back to article Tetris Company celebrates classic game's 40th birthday

We hate to be the ones to break it to all you El Reg readers, but we're informed the classic video game Tetris is turning 40. Tetris, perhaps the Soviet Union's biggest-ever export, is celebrating four decades of dropping blocks on everything from personal computers to consoles big and small and modern smartphones.  This …

  1. b0llchit Silver badge
    Joke

    Trying to build a nice wall... Bricks in shapes are falling in place, almost managed to get to the top, rows vanishing in a spectacular splash!

    Damn, I'm never gonna get paid for building that wall.

    1. MyffyW Silver badge

      Let it go, Donald, let it go....

      1. milliemoo83
        Trollface

        Let it go....

        The migrants never bothered him anyway.. </Elsa>

  2. Oh Matron!

    The film....

    On AppleTV+ is pretty good and amusing. I'm sure there's artistic license involved, but it is very much watchable.

  3. Yankee Doodle Doofus Bronze badge

    Legend?

    > "The reason Tetris rows disappear? Legend has it it's due to the limited memory in the Electronika 60, which necessitated clearing the screen."

    Admittedly it's been a while, but only the completed rows disappear, right? Did the Electronika 60 have a monitor with infinite height? It seems like that would have been the more obvious limiting factor.

    1. cornetman Silver badge

      Re: Legend?

      I guess it is plausible that the original idea was that your scoring was based on the number of symbols that fall before you hit the top and that the destruction of complete rows that disappear and shunt everything down was a later innovation. Personally, I've no idea. I'm sure one of the mentioned documentaries would clear that up. I should go watch one.

    2. Bebu
      Windows

      Re: Legend?

      《> "The reason Tetris rows disappear? Legend has it it's due to the limited memory in the Electronika 60, which necessitated clearing the screen."

      Admittedly it's been a while, but only the completed rows disappear, right? Did the Electronika 60 have a monitor with infinite height? It seems like that would have been the more obvious limiting factor.》

      According the Electronika 60 wiki entry it had an address space (no separate D/I space) of 32K words (64Kb) but memory was (typically?) 4K words (8K bytes.) There was no on board video (so no memory mapped video) so presumably a serial (rs232) terminal was required. Given terminal capabilities varied massively (from minimal to ansii) you would need to store the current state of the display in ram which could run to 25×80 bytes (~2Kb) but better encodings would use fewer bytes but 8Kb less the OS/CCP/monitor still wouldn't leave a lot of memory to play with.

      Actually Tetris or a simplified version is still a decent programming exercise today.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is also worth a watch:

    https://youtu.be/jPyf5kIGoKA?si=GvGKcRbZTPI2PP-B

    Tetris world records!

    1. MrBanana

      It is insane how they play past/abuse the inherent limitations of the game, just the controller gymnastics must be killer for their hands. Once you get into the charcoal levels they might as well be burned at the stake for being witches.

  5. PB90210 Silver badge

    The side effect... dreaming of falling blocks!

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Devil

      The other side effect: I've got that tune stuck in my head now. Probably for the next week!

      Damn you El Reg!

      doo doo-doo doo doo-doo doo doo-doo doo doo-doo doo doo-doo doo doo doo-doo! Forever and ever and ever until I go mad! Mad! I tell you!

      1. I could be a dog really Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Me too, had that tune going in my head from early on in the article - and it's "a lot" of years since I last played it.

    2. Sartori

      Oh yes, I have been there, done that, not entirely sure I want to thank you for bringing back those memories :)

  6. ThatOne Silver badge
    Happy

    Memories...

    Wow, I wasted many hours, many years ago, in a dark room full of buzzing machines while waiting for things to happen... Happy memories.

    Any suggestion for a good (paid) Android version of the classic Tetris game? I have done a search 1-2 years ago, but only found low-quality clones or mutant versions (different gameplay). As for the "official" Android Tetris game, it's an ad-riddled hell according to the comments.

    1. NATTtrash

      Re: Memories...

      Perhaps..? "Do one thing and do it well"

      Kudos for bashing it out...

      https://github.com/dkorolev/bash-tetris/blob/master/tetris.sh

      1. druck Silver badge

        Re: Memories...

        That fork has a bug in that some of the pieces are black, the original doesn't have that problem https://github.com/kt97679/tetris/blob/master/tetris.sh

  7. I am David Jones Silver badge
    Joke

    Obligatory is as obligatory does

    Hell: https://xkcd.com/724/

    Heaven: https://xkcd.com/888/

  8. Blackjack Silver badge

    [This vulture in particular - who would've been around two-and-a-half years old when Russian computer programmer Alexey Pajitnov first coded his magnum opus - remembers spending hours playing Tetris on his first-generation Game Boy in stunning green-and-black high-contrast graphics. One can only play so much Super Mario Land or Metroid 2 before needing a break, after all. ]

    I had those games and still got my brick Gameboy even if the screen is so scratched I have to play the games on a Gameboy Color instead.

    I got a Gameboy instead of a Sega Game Gear not only due to orice but because the Sega Game Gear battery life was horrible. Playing those old Gameboy games today is not the same, but still fun.

  9. HandlesMessiah

    A few years back, Box Brown did a good oral history in comic form about the competing claims and counterclaims regarding Tetris:

    https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723153/tetris

  10. Dan 55 Silver badge

    Truthy

    "Although some sources on the internet claim the game was created in 1985, Alexey created the first version of Tetris on June 6, 1984, now recognized as World Tetris Day," a spokesperson told The Register.

    Earlier interviews with Pajitnov in 1993 and 2004 say 1985 and an interview with Rogers in 1998 also says 1985. As does the Encyclopedia Britannica.

    So I'm going to defiantly stick with 1985 in spite of what Big Tetromino would have you believe.

  11. IGotOut Silver badge

    If you've never seen competitive Tetris...

    ....go look it up.

    It's absolutely mesmerising to watch, My brain can't even keep up with watching the shapes, let alone playing at that speed.

  12. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
    Megaphone

    Missing the tunes

    I have the 1988 version on my system, runs pretty well under DOSbox, but, for the life of me, I have been unable to coax the music, which I know is there, out of the program.

    This copy of the floppy is the same code I played on my old DOS box, but where is the music? I have the Cessna on the splash screen, the clicking as the initial text crawls by, even the Boss key, but no Russian folk tunes. I know I didn't have a sound card, the 8-bit tunes came through the PC speaker, perhaps with the aid of a TSR, I'm not sure.

    Does anyone have music? Does anyone know how to get music? It's just not the same without that music...

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Missing the tunes

      Maybe your DOSBox config needs to have the PC speaker enabled?

      1. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: Missing the tunes

        I think I've tried that, but I will try it again...

      2. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: Missing the tunes

        Yep, PCSpeaker is enabled.

        Does *anyone* run the 1988 PC-DOS ETetris (with Cessna on splash screen) in DOSBox and have sound?

        If so, can you post your DOSBox.conf file, please?

      3. RAMChYLD

        Re: Missing the tunes

        Doesn't the DOS version support AdLib audio?

    2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Missing the tunes

      Don't do it! IT'S A TRAP!

  13. Matt Dainty
    Mushroom

    Boom!

    Tetris for Jeff

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