Classic Tetris - play online without registration

Tetris is a computer game invented in the USSR by Alexei Pazhitnov and presented to the public on June 6, 1984. The idea of ​​"Tetris" was prompted by the pentomino game he bought.

The name of the game comes from the number of cells that make up each figure.

History

Interest in the figures of dominoes, trimino, tetromino and pentomino in the USSR was arisen due to the book by SV Golomb "Polimino" (publishing house "Mir", 1975). In particular, pentominoes were so popular that in the "Science and Life" since the 1960s there was a permanent column devoted to the assembly of figures from a set of pentominoes, and plastic sets of pentominoes were sometimes sold in stores.

‘Tetris’ was written by Alexei Pazhitnov in June 1984 on a computer ‘Electronics-60’. Working in the Central Committee of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Pazhitnov dealt with the problems of artificial intelligence and speech recognition, and used puzzles, including the classic pentomino to test ideas. Pazhitnov tried to automate the fitting of pentomino in the given figures. However, there was not enough computing power for the rotation of the pentomino, it was necessary to debug on tetromino, which determined the name of the game. The main idea of ​​"Tetris" was born in those experiments - the figures fall and the filled rows disappear.

7 "tetromino bricks" Tetris: I, J, L, O, S, T, Z.

For IBM PC, the game was rewritten on Turbo Pascal by 16-year-old schoolboy Vadim Gerasimov.

The game quickly spread through Moscow and further around the world. A few months later, the importer of software from Hungary - Robert Stein - heard about the game. Stein went to Moscow, where he met with Alexei Pazhitnov, and agreed on a license to release the game. For some reason unknown to Stein, Pazhitnov gave him Tetris. Robert Stein immediately decided that the game could be published freely.

Stein sold the rights to Tetris to Mirrorsoft (and its subsidiary Spectrum HoloByte), owned by British media mogul Robert Maxwell. A few months after the deal, Stein came to negotiate the purchase of rights from the real right holders. The Russians refused to sell Stein the rights to Tetris on his terms. Meanwhile, two of Maxwell's companies - the British Mirrorsoft and the American Spectrum Holobyte - were releasing their version of Tetris. The game had high-quality (by standards of that time) graphics and sound, as well as "Russian flavor" - in the background screensavers of the program appeared: Yuri Gagarin, Mathias Rust, who landed his sports plane on Red Square, and other resembling characters. The sensation was born just in front of us - the first game from the "Iron Curtain".

It is quite possible that no one would have known about Pazhitnov, if not for the cunning of CBS journalists, who presented to the world the real author of the popular game. After showing an interview with Pazhitnov, Stein's position faltered, he did not reveal traveling to Moscow and unsuccessful attempts to reach an agreement with Soviet organizations.

While Stein was wasting time on persuasion of Elektronorgtekhnika leaders, Spectrum Holobyte and Mirrorsoft were selling the rights to develop console versions of Tetris to Bullet-Proof Software and Atari Games on the basis of sublicensing. At the same time the first gets the opportunity to develop programs only for systems sold in the Japanese market. The conditions of the second are much more favorable - its "area of ownership" includes Japan and the United States.

In 1989, Nintendo was developing the Game Boy handheld game console at full blast. Minoru Arakawa, head of the US division, was persuading Bullet-Proof Software President Henk Rogers to negotiate with Stein about the possibility of developing a Tetris game for the Game Boy. He agreed, but Stein did not respond to attempts to contact him. Then Rogers flew to Moscow. Feeling unwell, Stein followed him to the capital of the USSR. Kevin Maxwell, the son of a media mogul, also flew there.

Rogers was the first to be met at Elektronorgtekhnika. The president of Bullet-Proof Software already knew Pazhitnov and Vladimir Pokhilko, who was a professor of psychology at Moscow State University before joining the development of computer games. Rogers made a favorable impression on his interlocutors and signed a contract under which his company could develop versions of Tetris for handheld devices at that time. After that, he proudly showed his new partners a version of "Tetris" for Famicom.

Rogers was trying to explain the nature of his relationship with Spectrum Holobyte, Mirrorsoft and Tengen, Atari Games' console development department. He had to purchase the rights for his Japanese "Tetris" also from Tengen. And it, in turn, having a license to develop software for the Nintendo Entertainment System, made a special chip that allowed them to bypass the security mechanisms of Nintendo and create cartridges for that gaming system for companies that were not licensed by Nintendo. The controversy between Nintendo and Atari (with Atari Games and Tengen) was so vigorous that almost no one doubted the long litigation of these companies. The proceedings between Nintendo and Atari continued until 1993.

Kevin Maxwell arrived to Elektronorgtekhnika and there he was shown a cartridge with Tetris for Famicom. Being completely unaware of the actions of the company founded by his father, Kevin initially refused to trust his interlocutors. Even though the cartridge clearly showed the inscription - Mirrorsoft.

Maxwell Jr. had no choice but to say that it probably was fake.

As a result, by the beginning of 1989, up to half a dozen different companies had claimed the rights to the Tetris version for various computers, game consoles and handheld gaming systems. ELORG stated that those companies did not have any rights to the slot machine versions, and granted those rights to Atari. The rights to the version for game consoles (video consoles) and portable gaming systems, in fierce and dramatic competition with Atari (which could have involved the highest officials of the Soviet state) - Nintendo company. The deal with Nintendo cost up to 450,000 US dollars, plus 50 cents of each sold cartridge.

Tengen (Atari's game console software department) released its version of the game for the Nintendo NES console, ignoring the agreement, and many players considered Tengen better than Nintendo. The game was called TETЯIS. But Nintendo sued Tengen and won. The game had to be dropped just a few months after the release, after the sale of about 50 thousand copies.

In March 1989, Rogers returned to Moscow, followed by Arakawa and Howard Lincoln, a chief executive of Nintendo. Electronorgtekhnika assured them that if the topic of "Tetris" was in litigation between Atari and Nintendo, then Nintendo could count on "Moscow's help." The meeting ended with the signing of a contract, the amount of which was estimated from 3 to 5 million dollars by various sources.

Nintendo officially notified Atari Games that it had no rights to legally release Tetris for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Only two weeks later, Tengen applied for copyright of the product.

Robert Maxwell was furious - the positions of Mirrorsoft and Atari urgently needed to be strengthened. Trying to change the situation, he used the resources of his empire, which included the newspaper concern Mirror Newspaper Group (in England) and Macmillan (in the US). Maxwell's connections were extensive - no wonder he was called "probably not only a Soviet agent" at the time. The governments of Great Britain and the USSR entered a dialogue with the mogul. From Moscow, Maxwell was assured that he "does not need to worry about the Japanese company." The message was sent personally by Mikhail Gorbachev. But on Rogers' side were Pazhitnov, as well as generous promises from Nintendo. After 4 days of negotiations, they finally agreed. An agreement was signed, and Pazhitnov and Rogers celebrated it in the only Japanese restaurant in Moscow.

Howard Lincoln arrived in Moscow once again and was convinced that Elektronorgtekhnika did not want to give in to the authorities. "Tetris" for Tengen's Nintendo Entertainment System was going to be released in May, and more and more people were starting to play it. The Nintendo versus Tengen and Atari Games hearings began in June. On June 15th, Judge Fern Smith ruled in favor of Nintendo - Tengen banned the production and sale of Tetris. A little more time passed, and Nintendo introduced the Game Boy, which came with Tetris.

Nintendo made very good profits from the sale of the game, but Alexei Pazhitnov himself was able to use the fruits of his brainchild only in 1996, when the original license expired, and he began to receive the first (very small) deductions from sales.

In 1996, he and Henk Rogers formed The Tetris Company LLC and Blue Planet Software in an attempt to profit from the Tetris brand. The Tetris Company LLC (TTC) has registered the word Tetris as a trademark. Since then, several companies have purchased a trademark license from TTC, but the legality of tetromino games that do not use the Tetris name has not been challenged in court. Under US law, the game cannot be copyrighted (only patented), so the company's main asset is the Tetris trademark. Despite this, TTC haunts clones of the game under names unlike Tetris. In May 2010, a TTC lawyer sent a letter to Google demanding that all 35 clones of the game be removed from the Android Market, although their names are not similar to the name "Tetris".

In 1996, Alexei Pazhitnov got a job at Microsoft, where under his leadership a set of Pandora’s Box puzzles was released. After that Alexei Pazhitnov was not directly involved in programming, he worked in the Microsoft department as a developer of computer games from 1996 to 2005.

However, on the 29th of June, 2010, in an interview with journalists from one of the gaming portals, Alexei Pazhitnov said that for the past ten years he had been working on a multiplayer mode for his creation. But the most interesting thing was that he had not finished by then.

He said the main problem was the dynamism of Tetris. In the last levels, all your attention was focused on the game, any careless movement and you lost. So you just didn’t have time to watch what other gamers were doing.

Music

The most famous melody associated in the West with "Tetris" is the Russian song "Korobeiniki". Many western music groups and performers remixed and arranged their melodies, insisting that the melody was from the famous "Tetris". Although there are many DJs who had remixed the melody, denoting "tetris remix", but did not publish them in albums.

In some versions one of the melodies is "Kalinka" by Ivan Larionov.

Theoretical problems

Usually the player lost because he couldn't handle the fast pace of the game, or because the implementation responded to the keys too slowly compared to the accelerating pace of the falling pieces, as a result of which the player could no longer apply enough shifts to a figure.

There was an article, the author of which proved that even if a player reacted instantly and always made the right decisions, he would eventually lose. The problem was S- and Z-shaped figures. A large enough number of S-pieces will cause the player to leave a hole in the lower right corner. A large enough number of Z-figures will then cause the player to leave a hole in the left corner of the next row without filling the previous hole. If after that enough S-figures fall out again, enough Z-figures, and so many times, the whole field will be filled (with holes at the edges), and there would be no room left for the next figure. If the random number generator is perfect and gives a discrete uniform distribution, any (including such) combination would sooner or later fall out.

However, the average time after which such a combination would fall was huge and exceeded the time of existence of the universe. However, it is possible that there was some other, more difficult to prove reason, for which the ideal player should have lost much earlier than the specified upper limit.

Some tasks that occurred to the player during the game were NP-complete.

From the author of this project

It happened that I am a programmer and most of the time I do boring and monotonous work, but one day I wanted to make my own Tetris, which would work in a browser. While being a student, I wrote my Tetris in turbo pascal (in the best tradition) with the only desire to impress teachers. I don't know if I managed to surprise anyone, but my first Tetris worked quite well on the 286s and it was nice. I had to optimize the program quite a lot, it worked in text mode.

Then, a couple of years later, I ported my first Tetris to Borland Delphi, and it worked with windows and in graphical mode, but I got bored quickly and gave up.

And after 5-7 years, when I worked in a large outsourcing office, I wanted to do Tetris again, but more professionally. I studied the question quite thoroughly, read various articles about the game itself, interviews with Pazhitnov, I looked at the code of almost all, more or less normal Tetris from gitHub. A couple of days later, the first prototype was ready. I wanted to combine all the best practices of recent decades in my Tetris and not become a game from the appStore.

It turned out that there is a set of Tetris Guideline rules that a good Tetris must follow. I studied this guideline quite thoroughly and as a result developed a set of requirements for the future game. In general, I have covered all the mandatory and almost all recommended requirements of the Tetris Guideline specification.

Lately, I've been thinking more and more about legal issues and software licensing, I wanted not only to have nice music in the game, but it had to be legal and original. Fortunately, my friends helped me with the design, music and sounds, and I am very thankful to them.

Hosting and deployment were quite easy to me. I managed to cross my existing infrastructure from one provider with various services that allowed me to conduct a full cycle of development and support of the resource remotely and distributed.

Things are way worse with promotion and optimization. For the start, I bought ads on adWords and Yandex, but I quickly ran out of money, and the effect was really tiny. Then I abandoned the project for about six months, attendance decreased and was low. But recently I noticed that the attendance jumped well and I decided to take up the project again, to make some edits on fresh ideas.

At this moment, my Tetris is exactly what I wanted it to be for 90 percent. Technologically, it has not suited me for a long time, but to raise new infrastructure and rewrite the scratch is not possible yet (wife, children, work). However, small but pleasant improvements may appear. The new design is already there and it is well optimized for various devices, but it is not practical to pull it on the current engine.

About money

This project did not bring me any money at all, that was not planned. The design and music were made by friends for zero money. It would be nice to place a donate button, but now the attendance is so low that it makes little sense. If you read these lines I'm very surprised, I wrote this more for myself and for robots.

I hope you enjoyed this game. When creating it, I hoped for your interest.

Update from November 2019.

The situation with Tetris has changed a bit, I noticed that the attendance started to grow well without my direct participation, but first thing’s first.

In July 2018, I noticed that the attendance was about 15-20 visitors a day, and then suddenly it jumped to a hundred. It made me look at the project anew, I lost my mind and with new strength closed several serious problems with optimizing the site for search engines, disabled the user language detection mechanism, added a blacklist of users in its simplest form. I can say, I bounced back the site for search engines and users, finished in the beginning of August, 2018.

By the end of the 18th year, problems with the display of the table of results of the players began to appear, the records increased so hard that they beat the front. I had to rewrite everything related to the database, including the backend. Colleagues helped with sql requests, it was quick and convenient, there was already a normal black list with sending notifications to the mail and a ban on the link from the letter. By mid-February 2019, everything worked on the new database, the data was completely transferred without loss.

I began to develop a system for validating the results, spent several weeks considering the approach to this task and came up with it. At the same time I bought the tetris.su domain and forked the project there. Fork had been cleaned up and started running the validation system on it, but the interest somehow faded.

By the end of 2019, a person found me and was ready to buy the whole project for good money, I refused.

Attendance continued to grow and again the problem with the table of results got out, even the optimized list of results now occupies 2.1Mb and contains 11000 records, not too much, but it is already noticeable that loading became longer. And still loading on a DB causes problems at the hoster, it is necessary to do something in the near future or I will be banned.

At the moment, the positions in Yandex are very good, not very much in Google yet, but the traffic is growing, now about 1000 users a day.

I am already interested in advertising, but still afraid to scare my loyal audience. We have to complete points validation, make a good base, reset the results and then advertise.