Game Mode: Tetris Turns 40
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Back to the first time someone told you about the game Tetris. Was it a friend, an older sibling, or a parent? Maybe you saw someone playing it at an arcade. How long did it take you to get what Tetris is, what you had to accomplish in the game, and how to play it?

Well, 2024 is the 40th anniversary of the classic game of falling blocks known as Tetrominoes. More than 520 million copies of Tetris have been sold since its worldwide release in the 1980s. It's been available on more than 50 gaming platforms and in the subject of multiple psychological studies on how it affects the human brain.

The studio Digital Eclipse is out with a new version celebrating this year's anniversary called Tetris Forever. It's a collection of different iterations of Tetris, but with a twist that looks back at the game's past. For our series Game Mode, we're booting up Tetris, looking at the game's history and why it became popular and has stayed popular. I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A Podcast, where we get to the heart of the story. We'll be back with more in just a moment.

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Hi, it's great to be here. Joining us from Oakland, California is Frank Cifaldi, Executive Director of the Video Game History Foundation. Frank, great to have you back.

Yeah, thank you. And joining us from Washington, D.C., is Gene Park. He's a video game critic for The Washington Post. Gene, welcome back to you, too. Thanks for having me, Jen. Frank, who originally created Tetris? That would be Alexey Pashnetov. He was a Soviet-Russian computer developer, programmer, who came up with the concept all by himself. Now,

Now, Hank Rogers is the American programmer and game developer who helped popularize Tetris in the West. Gene, what did he see in this game?

Well, Hank famously called it the perfect game. Hank actually went to Japan because he had an obsession with the video game business. And he really got involved with board games in Japan. But when he saw Tetris, he really saw a game that had a universal appeal. And that's why he had this really...

like, focused mission to bring Tetris to the world, basically. Rebecca, we're talking about a game that's an international hit. What made it so popular when it was first released?

There have been a lot of, I think, different moments over the years where it's sort of been popularized and repopularized. Certainly, it appearing in arcades was like a really big moment for it. I think the Game Boy is probably one of the big things that got it so popular in the West, right? Because it was like portable little puzzle thing. But I think fundamentally of all video games, it's very immediately understandable, even if you don't

quite click with the controls the first time, you understand exactly what it is you're supposed to do. There's something in the human brain that likes the idea of filling a hole with the blocks and then having

having the satisfying effect of clearing everything. And so you can just at a glance look at it and go, oh, I understand this immediately. I understand what the victory condition is, and I want more of that. And so I think that helped it click with so many people. So this new game, Tetris Forever, is an attempt to celebrate the anniversary of the game while also looking back at its history. Jean, describe Tetris Forever for us.

Tetris Forever is actually the third in the series of what's being called the Gold Master Series by the studio Digital Eclipse. And what they're trying to basically create is kind of like a mixture between a Criterion Collection type of series and also what I describe as a very Smithsonian-like experience.

creating this interactive documentary experience for players. So within Tetris Forever, you have old footage, old documentary footage from Hank Rogers when he was back in Soviet Russia. He was a

very ardent chronicler of his own journeys. So we're lucky to have a lot of that footage and also interviews with Alexei and Hank and many other people throughout the history of Tetris. But Tetris Forever is basically kind of like an interactive museum exhibit, right?

of the story of Tetris and its 40-year history from its invention through Alexei and its initial emergence out of Russia and into the rest of the world. Rebecca, how often do you see this style of game, this sort of combination game slash documentary style?

I think it's a very new thing, honestly. And I think Digital Eclipse has been sort of pioneering this idea. They had one a couple of years ago called The Making of Karateka, which is about a game called Karateka, that really took off. I mean, people were very, very positive on this format. And as Jean said, Digital Eclipse is working on this Gold Master series of similar ideas. And I think...

I think as people, as sort of the older group of gamers ages and, you know, has this like ability to look back fondly on gaming history, but then also, you know, introduce it to a new generation of players. I think there is this sort of craving to understand, you know, exactly how the games that we love got made in the first place. Now, it's striking that a game that's this popular, that it was a source of disputes over its rights from nearly the beginning. Frank, without getting into the legal weeds,

What was at the heart of the rights dispute about Tetris? Well, I mean, I think the heart of it was what is a computer is what it kind of came down to. So there was some confusion over the rights to the game with the initial rights holder over whether they had the rights to anything that played a video game.

or if it was specifically a computer with a keyboard and mouse kind of thing. And basically there was an assumption on their part that computer included video game console, which was challenged by Hank Rogers, who Gene just mentioned. And ultimately Nintendo sort of won the day back in the 80s and sort of set the stage for what we have now, which is the Tetris company.

Now, Gene, you wrote about the 2023 Tetris biopic. It's called, fittingly, Tetris, and it stars Taron Egerton as Hank Rogers. I played for five minutes. I still see falling blocks in my dreams. It's poetry, art and math all working in magical synchronicity. It's the perfect game. Gene, what does that 2023 movie depict about Tetris that people who aren't familiar with its history might find surprising?

Yeah, the movie attempts to kind of be a thriller version of what happened with Tetris, kind of mixing a Cold War spy storyline

which it kind of was into just the making of this game. Fortunately, Hank Rogers, the person who helped bring the rights out of Soviet Russia, is a very charismatic and funny person. So his personality easily translates to the screen, obviously.

when it does this. But the movie does take some liberties in terms of how it depicts the Tetris story. Towards the end of the movie, there's a very elaborate car chase that did not happen in real life and it definitely was embellished for the film. But everything about the film, including what Frank just talked about, including the legal wrangling over what is a computer and dealing with the state-owned organization known as ELORG within Russia, all

All of that is within the movie and is depicted in entertaining detail. Rebecca, when were you first introduced to Tetris and did you fall in love with it? Tetris is older than me.

And I have a very vivid memory of being in kindergarten. I was in an after-school program every day waiting for my parents to pick me up, and we had a Nintendo Entertainment System in there. And the little kids, you know, we would try Mario. We would try Legend of Zelda. We would play all those. But every once in a while, one of the seventh or eighth graders would come in and slap Tetris in there, and we would just watch in awe.

Because we thought it was a little too complicated for us. But then obviously, as I grew up and got a bit of a handle on a controller, I figured out, oh, this is intuitive. I understand this immediately. Frank, what about you?

So my very, very first introduction to Tetris was actually as a subscriber to Nintendo Power Magazine. I'll never forget it because it was my first issue. It was one with Michael Keaton Batman on the cover. And so Nintendo had just sort of cleared the rights and they were introducing this game to their audience for the first time. And they did that with, I think it was like the 16-page really elaborate cover

comic with like claymation, like Tetris figures that like storm a castle and talk to the king and stuff like that. And it was, they were pushing it really, really hard. And that was my first introduction to not only that game, but a video game like that, because kind of to Rebecca's point earlier, like as a kid with an NES, what I knew was like jumping around as a cartoon character, not, you know, moving abstract pieces around.

Gene, what do you remember about Tetris when you first introduced? Frank's memory of that Nintendo Party issue is also my memory as well. I'm not sure whether I was introduced to the game that way or I just got a Game Boy. I think my first memory of the game was just getting the Game Boy and the back-end game was Tetris. And Hank Rogers famously convinced Nintendo because Nintendo would pack in a Mario game

But Hank Rogers said, let me get you the rights to Tetris. I promise you this is the better packing game. Because he would tell Nintendo, if you want to sell millions of Game Boy to gamers, pack it with Mario. But if you want to sell the Game Boy to everyone else, pack it with Tetris.

So I remember, you know, like the listener earlier, you know, their parents bought all the kids Tetris. So my dad bought himself a Game Boy and me as well. And we played Tetris against each other. So it was definitely one of the first real cross-generational games that I certainly remember back in the day.

Tetris has had many iterations in the last 40 years, and of course, Tetris Forever is the latest in that long line of iterations. But Jean, what were the earlier versions of Tetris that made it ubiquitous?

Really, it was the Tetris Game Boy. That was really the nucleus that started it all. But then Tetris would have Nintendo versions, and as Rebecca mentioned, there were also arcade versions as well. Most recently, within the last couple of years, there was a wonderful game called Tetris Effect Connected, which aims to create a kind of synesthesia experience

where every time you move one of the Tetris tiles, you rotate it or drop it, or literally any time you press a button for the video game, the game's music will time itself to your actions. So it becomes kind of like a very interactive, like I said, synesthesia experience.

where you become one with the game and you really become one with the rhythms of the game as well. And that to me is probably the most remarkable version of Tetris ever released, I think. Now, Frank, you have an interesting piece at your foundation. It's a poster from Nintendo announcing Tetris with Mario shaking the hand of a Russian. What's the story behind that piece? Yeah.

Sure. I mean, well, I mean, there's two stories here, really. Two things going on at the same time. First of all, Nintendo... I mean, this is Soviet-era Russia. You know what I mean? This is an era where...

We don't know a lot about what's going on behind the Iron Curtain. So the idea of Mario shaking hands with a Russian over a business deal, that was a statement from Nintendo. But it was also how Tetris was marketed at the time. It was like, look at this mysterious thing from Russia. But the second thing that was happening with that was that Nintendo was really flexing

that they had the worldwide exclusive rights. And essentially they were shunning Atari, which ironically is the publisher of the latest Tetris product now that I think about it. This was basically a flyer saying that like, without naming Atari, just saying that like Atari was mistaken. Only we have the rights to take that. Let's take a quick pause here. Coming up, why Tetris sticks with us as a timeless game.

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Rebecca, how are you seeing Tetris show up in popular culture in ways that other classic games don't? Oh, my goodness. I think that potentially if there is a video game that is the most recognizable symbol of video games, it might be Tetris. Like, I mean, it's fighting with Mario and Pikachu, certainly, but I think...

I think it has like a sort of oldness and ubiquity to it that you recognize it and you immediately think of this image of Tetris in video games. You know, I've seen it turn up in various episodes of especially animated TV, but, you know, it gets referenced in TV shows all the time. You know, there's, you know, been multiple like sort of

different features and things about it, books written about it. It's literally everywhere. You see a Tetromino, it's such a simple, obvious shape. People dress up as them for Halloween. It's literally everywhere and it's inescapable. And I think it bridges the gap between people who play video games and people who don't really style themselves as quote unquote gamers in a way that so few things really do. I think most of us understand how Tetris works, but you have seven different...

pieces called tetrominoes. They are a various number of squares fit together in different patterns. And the goal is to try to fit them together as they fall down from the top of the screen. And so that you end up with a straight line of blocks that can then be cleared. And you don't want those blocks to pile up so they reach the top of the screen because then you lose. Frank, why do you think this game works as a game?

There's so much to talk about here. I mean, like books and books worth to Rebecca's point. But, you know, I'll bring in what the other guests have said already. One is that I think it's a perfect game, as Gene said. I'm reminded of a quote from the Ken Burns baseball documentary about how if you add like an inch to the base run line, you just ruin the entire game of baseballs.

Cause it's just perfect the way it is. And I feel that way about Tetris as well. There's just something to the exact configuration of shapes, the exact number of seven, you know, the exact number of rows that you have that I think, um, you just can't disrupt. But I think another thing though, is just kind of going back to what you were just talking about, which is that I think Tetris puts us in what I call a flow state. Um,

It puts us in a state where we're just kind of one with the game. And I think that a lot of things neurologically happen when you're in a flow state like that, that probably have a lot of health benefits. And I think that our...

brains are really good at telling us, you know, keep doing that thing. This is good for us. And I think there's a lot to that with Tetris. Well, speaking of flow state, we got this message from Rudy in North Carolina who emails, in the late 1990s, I remember watching one of my undergraduate professors play Tetris in two-player mode on his PC by himself, right hand versus left hand to improve his hand-eye coordination.

That is amazing. We also got this from Jess in Madison who emails, the first clue that I had ADHD should have been how my brain stopped being so noisy when I was playing Tetris. I'm sure there have been lots of conversations about the effect of Tetris on the brain. But Rebecca and Frank, I want to hear from you as well, Gene. I mean, what happens in your brain when you're playing this game? How do you find...

you respond? Do you move into that flow state? Do you have a different kind of reaction? For me, it's incredibly anxiety-inducing. I have never been able to hit the flow state, Frank, you talked about. But Rebecca, how do you respond to the game?

I think it's because I need to focus on it so completely, right? Like I used to play, I don't get them anymore, but I used to get really bad migraines that were stress-related. And one of the things that I was able to do to sort of calm them down a little bit, that sounds counterintuitive to stare at a screen when you have a migraine, but because they were stress-related, if I played Tetris,

my brain would only be able to focus on Tetris. I couldn't think about whatever I was stressed about. I couldn't think about any of those other problems. All I could think about were the blocks because if I didn't, I would not be able to play Tetris. And so being able to just focus on one thing and have that thing be a problem in front of me that was solvable, like it's something that I can affect and I can work with, like that really helped me in those moments and still does. Jean, what about you? How does your brain respond to the game?

I think I probably approach it more like what you might find in an esports player where you just kind of settle in and strap in. For me, I liken the flow state of reaching a video game or even just Tetris as to driving a car, basically, where you just kind of strap in and buckle up. If you already know how to drive a car,

If you're just starting out to drive a car, that could be very anxiety-inducing. But if you already know how to drive a car and you enjoy doing it, then it just becomes relaxing and it just kind of becomes second nature. So that's kind of how I describe not only just playing Tetris, but a lot of video games, really. Yeah, Frank, what about you?

I think that's a really good comparison, just driving a car. I think that for me, playing Tetris is just doing a task that makes me feel good. It's like, I don't know, I'm not a knitter, but it's probably similar to what people get from knitting. But I think there's also, I mean, I don't want to get too heady on this show, but I think something with Tetris is that we all have this need

need to make order out of chaos in the world. And I think that Tetris just gives us constant reinforcement that if we're just good enough, we can just create order out of everything. And I think that's really addictive and kind of nice. Rebecca, what modern games do you see as having been influenced by Tetris's massive success and how the game is set up and played?

Oh, my goodness. Tetris is sort of a funny thing because even though, you know, it is this ubiquitous game that we all associate, we all recognize, most video games... Frank made a point much earlier that most video games we're used to now don't look like it, right? We're usually controlling a little guy running around doing something, which is not what Tetris is. It's about arranging pieces. There is a vibrant genre of puzzle games, though, that are...

in some way, shape or form about moving pieces or arranging them. I think Candy Crush is maybe like a really good example of something that's popular and recognizable that itself is not Tetris, but you can look at it and be like, okay, I kind of see like where the flavor here came from. But then I think

even games that are about little dudes running around, a lot of those games nowadays, you're kind of expected to have some sort of puzzle element to provide the player challenges when they're running around on adventures. And often those puzzles that are built in are kind of reflective of things you see in Tetris. I've done stuff that looks somewhat like Tetris in games like World of Warcraft. I've done things like that.

Oh my gosh, like The Witness several years ago was probably a lot of that. I mean, you could probably look at most video games out there and find somewhere deep in there a kernel of a thing that looks like Tetris. Well, one standout game from 2024 is from Swedish developer. It's called Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. And the game combines puzzles of different kinds from lot combinations. There's also spatial puzzles, the size of rooms, and the game embeds them in a larger narrative about an old mansion.

You're being led around in a maze of deceptions. Think back on when they first tried to contact you. Do you remember? Do you remember the maze? Do you remember the maze? So Rebecca, where do you see the influence of Tetris in this game?

Oh, my gosh. The sorts of things that you were talking about, right? There's all these puzzles hidden throughout the house and actually wandering around the house itself. Maybe not so much, but I remember there's this one area in that game where you you walk into a room and you look down at a table and there's this it looks like a like a.

a poster for something, some event. And there's all these like sort of lines drawn on it in these sort of like zigzaggy combinations. And when you first look at it, you don't fully understand what it's doing. But then later you figure out that you can arrange them so that the lines form a very specific picture. And so again, that's not Tetris, but there's something just in the very like tactile thing of moving little pieces around to make the shape that you want. I mean, we did that in real life too. Like we do jigsaw puzzles.

It's all kind of going back to that same, some scientist has come up with some play center of your brain that's activated when you're doing all those things. Well, Rebecca, I know we have to let you go. That's Rebecca Valentine. She's a senior reporter for IGN, the media and entertainment news site. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. We're going to head to a quick break when we return, but the video game industry can learn from the longevity and success of Tetris.

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Let's jump back into the conversation. Now, Tetris Effect Connected is a Tetris game from 2020 that combined the game's format with virtual reality and music. Jean, how do features like VR change the experience of Tetris?

Oh my goodness. Tetris Effect in virtual reality definitely feels like a next level trippy experience. Actually, one of my girlfriends or one of my ex-girlfriends has a very...

deep-seated fear of the ocean. And the game actually takes you through the ocean and all these sea creatures as you're playing Tetris. So it really kind of becomes like an all-encompassing experience. It really is probably the best visual representation of the so-called flow state that we've been talking about, where you're just kind of surrounded by the game experience and all the decisions that you're making throughout. Yeah.

Frank, how much of the success of this game, of Tetris, is about its accessibility? Yeah, that's an interesting question because it's striking to me that I don't think I've put this much thought into Tetris in years, but there's so much to think about. And something that was coming up for me as we were talking was exactly this, the accessibility of it. And I feel like it's almost a perfect video game in that it's a game that could only be a video game. You know, like...

physically rotating these objects isn't isn't exactly the same thing um but also it's something that can play on anything that plays a video game you know that's simple enough um that that even the oldest microcomputers from the early 80s like an apple 2 does a great game of tetris there's there was a there's a famous like chicken mcnugget uh little handheld thing a couple years ago uh in in china you could just buy this like cheap little device to play tetris and

So it's accessible from a tech perspective, but also from a rules perspective. We all know how to fill gaps with things, and we all know how to rotate a physical object. We all know how to make order out of these things. And I think that the first time you play Tetris, the rules become really obvious, and you're a Tetris player for life.

We got this from Pip in New Hampshire who emails, What I love about Tetris is how it's become a moniker to describe more than just the game, but other things in life. I had a TSA agent open up my suitcase recently and say, Wow, you pack like Tetris. It made me laugh and made me proud since I was always pretty good at the game. As we wrap up here, what's one thing you each think the video game industry could learn from Tetris right now, whether that's how to design a better game, advertising,

as a message for what makes a game popular or maybe something else. Gene, I'll come to you first. Actually, I'm really struck by what that last listener just said about how the TSA agent saw Tetris in the bag. I think the most compelling video game experiences are the ones that...

change the way we look at the world, you know? The ones whose rules are so engaging and so engrossing that we start to reimagine how the world works. And like Frank says, it helps put some order into the chaos of what our lives are. So I think that's probably the most valuable thing a video game can offer to the world. And that's what Tetris does. Frank, briefly your thoughts.

Yeah, I don't know that I could make something a cultural phenomenon that changes our entire vocabulary as like a game design idea. But I want to actually just say that, you know, I am a historian. So for me, I'd like people to learn from Tetris Forever in that a lot of these games are not just, you know, pastimes anymore. There are cultural objects that affected the world. And I'd like to see

more video game companies recognize that and create products that help us celebrate and understand why these things had such a big impact on us.

Well, unlike Tetris, our show does have an end point, so we will leave it there. That's Frank Cifaldi, Executive Director of the Video Game History Foundation, and Gene Park. He's a video game critic at The Washington Post. Thanks to you both. Today's producer was Michael Folero. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Jen White. Thanks for listening. This is 1A.

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