Video game fans were thinking about celebrating the 40th anniversary of Tetris in 2025, but -whoops- some video game sites are celebrating that anniversary in 2024. What happened?
The commonly-known history of Tetris tells us that Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov invented Tetris in 1985. Or maybe that was the "release date." It's all very complicated because Pajitnov worked for the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and they forbade employees from playing Tetris because it affected their productivity. At the same time, Pajitnov worked for the government, which claimed copyrights for everything their employees came up with. Tetris spread organically instead of being hyped for sale because neither Pajitnov nor Soviet authorities knew what to do with the intellectual property of a video game. The truth is that Pajitnov worked on developing the game in 1984, and shared it with colleagues in 1985. So which is Tetris's "birthday"?
Damien McFerran and Jack Yarwood of Time Extension traced the date shift to 2009. That story that doesn't really clarify anything, but highlights the confusion of the early days of video games and the concept of intellectual property across different political systems.
Meanwhile, enjoy a video showing us what Tetris first looked like in 1984 on Alexey Pajitnov's Electronika 60, a handheld device made for scientific calculations, not video games. After the first few seconds, you'll want to turn the sound off.
From the vantage point of 40 years later, it seems way too difficult and annoying to enjoy, but in 1985, it was more fun than anything else those Soviet academics could be doing. -via Boing Boing
(Top image credit: Brandenads)
