There are some games that are suitable for all ages, up to 99, down to just walking, will be addicted.
For example, match-3: "Happy Dissipation", "Bingo Dissipation";
For example, Zuma category: "Happy Zuma", "Zuma Bubble Dragon";
Another example is the continuous viewing category: "Fruits and Vegetables Continuous Watch", "Mahjong Continuous Watch";
However, the originator of all these elimination games is actually Tetris, "Tetris"
With its simple rules and mathematical and dynamic combinations, it has become one of the most popular games of all time.
To this day, Tetris transcends times and borders, and men, women and children know it.
He even began research involving intellectual enhancement and cure of PTSD, and was involved in health programs at the Center for Smoking and Alcohol Management.
Not only that, on August 8, 2010, the Classic Tetris World Championship was held in Los Angeles, which has been continuously carried out for more than ten years.
Since 2015, Copenhagen has also hosted the classic Tetris European Championship every year.
On February 14, 2019, Nintendo also released a free new title called Tetris 99
Up to 99 people can be online PK battle royale, and it is a mess again.
The normal game speed is like this ⬇️
Where did this game come from?
And how did it get to where it is today?
Apple TV+ launches a thriller, Tetris
Classified as a "thriller", it is clearly based on the social and political context of the Soviet Union in the late 80s.
There is some exaggeration, but this does not affect the look and feel of the movie.
The movie revolves around the game "Tetris", a thrilling copyright war.
The story is smooth and the graphics are both eerie and cute.
It also incorporates elements of game pixels, presenting a simple, direct, intimate and savage beauty.
IMDb rating 7.4, Rotten Tomatoes popcorn 91%
Although the score is decent, I personally recommend it, and there are many interesting details to dig into.
01
Although the true story is not as exaggerated and unleashed as in the movie, it can also be said to be a thrilling "war without gunsmoke".
June 6, 1984, Computer Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Artificial intelligence researcher Alexei Pakitnov, after six days of "fishing in troubled waters", wrote the initial code of the mini-game.
Because all shapes are made up of four small squares, the game takes its name Tetris
Taken from the Greek number "four" prefix "tetra-" + Pakitnov's favorite sport tennis "tennis".
At the age of 17, Pakitnov became obsessed with computers at a Soviet technology exhibition.
Thanks to his own efforts, he was successfully admitted to the Moscow Aviation Institute and received a master's degree in applied mathematics.
In the early 1980s, he began writing riddles, puzzles, and board games.
Until now, Pakitnov worked on the design and rules of various mini-games.
"Putting together the messy pieces in some orderly way gives a good feeling." This is his own assessment of "Tetris".
Tetris certainly doesn't come out of nowhere, it's based on a five-panel domino game.
Five dominoes is a building block game invented by British mathematicians in 1907.
There are 12 dominoes in the game, each connected by five congruent squares.
The player must find a way to put these dominoes together into a rectangle.
On the basis of this idea, Pakitnov chose four dominoes, consisting of 7 patterns, and began to experiment with programming.
However, there was a problem, the computer used for testing did not have a graphics drawing unit.
It can only display text, not patterns, let alone colors.
Therefore, Pakitnov used the exclamation point and the greater than less than sign as the frame, and the dots as each line of grids.
A pair of brackets serve as a small square that makes up the pattern, making the basic UI
His friends ported this version to IBM computers, had the first color version, and quickly became popular.
Tetris is amazing.
To do this, you can make any attempt and memorize them skillfully in your mind.
This is also why many masters can perform various divine operations.
Save the seemingly defeated defeat.
And what is even more magical is its elimination setting.
The initial version was to eliminate the bottom layer, and later changed to eliminate arbitrary rows.
When combined with an extremely comfortable and refreshing "line reduction sound effect", it can make people instantly addicted and unable to extricate themselves.
Of course, the earliest popular version is very "rudimentary", but it is enough to form a trend of "virality".
Colleagues fell first, and the mini-game was easy to copy, so it was spread ten, ten, hundred, hundred, thousand.
According to Pakitnov himself: "Within two weeks, every computer in Moscow was equipped with Tetris. ”
It's just a step away from it going global.
02
In July 1986, visiting scholars in Hungary also had the right to experience this little game by copying.
They were then ported to the Apple II and Commodore 64.
Immediately afterwards, Tetris quickly occupied Europe and was unstoppable.
At the same time, it caught the attention of Robert Stein, the owner of British game company Andromeda Software.
He realized right away that copyright issues were going to be a big deal.
So Pakitnov was contacted directly and acquired the rights to Tetris.
Robert Stein obviously just wanted to make a copyright difference and was not good at developing games.
He sold the rights to Mirrorsoft in the UK and sister company Spectrum Holobyte in the US.
For the first time, the two companies released the game as a commodity.
Spectrum HoloByte was released in red packaging to show the mystery of the Soviet Union.
The title of the game is the Russian word Тетрис.
The Mirrorsoft version shows the Church of St. Basil in Moscow in the title screen, with the pseudo-Cyrillic word Tetяis.
In order to obtain more benefits, Mirrorsoft sold the copyright of the pick-up and handheld to Atari
Atari was originally an American arcade game company, and everyone should be familiar with it.
Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man ⬆️
The final playthrough game that appears in the Ready Player One film is a tribute to Atari's classic video game Magical Adventure.
In addition, Jobs also worked at Atari.
Tengen, a subsidiary of Atari Games in the United States, publishes computer and console games.
Big companies like Atari will definitely develop games.
But after they finished developing, they sold it to two companies: Sega and BPS
At this time, the Atari version of Tetris was already very popular.
But this also comes the problem, because from beginning to end, this copyright contract is only computer copyright.
Console, arcade, handheld, are not considered computer versions.
The above content may be more circuitous, and the copyright of Tetris is too complicated.
Major companies are fighting for it, doing pirated copies and selling copyrights at the same time.
The copyright of the home machine version, the personal computer version, the arcade version, and various versions are pulled back and forth by major companies.
Some of these companies have been bought, or some have long since gone bankrupt.
But don't worry, everything will end in the hands of Nintendo, the "master of the world".
Because they have an ultra-luxurious "lawyer group".
In addition, as of this time, as a game creator, Pakitnov has not made a fortune on copyright.
At that time, the Soviet Union was still a planned economy, and there was no concept of self-employed and private companies.
From the beginning of the game-making process, the device did not belong to the personal personal computer, but to the government's public computer.
The USSR Academy of Sciences was a state institution of the USSR, and the wealth it created belonged to the state, so the government took the copyright to itself.
Before we talk about Nintendo and ELORG, let's come to the time period for today's movies - 1988.
03
In 1988, the standard of living of the Soviet people fell sharply, and the whole society entered the last period of stability.
For ordinary people, some social problems and resource problems can be clearly felt.
But life still has to go on as usual.
Even at the end of the Cold War, in some old photographs, the degree of development and sophistication of the Soviet Union is visible to the naked eye.
But in the Tetris films, Moscow has always had a dim filter.
The miasma was smoky and missing, and I read it carefully again when I wrote the article.
From beginning to end, the sun in Moscow was never clear.
It feels cold and damp, the sense of oppression is strong, and the horror elements all come from it.
But that's not the whole tone of the movie, the United States on the other side of the world, the sun is shining and the birds are singing.
Everything here is bright, and the saturation of the picture is not a star and a half.
The first to appear was Henk Rogers, the founder of BPS (Bulletproof Software Company).
Portrayed by Taron Edgerton (Ace Agent: Agent Academy).
He is a charismatic, indomitable and shrewd businessman, and Edgerton single-handedly supports almost the entire film.
At this time, Rogers was traveling the world looking for a game to release in the Japanese market.
At a sales show in the United States, he stumbled upon Tetris and tried it out for a while.
As a Dutch-born, U.S.-educated and Japanese video game professional, Rogers immediately saw a huge business opportunity.
He signed a contract to sell Tetris in the Japanese market.
But Henk Rogers knew that a small BPS (bulletproof software company) couldn't make the game bigger.
So, he set his sights on Nintendo.
Nintendo thought Rogers was going to sell the rights to the game in Japan.
But his ambitions go far beyond that, and he wants to publish the game himself and work with Nintendo's console.
Become the designated publisher of this best-selling game.
He took a desperate loan from the bank,
Mortgaged the property and everything.
He needed $3 million, $2 million to make cartridges for consoles, and $1 million to make arcades.
“Nintendo, is the license to print money. ”
This phrase is still relevant today.
But we all know that the copyright that Rogers got in his hands is not legal and compliant.
Go back to the original contract itself.
Robert Stein eventually acquired the rights to Tetris on the IBM-PC and its compatible machines, including "any other computer system."
This "any other computer system" is described in the original text as "any other computer system."
This argument also seemed lax at the time, thus laying the groundwork for the subsequent dispute over property rights.
In October 1988, as the game became more and more popular around the world.
Elorg was the first contract with Robert Stein that began to review the All-Union Federation of Electronic Equipment of the USSR and saw the trick.
But Stein still peddles all kinds of copyright contracts everywhere.
Rogers also approached him because Nintendo was designing a handheld and it wasn't enough to get the rights to the FC.
After 1987, NEC and Sega entered the field of TV games in a big way, posing a serious threat to Nintendo.
At this time, Nintendo CEO Yamauchi Pu was very worried about the product being too simple.
As a result, an epoch-making "work of art" - Game Boy came into being.
Stein lied that he could also sell the rights to the handheld, but until then, he had no idea what it was.
So he had to sneak to Moscow to try to get a new contract.
And the keen Rogers also found this strange and also set off for Moscow.
At the same time, Mirrorsoft, the first copyright winner sold by Stein, also sent Kevin Maxwell to Moscow.
In this way, the three people and horses arrived at the icy red city almost at the same time.
The parts of the film about KGB are all made up, and these plots add to the tension and excitement of the story.
There's even a thrilling Hollywood-style car chase.
Negotiation Results:
Rogers signed the copyright of the handheld on behalf of BPS;
Stein acquired the development rights for the arcade version;
Kevin Maxwell returned empty-handed.
ELORG retains the rights to the home machine and does not sell it to anyone.
But Henk Rogers did not give up, and after a month, he returned to Moscow.
And on behalf of Nintendo, he invested heavily in the acquisition of the copyright of the home console version of Tetris.
The copyright fee was not subsequently disclosed to the outside world, and it is said that the deposit is 300~5 million US dollars.
This number may never be available to other companies.
On the evening of March 22, 1989, Nintendo and BPS leaders held a celebratory party in the Moscow Hotel
So, there are not as many intrigues and dangers as seen in the movie.
We may have forgotten about the game's founders.
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and the Soviet government, which profited from the game, was torn apart.
That same year, with the help of Rogers, Pakitnov, the "father of Tetris," immigrated with his family to the United States, where he founded his own company.
Therefore, although the movie is deliberately made into a cool film, reality can also be said to have a relatively "cool" ending.
In 1995, the Russian government returned the copyright to Tetris to Pakitnov.
Eleven years after the game's release, he finally received his first royalty income.
(Although before this, the Soviet government also issued him a 286 computer and a house)
Later, he also helped Microsoft develop software and mini games.
I bought a Tesla Model S a few years ago and applied for a Tetris license plate number.
If the movie is not enjoyable, there is also a documentary about Tetris.
The Story of Tetris Gaming Historian）
You can also search for it yourself~