The Legacy of Alexey Pajitnov
While visiting Aeriesstars for her wedding shower up in Rochester, we were treated to several hours of "Tetris Worlds" on the XBox. We all sat transfixed, each racing to complete the level we were on before the other players completed theirs. Smartly, the game only advanced the winner to the next level, but you all continued playing. In essence, you were competing against yourself, but it's fun to play together since only the first player to finish will advance.
In order to understand my appreciation for this game, you have to know that I'm no stranger to multiplayer Tetris. Years ago, my friends from back home and I squeezed 4 of us in front of a single PC keyboard, each reaching an arm in to claim our keys and battle it out in tristix. Later, my college buddies and I transformed the 3 PCs of the Wagnerian Newspaper office into tetrinet terminals, and dueled online, shouting late night obscenities back and forth as we sent weapons like "block bombs" back and forth at each other.
While both of these iterations were fun diversions, playing via the keyboard isn't quite as satisfying as utilizing the years of hand-eye training we all have with the NES gamepad and similar controllers. Tetris Worlds is available for all modern gaming consoles, so now you can play with the controller of your choosing, and the game is retailing for about $20, or cheaper if you find a used copy on ebay.
The update of the classic puzzle game is excellent not only for its brilliantly engineered multiplayer modes, but also for its subtle fixes for some of the great problems of the original. Dropping a piece in the wrong "column" is no longer as frequent, thanks to a "ghost" image of the piece you're about to slam down. The "hard drop" is also a part of the official game now, meaning that you can hit "up" to put the piece down in place instantly, or hit "down" to slide it down and then sideways if you choose. New game modes add extra fun to the game, and I recommend it to anyone who uses their gaming system to entertain. Everybody knows how to play Tetris, and of all the versions I've tried my hand at over the years, this is the best for casual gaming fun.
The game, which is officially licensed and written by Alexey Pajitnov, the original Russian creator of the game, also includes a 4 page long "History of Tetris." I had always wondered about the legality of the thousands of "clone" games and there's a apparently a long and sordid tale behind the mess. At the heart of it, the rights to the game were improperly licensed by a British company for years, and even when "Elorg" established official rights and licensed the game to Nintendo (and forced Tengen to pull it's arguably superior but unlicensed version) Alexey waited behind the Iron Curtain of Communism while the Russian government absorbed whatever profits he would have acquired.
Since then, the USSR has fallen, the venerable Mr Pajitnov has moved to Seattle and started working for Microsoft, and he still has yet to see the wealth creating the world's most popular video game should have garnered him. Surprisingly, Alexey himself says he's content to have created a piece of our culture. It's an interesting story and worth a read.
I wonder if there will be a movie or book deal some day. Imagine "Tetris: The Russian Puzzle" with Robin
Williams
as Alexey and Matt Damon as Vadim Gerasimov, his young hacker friend who ports it to the PC. Throw in Tom Hanks
as
the hard edge KGB agent who keeps them from getting their money while evil villain Mirrorsoft sells licenses
worldwide without owning them itself!
UPDATE: Wow - I just did some research, and it turns out the BBC just ran a documentary on all this. I'll have to try to get my hands on it! Anyone around here get BBCAmerica?
