Tetris - From Russia With Love

basilpronoun writes "BBC News has an article about seminal puzzle game Tetris and its inventor Alexey Pajitnov, timed to coincide with further UK screenings of the documentary 'Tetris - From Russia With Love'. There's also an interview with documentary director Magnus Temple in which he comments on Pajitnov: 'He had to be persuaded to get involved. You can imagine what it's like. He invents a game almost 20 years ago and it's the only thing people want to talk to him about even though he's still a professional games designer'."

Why only Tetris

[MMaestro]

Its to be expected that people only want to talk to him about Tetris. When a developer makes a really, really good game, most people like to talk about him in a good way. In this case its Tetris. In other cases, like in John Carmack's, they most likely will talk about the original Doom. Not the Quake series because the Quake series didn't have as much as an impact as Doom. Simple at that.

Re:Why only Tetris

[Divide By Zero]

More to the point, what else has he DONE? I've never heard his name other than in conjunction with Tetris. It's like talking to Don Johnson about Miami Vice. Yeah, he's done other roles, he had a single, but they all* kinda sucked. So every* interview he does, somebody has to ask a question about Miami Vice or Tubbs or pastel t-shirts and suit jackets.

* - pending correction from anal AC

Re:Why only Tetris

[GoRK]

Well he made some other variants of falling block games like Welltris.

As far as tetris variants go though, I am very fond of Block-Out.

Re:Why only Tetris

[simoniker]

I think Pajitnov definitely didn't help his cause of only being known for a certain product by producing a lot of other '...tris' games - I particularly remember Hatris [klov.com], which is a pretty wacky idea conceptually.

However, he did design Pandora's Box [mobygames.com] for Microsoft, which is a wonderful example of a classical puzzle game (not Tetris-like, more jigsaw-like, but with much more complexity and 3D puzzles of many kinds), which is, imho, very under-rated.

What else he Alexey Pajitnov done

[GerritHoll]

What else has Alexey Pajitnov done, you ask? Here is the complete list [mobygames.com]

• Project Gotham Racing 2 [mobygames.com] (2003), Microsoft [mobygames.com]
• Rampage Puzzle Attack [mobygames.com] (2001), Midway Games [mobygames.com]
• Tetris Worlds [mobygames.com] (2001), THQ Inc. [mobygames.com]
• Microsoft Puzzle Collection Entertainment Pack [mobygames.com] (2000), Swing! Entertainment Media AG [mobygames.com]
• The Next Tetris: Online Edition [mobygames.com] (2000), Crave Entertainment, Inc. [mobygames.com]
• Pandora's Box [mobygames.com] (1999), Microsoft [mobygames.com]
• Knight Moves [mobygames.com] (1996), Spectrum Holobyte, Inc. [mobygames.com]
• Breakthru! [mobygames.com] (1994), Spectrum Holobyte, Inc. [mobygames.com]
• El-Fish [mobygames.com] (1993), Maxis Software Inc. [mobygames.com]
• Super Tetris [mobygames.com] (1991), Spectrum Holobyte, Inc. [mobygames.com]
• Faces [mobygames.com] (1990), Spectrum Holobyte, Inc. [mobygames.com]
• Welltris [mobygames.com] (1989), Spectrum Holobyte, Inc. [mobygames.com]
• Tetris (original) [mobygames.com] (1986)

Conclusion: He hasn't done much beyond Tetris indeed. Apart from El-Fish, Knight Moves, Pandora's Box, Puzzle Collection, Rampage Puzzle and Gotham Racing, they're all Tetris variants.

But isn't Tetris more than enough to contribute to Humanity?

Re:What else he Alexey Pajitnov done

[simoniker]

Actually, a number of those credits are in the 'Special Thanks' section - notably Project Gotham Racing 2 and Rampage Puzzle Attack, which Pajitnov was uninvolved with, but obviously had fans on the development team.

Re:Why only Tetris

[jaishaw]

This seems to be a general trend in entertainment industries, I mean who keeps track of the screen writers for movies and TV shows? It's only when something is really popular that the guy behind it all is sought out and exposed to the public eye. Otherwise it's the publishers and developers that get all the lime light.

IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Tetris invents YOU!

Thank You!

[Pamplemousse]

thanks to him my brothers and i are still allowed to play video games because my mom got hocked on tetris:) many happy hours of game play came about because of him, we will never be able to pay off the debt...

Re:Thank You!

[addaon]

It takes guts to say, on slashdot, that your mom got hocked.

Regardless of what it means.

seen it

[cjthompson]

'timed to coincide with the UK screening of the documentary 'Tetris - From Russia With Love' it was on last week.

Tetris - Slashdot

[vasqzr]

Maybe there should be a Tetris section

History of Tetris [slashdot.org]

Tetris related to dreams [slashdot.org]

Tetris AI webcam system [slashdot.org]

Micro-tetris [slashdot.org]

Tetris is hard [slashdot.org]

Re:Tetris - Slashdot

[GigsVT]

The puzzle game icon already looks like a tetris piece, how much closer than that can you get?

Yes; but can it...

[p4ul13]

run Tetris?

How many platforms have a version of tetris, not to mention all the various variants of the game?

The article mentions:
Available on more than 60 platforms, including handheld games machines and wrist watches

I'd be curious to see the list that they used for that figure. I have a suspicion that this is refering to official releases of the game. If the various shareware and freeware versions were considered the number might be much much higher..

Re:Yes; but can it...

[ZX-3]

Several times I've implemented Tetris to learn a new GUI toolkit. Minesweeper is another good choice for that sort of thing.

Alexey Pajitnov

[Anonymous Coward]

He invents a game almost 20 years ago and it's the only thing people want to talk to him about even though he's still a professional games designer.

Yeah, but what does he say about Tetris?

20 years later and still popular

[Tetrad_of_doom]

With games continually getting more complicated, you can still find thousands of people playing Tetris online (at least on XBox Live). It is a great argument for simplicity in game design.

One thing did bug me about the article:

"..creating solid lines out of rapidly descending T-shaped on-screen blocks.

Only about 1/7 of the blocks that you see in Tetris will be T-shaped, and there are some variations of Tetris in which the proportion is less.

online?

[GerritHoll]

Unfortunately, I can't receive BBC 4 here in the Netherlands. Does anyone know if the BBC puts its documentaries online, in particular this one? The article says:

Tetris: From Russia with Love is broadcast in the UK on BBC Four on Thursday, 12 February, at 1900 GMT and Sunday, 15 February, at 2205 GMT.

Torrent

[Blublu]

Here [213.158.116.18] is the torrent for that film.

Tetris Theme Re-Mixed

[TubeSteak]

http://www.ocremix.org [ocremix.org]
Perhaps the most famous remix is by DJ Venom & opens with the line:
"Lets play some Tetris motherfuckers"

Too bad its not on that site.

Re:Tetris Theme Re-Mixed

[ziggy_zero]

I guess it depends on "which" Tetris theme you're talking about (since it had a few you could choose from) but the most popular one is actually based off of a Russian folk song, Korobieniki. The band Ozma [ozmaonline.com] did a cool rock version of it a few years back. I would link to their mp3.com site where you could get it, but....yeah. I think you can find it on p2p networks though.

Spelling error

[ziggy_zero]

Sorry - if you want to look for the song it'll probably be spelled "Korobeiniki".

Tetris - From Russia with Love?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always liked Tetris - The Spy Who Loved Me better. I think we can all agree that Roger Moore was the best Tetris.

Re:Tetris - From Russia with Love?

[irokitt]

Sean Connery: "Teshtrish. From Rushia with Love."

Re:Tetris high score

[Quill_28]

219

snes is the one Super Mario Brother/Duck Hunt came with right?

Re:Tetris high score

[Quill_28]

Actually no. Married 3 kids born early 70s.

I just can't keep up with NES, SNES, famicon, etc..
And which one was which.

tetris on mobiles..

[gl4ss]

"As Tetris reaches a whole new generation through mobile phones, with even bigger fortunes to be made, Pajitnov remains philosophical about his place as a cog in the great capitalist machinery. "You could always make a little more," he says, "but I never seriously think about this stuff. I live as I live.""

I had tetris on my Benefon iO back in 1999(also iirc it was the first one with t9 predictive text input). nice phone but wasnt exactly sturdy when it came to meeting the asfalt(also was my first phone as

Great Multiplayer Tetris

[CaptainFoo]

I have been a huge Tetris fan for many years, but the last year I have only played Multris [spogg.com]. It sports a rather nifty multiplayer mode, and there are competition at all levels, some of the guys are just unbelivable. I guess my girlfriend would have been a lot happier if the high score lists hadn't been there though...

Some say Tetris is dead, but for me it's actually the only game I come back to time and again. Tetris forever!

Tetris on the HP 54600B Oscilloscope

[windside]

This has already been mentioned below, but I dug up the link and I think it deserves its own thread: LINK [eeggs.com]

One of the labs at my University has the infamous Tetris oscilloscopes. Hoo mamma, when I discovered that little "feature" I was one happy camper.