#Spectrum holobyte tetris for iphone software
#Spectrum holobyte tetris for iphone license

The owner of the British company Andromeda Software, Robert Stein, a Hungarian-born Brit, happened to be at the Institute at the time. The game was transferred to Commodore and Apple-2 computers. Tetris first appeared in Hungary where it was taken up by the staff of the local Institute of Energy Studies in 1986. True, the Centre did not evince any interest. Officially, the rights to the program belonged to the Academy of Sciences Computer Centre.

Legend has it that within two weeks, Tetris became a best seller among the then-small community of Moscow programmers. Foreign rights to Tetris are the subject of a very complicated story.

#Spectrum holobyte tetris for iphone software

The right to sell the game in the US was contested by the companies Spectrum Holobyte, Bullet-Proof Software and Atari Games, Famicom and others. The game quickly became popular among Muscovites before spreading to other countries in the Soviet camp and eventually caught the eye of Americans in Hungary. Later a 16-year-old Soviet schoolboy, Vadim Gerasimov, ported the game from Elektronika-60 to an IBM PC. Tetris thus became a pastime that had grown out of a scientific experiment. During the course of many experiments, it occurred to Pazhitnov that the figures could be put together by a human and when they form themselves into a figure, the figure disappears and the game starts all over again. Pazhitnov “simplified” the game because the computers of the time were not powerful enough to handle the classical Penatmino game. Tetris is a truncated digital version of the Pentamino game popular in the Soviet era, in which all the figures consisted of five squares. The Soviet computer of the time failed the test. Tetris was intended not as a game, but a program demonstrating the potential of the computer intellect: The computer is so smart that it can even put building cubes together. At the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the 29-year-old Pazhitnov studied artificial intelligence and created speech recognition programs. In fact they are practically unknown.Ĭould a Soviet programmer imagine in 1984 that his brainchild would conquer the world? Certainly not. He attributes the success of Tetris to the fact that “it is easy to learn, but hard to master.” He says the game is successful because it is the player’s task “to build, to create, and not to destroy,” making it a “feel-good game.” Pazhitnov’s other games, including “Pandora’s Box” and “Hexic” are less popular. Tetris is one of the best children’s games that develop the mind,” he says. He wrote the game on the Elektronika-60 computer: “I tried to transfer the table games I used to play as a child to the computer. His aim was to test the potential of Soviet computers. Pazhitnov himself insists that he did not invent Tetris as entertainment.

Interestingly, Alexei Pazhitnov still receives royalties from Rogers for selling his game. The US Tetris championship will be held this year, he promises. Yet Rogers is sure that the game still has untapped potential: He plans to include Tetris in the Olympic Games.

#Spectrum holobyte tetris for iphone license

The Tetris license is currently owned by the company Electronic Arts, but the licensed copies of the game sold for PCs, smart phones and pocket consoles do not begin to give an idea of the real number of pirated copies sold. It may be hard to believe, but Tetris is among the ten most popular games for the iPhone according to purchases in the AppStore. Since then, 120 million official copies of the game have been sold. The Cold War was at its height, but it did not prevent Hank Rogers, an enterprising American businessman and owner of BulletProof Software, from buying the rights to the Russian game. Tetris was invented by a Soviet programmer, Alexei Pazhitnov, who was working at the Academy of Sciences at the time when he developed the game. What makes Tetris unique is that it is still a popular pastime in spite of the plethora of digital entertainments that have appeared since its creation. “Born in 1984, it instantly changed the world and become a classic puzzle,” said Reuters.