The Story of Tetris [video] | Hacker News Reader

The Story of Tetris [video]

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I watched this last night. Pretty well done. Another worth watching is Tetris - From Russia with Love that aired on BBC a few years ago and is on youtube: https://youtu.be/NhwNTo_Yr3k

Great documentary, I learned a lot.

If anyone wants to hear Alexey Pajitnov speak about Tetris, I can recommend this section of the Thumb Candy documentary (released in the early 2000s):

https://youtu.be/UAo4CZTGFQQ?t=40m37s

30 years later Tetris is still my most played game on my mobile. I got bored of Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, even GTA5. But after 10 consecutive years of continuous iphone Tetris playing it is still as addictive. This game is just genious.

I played the hell out of Tetris on the Nintendo DS, but I just can't play it on a touchscreen unfortunately - I do wish I could play it on the way to work, but you just can't get the speed and reliability you get with clicky buttons.

Fun fact: Tetris has been shown to help with mental burdens such as anxiety, PTSD, and intrusive thoughts, and anecdotally I have found this to be true.

Has Tetris been released for the Switch yet? I’d hope that they could support the digital inputs (like the D-pad).

Puyo Puyo Tetris is pretty decent. Some of the options (like endless mode) are a little hard to find. The story is weird but interesting.

and the Japanese Puyo Puyo Tetris might help us archive Switch games for the future, too...

I'm not familiar. Care to elaborate?

Kinda tongue in cheek as the dumping of Switch cartridges is very rudimentary and not at the level where say, redump.org would accept them.

There's a flaw in the Japanese Puyo Puyo that allowed unsigned code to run on firmware version 3 Switches.

The first thing the scene will try to do other than running Doom will be dumping cartridges. You may immediately jump to piracy, but dumping carts and especially title updates is really important for preserving games into the future, as game companies have proven again and again that they either don't care or don't have the resources for proper archival.

I am all for homebrew and archiving.

If you want a great way to play tetris on your way to work check out the Tetris MicroCard. Arduino based card that just plays tetris and is part of the larger Arduboy project.

Ohhhhhh this explains something that confused me at the time and that I never followed up on. My family had a Nintendo and rented a copy of Tetris, played it for a few days, liked it. Aside from the gameplay, I remembered that they had clear level breaks and interludes where tiny Russian figures danced on the screen. Not that long after, we bought our own copy, and that stuff was totally not there....

What is now clear, in retrospect, is that the one we rented was the Tengen version, and the one we bought was the Nintendo release! The year must have been 1989 just as this was all going down.

Sidenote: have a look at the eBay prices for Tengen Tetris vs Nintendo Tetris. Retro collecting is another world.

And you can play it here http://www.goodoldtetris.com

That version has neither sound nor colors, but at the same time does not look like the original shown in the documentary either. At least it's mobile friendly though.

Does anyone have an online version that is in color and has sound and is also mobile friendly?

There is an online version at https://tetris.com/play-tetris/, but I don't know if it's mobile-friendly. It's also ad-supported, so you'll need to turn ad blocking off.

As for other platforms, I suggest looking here: https://tetris.com/product-list-videogames

Why am I pointing to tetris.com? Because, those products benefit (either directly or indirectly) Tetris Holding and the Tetris Company, a co-owner of which is Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris.

It has sound for me...

I really enjoyed this and after it was over had no idea I had been watching it for an hour. This story could make a good movie in the vein of Pirates of Silicon Valley.

That said, the note at the end about how Vladimir Pokhilko ended up killing his wife, son, and himself was more dark than I expected. What a shame.

Not completely off-topic, a 6-minute video from 2010: Complete History Of The Soviet Union, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8

If written histories are more your thing, Jimmy Maher did a series on Tetris for his Digital Antiquarian blog: http://www.filfre.net/tag/tetris/

A shameful plug from 2001, while we are at it :)

Playable: https://archive.org/details/tetris_201801

Tetris for DOS, text-mode but with colors! :)

Love this guy's videos, recommend to check out his channel.

I too watched this the other day, but I still like Chrontendo's telling much more: https://youtu.be/Z0VKg_dJzzQ?t=29m48s

His entire series is very well done, but episodes have slowed down, especially after starting two more series, Chronsega and Chronturbo.

This documentary is great, I thought I knew the Tetris story, but this filled in every blank.

A related documentary, about the 2010 Classic Tetris World Championship:

http://watch.ecstasyoforder.com/

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