On Tetris, Its Past, and Kaiser's HyperTetris

Tetris is one of the best selling computer and video games of all time, appearing for essentially every computer platform or game system since its propagation in the late eighties.It is conceptually simple, but deceptively difficult and obscenely addictive.From its humble beginnings on an Electronica 60 in Moscow, to the current official renditions of the game, to the plethora of unofficial variants that abound elsewhere (such as G. Kaiser's four-D adaptation here), Tetris is a game phenomenon unlike any other.

I.The Source

Back in 1985, Alexey Pajitnov and Dmitry Pavlovsky, two computer engineers at Moscow Academy of Science's Computer Center, were in search of the perfect addictive game, which they might create (and hopefully sell).They tested out a number of different games, and Alexey based one on a set of Pentominos, an ancient Greek puzzle game involing arranging puzzle pieces made of five squares.After some pondering, he thought up the idea of arranging the pentominos as they fell into a glass, but realized the twelve different five-square shapes were too complex to deal with and switched to using the seven "tetraminos" made of four squares each.The aforementioned first version of Tetris was written on an Electronica 60 by Pajitnov himself, and ported onto MSDOS/IBM by a then sixteen-year-old Vadim Gerasimov, a high school computer prodigy who also worked at the academy.The final version of this original (pre-commercial release) is still available at Gerasimov?s homepage (he now works at M.I.T.).Pajitnov was initially unable to sell Tetris (or any of the other experimental games the three had come up with), and this pretty much ends Pavlovsky and Gerasimov's involvement in the main development of Tetris.By this point, the game had become a widespread underground favorite in Moscow's computer community, and was copied by a group of Hungarian programmers (from whom the West learned of the game).

II.The Battle

At this point, the story becomes much messier:seeing the potential of the game, software exec. Robert Stein (first) sells rights to two companies to create and sell computer game versions of Tetris, and (second) tries to get the actual right to do so from Pajitnov (who, along with the USSR itself, owns the game).When he fails to sign a contract with Pajitnov, he plans to "steal" the rights to the game by claiming the Hungarian programmers had invented the game, and contracting with them to sell the game.This plan is foiled when Alexey is interviewed as the creator of the now immensely popular game.The original producers of the computer Tetris, Mirrorsoft UK and Spectrum Holobyte US both sub-license the rights to produce console (video game) editions of Tetris to Bullet Proof Software (B.P.S.) and Atari (under the Tengen brand name) as well as an arcade version to Atari.These rights are expressly forbidden by the contract Stein has finally managed to sign with the soviet consortium ELORG.Henk Rogers of Bullet Proof ends up with (unfounded) rights to video game release of Tetris in Japan.Nintendo, seeking Tetris as a bundled game to release with the new Game Boy, sends Henk to Russia to get the yet-undeclared permission to create handheld versions of Tetris.After securing this new contract, he show Pajitnov Bullet Proof's (i.e. his) version of Tetris for the Famicom (Japanese name for the 8-bit "Nintendo" here), which surprises the Russian since console/video game rights for Tetris had never been sold to anyone.Rogers, thinking on his feet, pays ELORG the royalties for the Bullet Proof copies already sold, and agreeing to pay them for any future sales.Realizing that there are unofficial cartridge versions of Tetris available and in the works, they open bids for the official rights to make and sell console versions of the game.On behalf of Nintendo, Henk Rogers offers ELORG a large enough sum for the rights that no one (i.e. Stein, Mirrorsoft, Atari/Tengen, or anyone else) tries to outbid them.Thus, in the end, Mirrorsoft and Spectrum have PC contracts, Atari has arcade rights, and Nintendo has console and hand-held rights.Atari/Tengen proceeds to develop and then release a cartridge version (the famed Tengen Tetris), despite the legal battle now raging between them and Nintendo.Having the (actual) rights to the game, Nintendo is able to force a cease-and-desist order on Tengen, less than a month after their release of the game.Approximately 100,000 copies have been sold and several hundred thousand more are now taken off shelves and returned to a warehouse under the legal injunction.The court case drags on for several more years and further decimates an already failing Atari as Nintendo wins out.Somewhere along the line, Mirrorsoft collapses under the legal stress of the mess, and its owner (Robert Maxwell) dies of mysterious circumstances.Alexey himself receives no money at all for his creation until the '96 founding of the Tetris Company with Henk Rogers (of B.P.S.).Whew.What a mess...

III.Greg Kaiser's HyperTetris

In '96, in a setting much more like the origin of Tetris than the final destination, Greg Kaiser put together a four-dimensional variant on the classic game.Using IrisGL (a.k.a. igl) he created a working, if hard to play, game using four sub-screens to depict different three-dimensional aspects of the entire game-space.Since there is not an easily comprehendible way to draw four-D objects on a two-D screen, the four sub-views are a practical method to manipulate and visualize the rotation and translation of the pieces through the four dimensions (in the game called x,y,z,w).Rather than completing lines of blocks as in the original, the goal in this case is to fill a complete cube in the x,y,z subview (usually 4 by 4 by 4).Theother subviews which contain the "w" dimension are arranged in a default 4 by 4 by 10 block arrangement with "w" being the long, "vertical" dimension in all three cases, with different bases of (x,y), (x,z), (y,z).Gravity acts in the "-w" direction, so pieces fall "down" in the three long subviews that include "w", and do not move unless by player control in the last (x,y,z) subview.It takes awhile to get used to, to say the least.If by some miracle of patience or changing the parameters of the game, one does complete a cube, it will disappear as the completed lines do in the original Tetris, though no score is kept in HyperTetris.The game offers a wide variety of command line arguments to allow the user a better chance to understand the mechanics of the game, including specifying the fall rate (including turning it off), the size/shape of the game space, which of the twelve pieces may be used, and several other variations. After tinkering around with the ideas of translating HyperTetris into OpenGL (a.k.a. ogl), consolidating the numerous pieces of source code, and adding features such a "graffiti" in-game labels to the screen, it was determined that the above tasks were either of marginal use, out of my ability league, or both.The only two notable contributions I made to the program itself are the addition of the w-fall ("gravity") toggle (F key), which is more useful than the original command line switch, and the addition of instructions for the game which now print out in the Unix shell automatically when the game is run, for easier reference in midgame than digging through Kaiser"s readme (which I updated a bit as well).

One last thought:The Tetris Company has sought out unofficial versions of Tetris when they are posted on web pages, and demanded removal for copyright infringement, both in terms of use of the name "Tetris" and for infringing on "act-alike" rules concerning games very similar to the actual Tetris products.Because of this, I suggest not posting the actual completed game or complete source code to avoid possible complications.

References:

http://atarihq.com/tsr/special/tetrishist.html

thorough, sourced on the book "Game Over" by David Sheff, deals with the history of the legal battle.

http://vadim.www.media.mit.edu/Tetris.htm

Vadim Gerasimov's own page.

http://www.tetris.com/history.html

Alexey Pajitnov and Henk Roger's company's history on the game.