Why Tetris is still captivating minds decades later

Tetris is a universally recognised game. Photo / Rapapawn, The New York Times

Tetris exploded in popularity after a race in the 1980s to secure global rights for the Soviet-made video game, a tale retold in a new movie. It is still captivating minds decades later.

Rotating a colourful shape before slotting it into the perfect position is such a satisfying experience that Tetris has joined chess in the pantheon of universally recognisable games.

Less familiar is the true story of how a prototype created in 1984 by a software engineer for the Soviet Union’s Academy of Sciences ended up reaching millions of players across the world. The movie Tetris, which stars Taron Egerton and was released on Apple TV+ on Friday, explores those humble beginnings.

The addictively simple puzzle game features seven uniquely shaped pieces, each composed of four square blocks. Players move, rotate and position the pieces to form solid lines, which are then cleared away, allowing for potentially endless play. The game’s name — derived from the words “tetra” (Greek for “four”) and “tennis” (the sport enjoyed by the game’s creator, Alexey Pajitnov) — has even pervaded culture as a verb, like when you “Tetris” your luggage into the overhead bin on a plane.

In an interview with The New York Times, Pajitnov described Tetris as “the game which appeals to everyone” and said he hoped that its future included esports and the integration of artificial intelligence. He is also working on making “a very good” two-player version of the game but said “we are not there yet.”

Before Tetris was able to cement itself as a household name with releases on consoles like the Nintendo Game Boy, Henk Rogers, the character played by Egerton, had to journey to the Soviet Union and fend off competitors to secure the game’s rights. As the film shows, that was an arduous task that paid off immensely.

Here are more details about the game’s creation and why it has resonated with so many for so long:

The Nintendo Game Boy

In the nearly four decades since Pajitnov created Tetris using the Pascal programming language on the Electronika 60, a Soviet-made computer, more than 215 officially recognised versions of Tetris have been released.

Perhaps the most notable variant is the one that was packaged with each copy of the Nintendo Game Boy when the hand-held gaming console was released in 1989. But that incredibly successful pairing — the Game Boy and the Game Boy Color have combined for about 120 million unit sales — almost didn’t happen.

The president of Nintendo of America, Minoru Arakawa, initially wanted to bundle Super Mario Land with the Game Boy, following the company’s success packaging Super Mario Bros. with the Nintendo Entertainment System. Rogers, however, was able to convince Arakawa that Tetris should be included instead, in part because it would appeal to a broader group of demographics.

Pajitnov described the partnership as “two creatures created for each other: Game Boy for Tetris and Tetris for the Game Boy.”

The Tetris effect

As anybody who has spent hours playing Tetris knows, it is an incredibly addictive game. Many people who play for extended periods of time have reported seeing Tetris pieces outside of the game, such as in their mind when they close their eyes, or in their dreams. It’s a phenomenon known as the Tetris Effect.

You may have experienced the Tetris Effect yourself if you’ve ever seen tetrominoes, officially known as Tetriminos, when you’re trying to bag your groceries.

In professional studies, psychologist Richard Haier found that regularly playing Tetris resulted in an increased thickness of the cerebral cortex. Haier’s studies also demonstrated how Tetris can affect the plasticity of cortical grey matter, potentially enhancing a person’s memory capacity and promoting motor and cognitive development.

A study in 2017 by researchers at Oxford University and the Karolinska Institutet showed that Tetris had the potential to provide relief for people with post-traumatic stress disorder, if they played the game after an incident while recalling a stressful memory.

The quest for perfection

Decades after it was invented, Tetris continues to have staying power. Newer versions of the game include Tetris Effect, which builds a Zen experience via music, and Tetris 99, in which players try to outlast opponents who are meddling with their boards.

In competitive play, new methods of moving the pieces are still being discovered. The standard way to play the Nintendo Entertainment System version of Tetris — yes, the game first released in 1989 is still used at the Classic Tetris World Championships — is by holding the grey rectangular controller so that the left hand controls the movement of the pieces, and the right hand manages the rotation. But that method, known as “delayed auto shift” in the competitive community, has been usurped in recent years by “hypertapping” and “rolling.”

Hypertapping involves rapidly pressing the buttons, countering the traditional sensation that pieces are slowly being dragged into position. Rolling lets pieces be moved even more quickly, by flicking the fingers of one hand along the back of the controller.

The power of hypertapping became clear in 2018, when a 16-year-old named Joseph Saelee used the method to defeat Jonas Neubauer, a seven-time world champion. But in the years since, the rolling method has dominated the competitive scene. Not only is it incredibly effective, but it seems to be less strenuous on fingers and hands.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Morgan Shaver

Photographs by: Rapapawn

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