Tetris, the video game that hypnotized half the world from the Soviet Union in 1984.
On this day like today, June 6, was released one of the most successful video games in the market throughout history. Tetris was born in 1984thanks to the imagination of Alekséi Pázhitnovcomputer engineer at the Computer Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. Soviet Unionin Moscow.
The name of the video game comes from the Greek word tetra (four).The base of the game is composed of four squares joined in different shapes, which must be stacked as if it were a puzzle, falling from the top of the screen. The player can rotate them before they fall, so that they fit in the ideal position in the base.completing horizontal lines as a target. There is no associated narrative. It is a divertimento of a spatial, abstract character, and on this was based part of its success. Some speculate that it has a certain hypnotic character precisely because of this characteristic.
The pieces have an associated color according to their shape, something that helps our brain to identify them more quickly in a geometric type game like this one. The computer programming of Tetris did not involve any difficulty.The only thing the player can do is to rotate each piece and make it descend quickly.
As almost always, everything starts from a fairly simple idea but the merit is that someone comes up with it for the first time and, above all, gets down to work as soon as possible to carry it out.
In 1991, Alekséi Pázhitnov left the Soviet Union for the United States. where years later he founded his own company, Tetris Company, together with Henk Rogers. The complete story of his creation has given rise to a film distributed by Apple TV+, in which the cold war intersects with the personal journey of its creators.
Tetris has not been spared from any gruesome history associated. Vladimir Pokhilko was a collaborator of Pázhitnov in the development of the video game in Moscow. In 1998 his body was discovered along with those of his wife and son , at his home in California, brutally hammered to death. It was initially admitted that Vladimir had liquidated his family before committing suicide, but evidence has recently surfaced that the Russian mafia settled unsettled scores in its own way. The enormous amount of profits brought in by the innocent game since it was created 39 years ago has these annoying downsides.
