58 Fun Facts About Tetris

Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center of which Soviet institution?

The Academy of Sciences paid Pajitnov a researcher's salary, and Tetris earned him nothing more for about a decade, until his rights came back to him.

Which computer, with no graphics at all, ran the very first Tetris, its blocks drawn from text characters?

Elektronika 60 terminals showed only text, yet colleagues got hooked anyway, so the team soon ported the game to a machine with a sharper colour screen.

In which programming language did Pajitnov write the original Tetris?

Pascal was the language, and once the game ran, Pajitnov pretended he was still debugging it when really he just couldn't stop playing.

Pajitnov blended a word for four with which sport, his favourite, to name Tetris?

Tennis supplied the rest of the name, and the game began as a quick test program Pajitnov wrote to see what a new lab computer could do.

Pajitnov scaled Tetris down from which twelve-shape puzzle, a childhood favourite of his?

Pentominoes have twelve five-square pieces, and rotating that many in real time seemed too complicated, so Pajitnov cut every piece to four squares.

Which Tetris move instantly drops and locks a piece?

Hard drop is missing from Nintendo's NES Tetris, so pros at the Classic Tetris World Championship can only speed a piece down with a soft drop.

Which computer did 16-year-old Vadim Gerasimov port Tetris to, giving the game colour?

IBM PC Tetris spread fast: Pajitnov said it went through Soviet PC owners 'like a wood fire', and Moscow went Tetris-crazy.

Software dealer Robert Stein first saw Tetris during a business visit to which country?

Hungary's programmers did contract work for Western firms, which is how Stein, who licensed Hungarian software to UK companies, came across Tetris there.

Andromeda Software licensed Tetris to Mirrorsoft, a UK publisher owned by which media magnate?

Robert Maxwell's son Kevin went to Moscow for the Game Boy rights too, but the Soviet negotiators gave them to Henk Rogers instead.

Which American publisher first released Tetris in the United States?

Spectrum HoloByte's chief, Gilman Louie, dressed the Moscow-made game in Soviet imagery and folk music to make it stand out to American buyers.

The red US box art for Tetris's 1988 PC release featured which Moscow landmark?

Saint Basil's Cathedral turned up again in Nintendo's NES Tetris, where the best A-Type ending has the cathedral itself blast off into space.

Henk Rogers first saw Tetris on public display at which 1988 trade show?

The Winter CES in Las Vegas was a scouting trip where his job was to judge each game in minutes, yet he kept going back to the Tetris machine.

Henk Rogers published Tetris in Japan in 1988 through which company of his own?

Bullet-Proof Software's Famicom version was already on sale in Japan when Rogers carried a cartridge to Moscow, and the Soviet rights holders had never heard of it.

Which Soviet software-export monopoly ended up negotiating the Tetris rights?

Elorg got an uninvited visitor in Henk Rogers, who broke the rules by talking business on a tourist visa and still left Moscow with the Game Boy rights.

Chasing the Tetris rights, Henk Rogers put up whose property as collateral?

His in-laws' property was on the line, not the family home that the 2023 film shows Rogers risking.

Mirrorsoft's owner tried to lobby which Soviet leader to overturn the Nintendo Tetris deal?

Mikhail Gorbachev seemed within reach, since Mirrorsoft's owner had Kremlin contacts and had published Communist leaders' life stories, yet the Soviet agency kept its deal with Rogers and Nintendo.

Which Atari Games subsidiary released an unlicensed NES Tetris, then had to pull it?

Tengen's version was pulled within weeks when a judge sided with Nintendo, leaving Atari Games with piles of cartridges it could no longer sell.

Joseph Saelee won the 2018 Classic Tetris World Championship at 16 using which controller technique?

Hypertapping beats simply holding the D-pad, which at NES Tetris's top speed usually can't push a piece all the way to the edge of the well.

In Tetris, the only piece that can clear four lines at once is named after which letter?

The I piece is worth waiting for: NES Tetris pays far more per line for a four-line clear than for singles, so top players stack high and hold out for it.

Henk Rogers told Nintendo a bundled Mario game would sell the Game Boy to whom, but Tetris to everyone?

Young boys would buy it for Mario, Rogers argued, and Nintendo took his advice, packing Tetris in with the Game Boy in North America and Europe.

Game Boy Tetris's two-player mode needed two consoles and which accessory?

The Link Cable mode is what Nintendo dropped when it rereleased Game Boy Tetris on the 3DS Virtual Console in 2011, leaving that version single-player only.

Oxford researchers found that playing Tetris soon after watching traumatic film footage reduced what?

Flashbacks dropped, but not every game helps: in a follow-up study, a general-knowledge quiz game called Pub Quiz actually increased them.

Beating Game Boy Tetris's hardest B-Type setting launches which Soviet spacecraft?

The Buran shuttle, the Soviet answer to NASA's Space Shuttle, blasts off in the game, but the real one flew into space only once, uncrewed, in 1988.

Game Boy Tetris's 'Music A', now known as the Tetris theme, is which 19th-century Russian folk song?

Korobeiniki is a flirtation: a peddler haggles with a young woman over his wares, a courtship dressed up as bargaining.

Game Boy Tetris's 'Music C' is a minuet from a French Suite by which composer?

Johann Sebastian Bach never called these suites French: that label first appears in a text written twelve years after his death.

Which musical-theatre figure was half of Doctor Spin, whose 1992 Tetris single reached the UK top ten?

Andrew Lloyd Webber's single, alongside Ambassadors of Funk's 'Supermarioland', helped kick off a brief craze for novelty rave hits built on video game music.

The 'Tetris effect', seeing falling blocks after you stop playing, is traced to a 1994 article in which magazine?

Wired's writer, Jeffrey Goldsmith, described visiting a friend in Tokyo 'for a week' and still being there, playing Tetris, two months later.

With Rogers' help, Pajitnov and his family moved in 1991 to which US city?

Seattle was meant as a career move, but after a few years Pajitnov decided to stay and later became a US citizen.

In Tetris Effect, activating the Zone lets players do what?

Freeze time, and pieces stop falling while you keep stacking, so completed lines pile up and can clear together, far more than four at once.

When his Tetris rights came back in the mid-1990s, Pajitnov went to work designing puzzles at which tech giant?

Microsoft later put his puzzle game Hexic HD on Xbox 360 hard drives, so the console shipped with a Pajitnov game built in.

What nationality by birth is Henk Rogers, who won Tetris's handheld rights for Nintendo?

Dutch-born and raised in New York, Rogers moved to Japan and designed the role-playing game The Black Onyx years before he ever found Tetris.

The Japan-only Tetris 64 came packed with which Nintendo 64 accessory that clipped onto the player's ear?

The Bio Sensor read your pulse, and the game changed which pieces it dealt depending on whether your heart rate ran high or low.

Which publisher held the Tetris mobile licence from 2006 until it expired in April 2020?

Electronic Arts retired its Tetris apps on 21 April 2020, and even players who had paid for the game could no longer play it.

Tetris Effect launched in November 2018 as an exclusive for which console?

PlayStation 4 players got a game named after the Tetris effect, where people keep seeing falling blocks hours after they stop playing.

Which Rez and Lumines producer spent years trying to make a music-driven Tetris before Tetris Effect?

Tetsuya Mizuguchi wanted a music-driven Tetris for years, but the licence was tightly held, so the project only began after long talks with Henk Rogers.

Tetris 99 launched in February 2019 as a free download for subscribers to which service?

Nintendo Switch Online members got it with no warning: Nintendo announced Tetris 99 during a Nintendo Direct and released it the same day.

Which Japanese studio developed Tetris 99, and later Pac-Man 99?

Arika's game pits 99 players against each other at once, and knocking a rival out steals their badges, which make the rows you send hit harder.

Which company published the crossover game Puyo Puyo Tetris?

Sega's crossover lets one player drop Puyo blobs while a rival plays Tetris, and each side's clears send garbage over to the other.

Who plays Henk Rogers in the 2023 film Tetris?

Taron Egerton's Rogers wins Pajitnov over on screen, and the real pair, who bonded at their first meeting in Moscow in 1989, were still friends in 2023.

The 2023 film Tetris premiered at SXSW before streaming on which service?

Apple TV+'s film plays the licensing fight as a Cold War spy thriller, complete with KGB surveillance of Rogers and Pajitnov.

After a Moscow shoot fell through, the 2023 film Tetris used cities in which country as the Soviet capital?

Scotland suited the story partly because Moscow has buildings designed by Scots, and grey Glasgow streets passed for 1980s Moscow.

Which director, whose earlier films include Filth and Stan & Ollie, made the 2023 film Tetris?

Jon S. Baird built the film around the fight over the game's rights rather than trying to adapt the gameplay itself.

A US judge ruled in 2012 that the Tetris clone Mino broke copyright by copying what?

Its look was the problem: the judge agreed Tetris's rules can't be copyrighted, but Mino copied the pieces, colours and board so closely that the games looked alike.

Which New York museum made Tetris one of the first 14 video games in its collection?

MoMA's choice prompted Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones to reply, 'Sorry MoMA, video games are not art.'

A giant Tetris game on the Cira Centre earned a Guinness World Record in which city?

Philadelphia's giant game was built by Drexel professor Frank Lee, whose team turned the Cira Centre's LED lights into a Tetris board people played from the ground.

Willis Gibson, 13, is credited as the first person to 'beat' NES Tetris, by doing what?

Making the game crash counts as beating it, since the endless A-Type mode otherwise always ends in a game over, and he froze it at level 157.

Willis Gibson, the Oklahoma teenager who 'beat' NES Tetris, streams under which online alias?

Blue Scuti's record-breaking livestream brought the 13-year-old international news coverage.

Which player won the first Classic Tetris World Championship and went on to seven titles?

Jonas Neubauer's run of titles ended in 2018, when 16-year-old Joseph Saelee beat him in the final.

Which NES Tetris level was long treated as the 'kill screen'?

Level 29 doubles the falling speed, and players long believed nobody could get past it, until new controller techniques let them play far beyond.

In Tetris, what is it called when your stack blocks new pieces from entering and the game ends?

Topping out first doesn't always lose a Classic Tetris World Championship game: the higher score wins, so a trailing rival plays on until they pass it or top out too.

In modern Tetris, rotating a piece into a gap it can't simply drop into is named after which piece?

T-shape pieces make the T-spin, and in versus play a T-spin triple sends six garbage rows, more than a four-line clear, while clearing just three lines.

Heidi Burgiel proved that a long enough run of which tetromino, alternating orientation, ends any Tetris game?

Z-shape pieces alternating with their mirror image, the S, always leave gaps that can't be filled, and she showed play ends within about 70,000 of them.

MIT researchers proved that playing Tetris optimally is what kind of problem?

NP-complete means no known method finds the best play efficiently, and it stays that hard even if you know every piece in advance.

Which studio followed The Making of Karateka with Tetris Forever, a 2024 interactive documentary?

Digital Eclipse added a new game, Tetris Time Warp, which keeps flipping you back into older versions of Tetris for quick challenges.

The remaster Tetris DX was released for which handheld?

Game Boy Color owners got a computer opponent in Tetris DX, so a single player could play a versus match without a friend's second Game Boy.

Who succeeded Henk Rogers as CEO of his Tetris licensing company in January 2014?

His daughter Maya took over in the game's 30th-anniversary year and set out to take Tetris beyond games, into merchandise.

Which 1999 game introduced the 'hold' feature that lets players reserve a tetromino for later?

The New Tetris introduced hold on the Nintendo 64, and the feature later became part of the official guideline most Tetris games follow.

Which company did Henk Rogers form to co-own The Tetris Company when it was set up in 1996?

Blue Planet Software's joint venture went on to standardise, and trademark, the names and colours of every Tetris piece.