A Trip Down Memory Card Lane Ep.93 – It's Quite Puzzling: How Tetris Took Over The World
In 1985, Tetris was born at the Soviet Academy of Sciences when Alexey Pajitnov turned childhood memories of pentomino puzzles into falling tetrominoes. We revisit how Vadim Gerasimov’s IBM PC port helped spread it across Moscow, where it was so addictive it had to be banned. The episode explores Robert Stein’s shady licensing faxes, the tangled web of Mirrorsoft, Spectrum Holobyte, Atari, Sega, and Nintendo, and the court battle that secured Game Boy rights for Nintendo. Our conversation digs into critic reviews praising its addictive simplicity, player reviews that tied it to everything from dreams to psychology, and its Guinness record for most ports. We also touch on Pajitnov’s emigration, the founding of The Tetris Company, and the game’s enduring cultural legacy.