Tetris, hands down, shaped an entire generation of gamers, not to mention game designers. With over 200 versions of the game across four decades of arcades, consoles, PCs and touchscreen devices, Creator Alexey Pajitnov and Tetris Company President Henk Rogers are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the puzzle game with what feels like a world tour!
CGMagazine first celebrated Tetris’ 40th anniversary with Rogers and Pajitnov in Los Angeles this summer, and last week, we were able to sit down with the pair in an exclusive interview and see what makes them tick. With the Tetris film released last year and Tetris Forever coming on November 12th, Tetris is more relevant than ever. We wanted to ask the minds behind the game a bit about porting and recreating Tetris so many times and what it takes to keep the game fresh for four decades. Let me tell you, there were some surprising answers!
We were at the anniversary party with you both in LA in the summer. You’re celebrating this 40th anniversary first in the United States, and now we’re here in Italy at Lucca Comics & Games. What does it feel like to have created a game that requires an anniversary tour? You’re like the rock stars of gaming.
Henk Rogers: Well, he’s the rock star of gaming. I mean, he created the game. It’s amazing. For me, it feels like I discovered baseball. You know what I’m saying? So many sports must have existed back then that disappeared, and baseball is still here, and now it’s Major League or hockey, whatever you want to say. [laughs]
Alexey Pajitnov: I should admit I’m still wondering why not every game lives that long. The game is a psychological product, it’s not a program. The real game is about your focus, your attention, your concentration, your psychological kind of resilience and whatever. And if the game is good, it doesn’t matter if you play it on an iron or on a computer. So basically, it should survive for a long time, but somehow the industry works the other way. So basically, I’m very pleased that Tetris survived that long.
Us too! You’re talking about you should be able to play it on an iron.
Alexey Pajitnov: It is possible! As soon as irons have the voice control working, Tetris will be there, believe me.
I’ve played it on a Slurpee cup, so really…
Alexey Pajitnov: There we go!
We are on our ninth generation of consoles. Computers and phones have evolved so much. What’s it like to see your game meet all of those mediums along the way and not get stuck on the iron, as you would say?
Alexey Pajitnov: Yeah, it’s lucky for the game. It has very abstract content and it’s very easy to reproduce. It was reproduced in many big games, inside them. I was shown it even in Warcraft. They have a small macro, which reproduced Tetris in World of Warcraft. So yes, that’s the luck of this content.
“We made a Tetris Kinect for Burning Man. A Giant Tetris screen and people would move to try to play Tetris.”
Henk Rogers: That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that we work really hard to make sure that each time a new console or a new device or smartphone comes out, that we figure out how Tetris will work on that device. And that’s not an easy task. Some games just disappear because they don’t work on the new hardware. And we’ve kind of made sure that it still works.
And what about the journey of making sure Tetris can be controlled, even? We’ve gone from mouse and keyboard to controllers to on-screen commands. What were the struggles there?
Henk Rogers: Yeah, the struggle. The obvious thing that you try to do is you try to replicate the previous user interface. And so you could create virtual buttons on the screen and touch those buttons. The problem is when you go to push the button, the screen is very sensitive, so it’s not exactly sure exactly when you want to push the button. That means that you’re introducing some… How can I say?
Alexey Pajitnov: Reliability is an issue.
Henk Rogers: Yeah, so your action doesn’t necessarily become the action that you want. And so we worked hard in figuring out how to overcome that by sliding your finger, making it into a slide. And then you could pull a piece down and there’s a little piece down below that shows you where it would land. You know, all those things we added.
Alexey Pajitnov: Yeah, that was a big challenge with the touch screens. That probably was the biggest user interface challenge. Yeah. We didn’t meet it with this Xbox stuff.
Oh, the Kinect? I didn’t know Tetris was on the Kinect.
Henk Rogers: We made a Tetris Kinect for Burning Man. A Giant Tetris screen and people would move to try to play Tetris. And this device is called a Tetreon. You send it to another planet, and then some life forms are going to start moving, and the Tetreon tries to understand what he is trying to do, and if that life form managed to get the Tetreon to clear a line, we have discovered intelligent life.
Burning Man seems like a wild ride.
Henk Rogers: So the question is, why did we do this at Burning Man? To find out if there’s any intelligent life at Burning Man!
There you go.
Henk Rogers: There was!
That’s my new favourite story from Lucca Comics & Games, just so you know. We have Tetris Forever coming out. Have you had direct input on that, and what has been your favourite Tetris edition to date?
Alexey Pajitnov: Well, I have lots of questions asked because nobody knows the very early version, just me. And frankly, I started forgetting them, and there are some kinds of reproduction, so basically, I am helping as much as possible with the stuff and I find it very fascinating for people to find all this from the beginning.
Henk Rogers: Yeah, so I was involved in a lot of them peripherally, so they asked me to help with the writing, the descriptions of the different games, and what makes them different and all that. My favourite—it’s probably not in there—it’s Tetris: The Grand Master. It’s an arcade game in Japan. And you can go to YouTube and see somebody play Tetris at an unbelievable level. Yeah, and that’s sort of a hint as to what professional Tetris players will look like in the future when it goes into the Olympics.
Yes, gaming in the Olympics. I like it!
Tetris Forever releases on November 12, 2024, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X and Series S and includes more than 15 classic playable Tetris games.
