When did Pajitnov first create Tetris?

[caffeine]

Almost all sources on the net point to June 1985 or around 1985. My bet is that atarihq.com's article on the history of Tetris (http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/special/tetrishist.html) is the origin. That article has been around for a long time. Other sources like BBC's documentary says spring of 1985. I'll have to see what Game Over says later, but I don't have access to that book right this moment.

Anyway, the reason why I bring this up is because I always thought it was weird that tetris.com's timeline puts Tetris's birth date in 1984. I didn't think much of it until just yesterday I was reading an interview with Henk Rogers (http://www.khnl.com/Global/story.asp?S=10302666) which states "Rogers is planning something special for Tetris' 25th anniversary later this year." Later this year is 2009, and 2009 minus 25 is 1984. Did BBC mean spring of 1984? Have we all been getting it wrong all these years? What do you guys think? Any leads?

[Needle]

Why not fire off a question email and hear it from the horse's mouth? Shouldn't hurt to ask...

[EnFuego]

A reasonable explanation would be that tetris was made/started in 1984 and then release in june of 1985. Basing off the interview I would think that the author would say something like "next month" instead of "later this year" since june is only a month away.

Kinda off topic but I am interested to hear more about "The Tetris Cup" he mentions. I searched for it and only found an article on how they had a Tetris Cup at the university of Hawaii (here) http://media.www.kaleo.org/media/storag ... 3338.shtml (http://media.www.kaleo.org/media/storage/paper872/news/2007/11/21/MixedPlate/Tetris.Cup.Final.Brings.Gamers.Together.In.The.Spi rit.Of.Competition-3113338.shtml)
other than that nothing

[colour_thief]

I've wondered about this as well. I don't have an answer but I can say that:

atarihq.com's article on the history of Tetris (http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/special/tetrishist.html)

This is a poorly written plagiarised version of the Game Over book. So it's a tertiary source, and you can safely ignore it.

[jujube]

from Vadim Gerasimov's web site (http://vadim.oversigma.com/Tetris.htm):

Tetris is a popular game developed in 1985-86 by Alexey Pajitnov (Pazhitnov), Dmitry Pavlovsky, and me.
this doesn't imply that the original idea didn't come before that. it only means that this is the time period in which the three were working together on it. but reading further...

A few months after we started working together, Pajitnov came up with the Tetris idea.
ok, so the idea came after Gerasimov started working with Pajitnov. therefore Gerasimov knows exactly when the game was originally conceived (1985).

Before we met [Pajitnov] had a computer game called Genetic Engineering. In that game the player had to move the 4-square pieces (tetramino) around the screen using cursor keys. The player could assemble various shapes. I don't remember the exact objective of that game, but it seemed rather dull.
is this what Pajitnov considers to be the beginning of tetris?

[colour_thief]

Before we met [Pajitnov] had a computer game called Genetic Engineering. In that game the player had to move the 4-square pieces (tetramino) around the screen using cursor keys. The player could assemble various shapes. I don't remember the exact objective of that game, but it seemed rather dull.
is this what Pajitnov considers to be the beginning of tetris?

I've always though that sounded like tangrams with tetrominoes. See also: Neves for DS.

[tepples]

Before we met [Pajitnov] had a computer game called Genetic Engineering. In that game the player had to move the 4-square pieces (tetramino) around the screen using cursor keys. The player could assemble various shapes. I don't remember the exact objective of that game, but it seemed rather dull.
is this what Pajitnov considers to be the beginning of tetris?
I've always though that sounded like tangrams with tetrominoes. See also: Neves for DS.
Or the puzzle mode in Lumines. Or the puzzle mode in Tetris Party.

[caffeine]

Okay, I asked kbr420 about it, and he says "summer of 1984." Happy 25th anniversary, Tetris.

[jujube]

i wish i was only 25...i turn 30 soon

[iphys]

It's in the news that the 25th anniversary is this week. I wonder if he even remembers the exact day he invented Tetris.

[colour_thief]

It's in the news that the 25th anniversary is this week. I wonder if he even remembers the exact day he invented Tetris.

Alexey Pajitnov was 29 and working for the Moscow Academy of Sciences when he completed "Tetris" on June 6, 1984, for a Soviet computer system called the Elektronika.

http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/2009/06/02/20090602ODDtetris-anniv0602-ON.html

[tepples]

From the article:
NEW YORK - With its scratches and sticky brown beer stains, the "Tetris" arcade machine near the back of a Brooklyn bar called Barcade has seen better days. Which makes sense, given that the machine was made in the 1980s.
Does any regular of this board live in the New York City area? If so, let's ask the bar owner if he wants to upgrade to Ti http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif

[TWF]

Zircean lives in NYC, but he's underage so he wouldn't really care about Ti in a bar.

[kbr420]

hi guys,

here's a little salute to Tetris that google is doing for the 25 years of Tetris. Currently, google.co.jp is the only region that updated it. It should hit N.A. shortly.

http://www.google.co.jp (http://www.google.co.jp/default.htm)

[m:)]

i wish i was only 25...i turn 30 soon


i wish i was only 30.... i turn 37 soon http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_sad.gifhttp://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_cry.gif

[iphys]

That Google image is awesome!

I just turned 32 on Saturday, so I guess I'm 7 years and 7 days older than Tetris. Hard to believe Tetris was created all the way back when I was in Grade 1.

[Caithness]

hi guys,

here's a little salute to Tetris that google is doing for the 25 years of Tetris. Currently, google.co.jp is the only region that updated it. It should hit N.A. shortly.

http://www.google.co.jp (http://www.google.co.jp/default.htm)

Wow, the Japanese Wikipedia article on Tetris is quite a bit longer than the English one.

Too bad we're not on the first page of Google results for "tetris", or we'd be getting a lot of new visitors tomorrow. As it stands, perhaps a few will come through Tetris Friends, which is currently number three.

[tepples]

It amuses me that The TetriSCO (http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1242077&cid=28057685)mpany hasn't finished sweeping Google's top ten results (http://www.google.com/search?q=tetris) for its own trademark. Result 2 (http://www.freetetris.org/default.htm) and result 8 (http://www.missoulian.com/bonus/games/tetris/tetris.html) are copies of old, pre-sell-out (http://www.tetrisconcept.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=34136#p34136) N-Blox.

In fact, counting Tetris.com (#1), Tetris Friends (#3), and Neave.com (#4), which have the post-sell-out version, fully half of the top ten results seen from a U.S. IP address link to N-Blox.

[caffeine]

"Wow, the Japanese Wikipedia article on Tetris is quite a bit longer than the English one."

Are you sure? The English article is 53.5 KB and the Japanese article is 50.8 KB.

[Lenna]

Kinda off topic but I am interested to hear more about "The Tetris Cup" he mentions. I searched for it and only found an article on how they had a Tetris Cup at the university of Hawaii (here) http://media.www.kaleo.org/media/storag ... 3338.shtml (http://media.www.kaleo.org/media/storage/paper872/news/2007/11/21/MixedPlate/Tetris.Cup.Final.Brings.Gamers.Together.In.The.Spi rit.Of.Competition-3113338.shtml)
other than that nothing

I can elaborate, since I participated in it. (Didn't make the bracket, though - mainly since I didn't realize it'd be better strategically to do all t-spins rather than go for a faster time chaining B2B tetrises)

The tournament consisted of two divisions, solo and team. In either case, qualification was necessary to "seed" the participants, and the sixteen highest scores (or team scores, which is basically adding each teammate's best score) were in the bracket. Teams consisted of four players each, though in the competition, only three players actually competed. Teams were allowed to swap players between matches. (Between games in a match, I'm not sure, but that might have been allowed too)

The Qualifier
Qualification ran for six days (non-consecutive), generally running around lunch time. (10am to 2pm if memory serves me right) On a qualification day, you would walk in, sign in (assuming you registered on the tournament website), and get one try to achieve a high score. Games were played on level 1, height 0, line clear mode. Restarting would effectively void your attempt for that day.

Scoring
Scoring consisted of two parts - your in-game score, and a 'time bonus'. When you started your round, they started a stopwatch to keep track of your time. (Tetris DS didn't have an in-game clock, so this was necessary) The time bonus effectively worked something like, they set an upper cap on time at around 2 minutes, 40 seconds. For each 10 seconds you finished under that cap, you was awarded 1,000 points. (Your time bonus is always a multiple of 1k)

This was added to your in-game score to get your 'qualifying score'. Your best score from any of the qualifier rounds determined your ranking.

Tournament Day
Top 16 people formed the bracket. First two rounds were single elimination - leaving a 'final four'. Each of the final four players played two games to determine first, second, and third rankings. Only top three people won for each division. Team division was played in the same way.

There was also a monitor hooked up to one of the DS's to show each player's in-game screen.

Prizes
Trying to recall...

Solo:
1st - $1,000 travel certificate
2nd - A big screen TV (42", i think)
3rd - iPod touch (or whatever the one that looks like an iPhone is)

Team:
1st - Four nintendo Wii consoles (one for each teammate)
2nd -
3rd -

(Yea, sorry, I forgot what 2nd and 3rd were. I think one of them was a $100 gift card to somewhere, but forget where, for each person)

Unfortunately, tetriscup.com (the site that was used at that time) is now defunct, so I kinda have to rely off of my memory to remember most of this.

[iphys]

Here's the archive for tetriscup.com:

http://web.archive.org/web/200710230553 ... index.html (http://web.archive.org/web/20071023055339/http_3A/www.tetriscup.com/index.html)

[Lenna]

Thanks for the link, iphys.

http://web.archive.org/web/200711232212 ... board.html (http://web.archive.org/web/20071123221220/http_3A/www.tetriscup.com/leaderboard.html) is the leaderboard, and high score is about 22.7k. One can get roughly that score from doing Z stacking.

If I knew what I know today back then, I might've made it into the bracket, but probably would've still gotten destroyed in the bracket. (I managed to play one of the top 16 one day on the bus for fun, and managed to nicely get my ass kicked every time. haha.)

[caffeine]

If I remember correctly, I think either Tyler or Remy said they just did straight tetrising instead of SZ stacking for the time bonus. I could be wrong.

[Caithness]

"Wow, the Japanese Wikipedia article on Tetris is quite a bit longer than the English one."

Are you sure? The English article is 53.5 KB and the Japanese article is 50.8 KB.

Well, I can't tell for certain of course, but I was estimating based on stuff like the length of the scroll bars, the number of sections in the summary, and the fact that Japanese is generally a more compact language than English.

[EnFuego]

Thanks for the link, iphys.

http://web.archive.org/web/200711232212 ... board.html (http://web.archive.org/web/20071123221220/http_3A/www.tetriscup.com/leaderboard.html) is the leaderboard, and high score is about 22.7k. One can get roughly that score from doing Z stacking.

If I knew what I know today back then, I might've made it into the bracket, but probably would've still gotten destroyed in the bracket. (I managed to play one of the top 16 one day on the bus for fun, and managed to nicely get my ass kicked every time. haha.)

Thanks for the info. I just tried it myself and score ~20k going for speed tetrises. I hope they do something like this near me

[z-flo]

If I remember correctly, I think either Tyler or Remy said they just did straight tetrising instead of SZ stacking for the time bonus. I could be wrong.
Long time no post.

To my recollection, I don't believe either of us had learned SZ stacking at that point. Midway through the qualifying period, Tyler realized that by using a certain setup to achieve two consecutive T-spin doubles from the start, and finishing with straight Tetrises, he could edge out the remainder of the competition. And so he did, while I amongst others chose to focus my energies strictly on forming the Tetrises.

When it came down to the finals, Tyler and I (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOzmyqL9XFI) had determined that while we were only in the beginning phase of learning T-spins (unless he was damn good at hiding it), based on the observed competition there was little to no need to use them against others. Suffice it to say I almost lost in the quarterfinals to a proficient T-spinner, and my opponent in the finals, Traci, was also decent (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jSGRXPmVxA).

[Chaos]

To clarify a few things...

I did use a setup where I first started off with two TSDs then from there went into straight tetrises to get the biggest possible time bonus....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssT6v6S9lYE this link will show you what I mean.

This is from a quick trial I just did, a score of roughly 197xx (19754 on my run) can be attained by st stacking (8 TSDs and 2 tetrises). So even without the time bonus, a score that would get a slot in top 16 would be attainable with that method. So if you could st stack and finish 25 lines in less than 2 minutes, you'd get enough of a time bonus to roughly match my score. Since my lack of experience with t-spins and any t-spin related strategy, I opted to try and push the limits of my small amount of knowledge with t-spins, and then rely more on speed to get a higher time bonus.