Tetris, a game that changed the story
There was once a computer engineer named Alexei Patjinov who was studying in the Dorodnicyn computer center of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow.
Alexei showed great interest in computer games and, therefore, transmits his ideas to the Elektronika 60. Later, he bought a game of pentamines in which he was inspired to create a new game which he called Tetris, that is: Tetris. The name is a mixture of tetromino and tennis.
Elsewhere, Vadim Gerasimov, who was 16 years old and studying encryption algorithms in MS DOS, caught the attention of Dimitry Pavlovsky, who shared his interest in IBM PCs and proposed to create a game together. That's when they met Alexei Patjinov, with whom they also wanted to make a game. Some time later, they programmed one called "Genetic Engineering", in which tetrominoes were fitted on the screen by means of cursors.
Then it was when Patjinov created the Tetris in the terminal of Elektronika 60. Together they took it to the MS DOS in 1986 under the seal of Academysoft, but none was a good salesman, so they gave away copies of the game
Curious things about Tetris
• Besides being the name of the game, Tetris is a verb that means to eliminate four rows at the same time, which can only be achieved with the long piece placing it vertically when all the other rows are full.
• Although it was originally released for PC use, Tetris gained great popularity from the Nintendo Game Boy, of which 35 million copies were sold.
• In 2007, the specialized video game portal ign.com, rated Tetris as the third best game of all time, behind only "Super Mario Bros" in the first place and "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" in second.
• Although Nintendo acquired the exclusive rights for use in consoles, Sega included it in its Mega Drive, which triggered a legal battle and had to withdraw it. The few remaining copies of this version are worth thousands of dollars.
• Unlike most games, there is no possibility of "winning" in Tetris. In 1988, a master of science student wrote a thesis where he concluded that due to the random nature of the figures it is impossible to develop a strategy to win indefinitely and it is inevitable that the player ends up losing.
• Despite having become world famous, Pajitnov practically did not win money with the game and said: "Let me tell you my opinion about free software: It should never have existed and today should not exist".
• Brain scans of Tetris players show a marked increase in brain activity, in some cases increasing the rate of operation seven times, in certain areas.