History of Tetris
During my school days, I discovered Tetris while walking in a Tawau street in Sabah. A guy was selling some hand held games. Pretty fascinating game. Where multiple shaped blocks will fall and you are supposed to make a straight horizontal line in order to reduce the height. I looked turned the toy and read the back label. ‘Made in China’. I bought the stuff.
My second encounter was in an entertainment outlet. You know the shop where you can play ‘street fighter’, ‘donkey kong’, ’1945′ and so on. Tetris has this Russian music as it’s background music. Check out this one. It’s not the original but it’s a dance version of it.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Tetris was invented by this dude by the name of Alexey Pajitnov in 1985. Some folks here may not even been born yet. He created it for fun at the Moscow Academy of Sciences’ Computer Center. It was just for entertainment for himself and shared with the rest of his friends at the academy. It turned out to be a phenomenal game. He never benefited from the success of his creation until 10 years later.
Do you know the word Tetris came from the word “tetraminos”, the simple geometric shapes formed by four adjacent squares? So now you know.
By the way, here’s a version of Tetris. Human Tetris that is. Here’s the link.
Ad: Some senior living in old folks home sure digs their Tetris Game Boy!
i was a tetris expert donkey years ago. whenever i play at one of the arcades in KK, there will be many people watching me play. sometimes the score will be back to zero!
Ben- Wah. Didn’t know that it can go back to zero. You must be a speed king man!
I think after the score reaches the max i.e. 999,999 or sth like that it doesnt know what to do, so it goes back to zero.