chroniclogic.com] released Triptych this spring. It has some of the features you've always missed the most in the original, namely the ability to smack that blocking piece away and to squeeze a piece in between two others. This game is actually a physical 2D simulation of slightly bouncy blocks being jammed into a limited space.

    They had to change the rules a bit to accomodate the more... ermm... physical nature of this game, but it's still near enough that I'd nominate it for Tetris clone of the year.

    Have fun! I've had a lot!
  • Looks basically the same but includes a wallhack that shows you the next 5 pieces and an aimbot that automaticlly picks the best place to drop them.

    RMN
    ~~~

  • Two games at once? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by honcho ( 69284 )
    Did anyone else ever play two tetris games at the same time? One with the left hand and one with the right? The Windows version is the best implementation I've found for doing this since you can play two player, the controls are in pretty good positions for each hand, and you can turn off the "penalize other player" option.

  • Wesleyan Tetris on the Mac (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dr. Manhattan ( 29720 ) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (171rorecros)> on Monday July 15, 2002 @10:05AM (#3885924) Homepage
    A wonderful Tetris version, the point of which was to be as annoying as possible. Not unlike the character from Star Trek...

    The sounds were annoying when they weren't actually insulting, the lookahead would frequently lie (just infrequently enough that you'd find yourself trusting it at the worst possible time), and then of course the innovations like invisible blocks and pieces on the later levels.

    It all comes together when you hear the "nyah-nyah" sound when it randomly takes a block away from a line you've almost completed...

  • Somewhere... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mstyne ( 133363 ) <mike@@@alphamonkey...org> on Monday July 15, 2002 @03:52PM (#3888755) Homepage Journal
    Alexey Pazhitnov created the one game that has caused so many people around the world to just about go nuts trying to win a game that has the ability to slowly drive you to insanity one small misshappen block at a time.

    An english teacher is crying.

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