“Tetris” starring Taron Egerton premieres globally on Apple TV+ on March 31, 2023. “Tetris” tells the unbelievable story of how one of the world's most popular video games found its way to avid players around the globe.
2023
1998 - 2022
Tetris rapidly expands, establishing rights with many other companies, games, consoles, etc.
1997
Artist Roger Dean designs a bold and distinctive logo for Tetris.
1996
As companies around the world made a mint from his invention, Alexey Pajitnov himself didn’t receive any royalties because ELORG technically owned Tetris. However, that changed in the 1996 when ELORG’s license expired and the rights to Tetris finally reverted to its creator.
Pajitnov and Henk Rogers formed the Tetris Company to manage global rights to all things Tetris, and the game continues to go strong online and on smartphones all over the world.
1995
Henk Rogers establishes Blue Planet Software, which becomes the exclusive agent for the Tetris brand.
1993
Tetris becomes the first video game to make it into space according to the Guinness World Records 2014 Gamer's Edition.
1989
A Win for Tetris and a battle between Nintendo vs. Atari
Henk Rogers and Alexey Pajitnov become very good friends, helping to secure the handheld rights to Tetris. Then licenses those rights to Nintendo.
Nintendo's Game Boy launches platform with one packed-in cartridge Tetris. Over 35 million copies are sold. Atari Games hit a wall, who in 1989 released their North American NES version of Tetris using the non-existent console rights that had come down from Stein through Mirrorsoft. Nintendo sent Atari Games a cease and desist letter, correctly saying only they had the rights. Atari Games, which had invested millions in bringing their game to market, stubbornly claimed they had the rights, and sued Nintendo.
A judge later ruled in favour of Nintendo, meaning that Atari Games had to destroy their entire inventory of unsold Tetris games.
A Fight for Tetris
“Either I’m going to come out of this with the rights to Tetris or I’m going be in some gulag,” - Henk Rogers.
By coincidence, Stein came to Moscow for a meeting with ELORG on the very day Rogers had turned up out of the blue. Given what he’d learnt from Rogers, Belikov was now deeply suspicious of Stein, accusing him of selling sub-licenses in secret. But now Belikov was about to play the capitalists at their own game. He presented Stein with a new contract that contained a subtle, additional clause specifying that Stein’s rights were only for computers, not consoles. Belikov also added clauses stipulating high penalties for late royalty payments – but these were simply there to distract Stein from that crucial clause about the console rights.
Stein went ahead and signed, blocking himself and his sub-licensees from being able to sell Tetris on consoles.
“Belikov was a son of a b***h,” - Robert Stein.
1988
Video game designer and publisher Henk Rogers discovers Tetris at a Las Vegas tradeshow and is instantly hooked on the game. Henk eventually asked Atari Games to ask about the rights, eventually forming a deal and bringing Tetris to Japanese home computers and Nintendo NES consoles. However, the next challenge was to get the handheld rights so that Nintendo could publish Tetris on... the Game Boy.
Contacting Alexey Pajitnov was not a easy task, so Henk Rogers flew to Moscow, completely uninvited, to knock on ELORG’s door to do whatever it took to persuade the Russians into handing over the handheld rights to Tetris. Normally, this was the kind of meeting that would ordinarily have to be approved by the KGB, but Rogers, aided only by an interpreter, managed to make a meeting with ELORG’s boss, Nikolai Belikov.
1985 - 1986
In 1985, Tetris is ported to the IBM PC and is quickly spreads throughout the Soviet Union. Interested in it’s commercial potential, software salesman Robert Stein came across a copy of Tetris while visiting Hungary. However, being that there was no way to communicate with its creator in Soviet Russia, except via printed messages sent through telex machines. Stein acquired the Telex number for AcademySoft, the internal licensing and publishing division of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, from the director of the institute in Soviet Hungary.
The Telex was a method of sending printed messages over telephone lines before the fax machine became widely adopted. After a series of messages back and forth between the two, Stein falsely assumed that he secured the rights to publish Tetris, however, a contract was never signed. Stein made a deal with the British media company, Maxwell Communications Corporation.
Tetris launches on PCs in North America and Europe – the first step in its global expansion beyond the Soviet Union.
1984
June 6th, Tetris is Born
Born in Soviet Union Russia, Moscow by Alexey Pajitnov, a computer engineer at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, Tetris is was created on a Elektronika 60, a computer that lacked graphic capabilities and was only capable of displaying text.