How Tetris Started a Dispute that Nearly Fueled the Cold War

The Cold War era was what it suggested- a quiet, freezing, dull and dreary time. Technology combined, all into one government, with every day boring and out of it. But even dreary days cannot bring down the imaginative mind. This imaginative mind belonged to Alexey Pajitnov.

Pajitnov was a computer engineer, working for the Soviet Academy of Sciences. However, he was bored every now and then, usually playing with puzzles to keep the time going. One puzzle he loved was pemtominoes, which involved arranging shapes in a box shape and keeping it gap-free. It even inspired him to create his own puzzle, which he did on a company computer, the Electronika 60 (a private computer only used for the organization) with the help of Dmitry Pavlovsky. This puzzle would involve players to put blocks together in lines and erase them, moving on with more blocks to take care of. Pajitnov's inspiration from pentominoes helped him create the name, because each shape had four blocks, and Pajitnov's favorite sport happened to be tennis. In that sense, Tetris was finally born. However, things were only beginning to get screwy.

Soon after having made Tetris, Pajitnov and Pavlovsky's friend Vadim Gerasimov had created a port for the IBM PC, which only made the game grow in popularity as it was distributed all throughout Moscow. However, because the game was originally made using Soviet computers, the rights for the game were given to the Soviet government, who then in turn distributed the rights from an organization called Eletronorgtechnica, or Elorg. Therefore, Pajitnov saw no profit from his creation. But, this only started even further problems.

Tetris just so happened to be distributed in Budapest, Hungary, where Robert Stein, owner of Andromeda Software, was thoroughly interested by the game. He therefore contacted Alexey Pajitnov in order to secure the deal. BUT, before the deal was looked into and finished, Stein had sold rights already to Spectrum Holobyte, a company in the U.S., and Mirrorsoft, owned by Robert Maxwell's son, Kevin Maxwell. Both companies were interested by the game as well, wanting PC rights - rights that Robert Stein did not even have. Even worse, Robert Stein failed to settle a deal with Pajitnov, then going for a licensing with the Hungarian programmers who made it. However, at that point, Spectrum Holobyte was already developing and selling their version of Tetris on the IBM PC in the U.S. What happened? The version was an absolute smash, garnering money all over the area. Now, the real confusion started to begin.

Through the sending of rights, Spectrum Holobyte actually distributed the rights to many different companies, all claiming they had the rights, when in actuality they didn't. One of these companies who thought the rights were in general was a sub-division of Atari Games, Tengen (the Japanese console games maker). Tengen had signed rights for an arcade version of Tetris with proper dealings with Elorg. However, having thought this meant for all arcade-related objects, Tengen created a version of Tetris for the NES, a game console made by video game company Nintendo. In actuality, they had no proper copyrights and were selling an illegal game in Japan and U.S., lying to Nintendo about the rights, unbeknownst to them. It all started to really heat up when Nintendo would find out through some unorthodox investigation.

During the CES Convention in Las Vegas, Spectrum Holobyte showcased Tetris, hoping that people would be thoroughly interested. One particular person just so happened to be the main hero of this story, Henk Rogers, who worked for Nintendo. Rogers had said, "It was like an addiction.....I just found myself playing it and playing it, wanting more and more. I just knew that this kind of game was perfect." From this experience, Rogers believed that the game would be wonderful to make for the Game Boy, because of the sudden addictiveness. After persuasion and hearing that Spectrum Holobyte had the rights to give to Nintendo for a distribution, Rogers gave the order to Nintendo to begin production on Game Boy cartridge of Tetris. However, after further contact, Rogers couldn't finish a proper deal with Spectrum Holobyte, with the company saying that they had their own rights' troubles.

Concern started to grow from Rogers, but he was given the command by the president of Nintendo to go to Russia for further rights, after realizing that the rights given were only for the COMPUTER, not HANDHELD rights, of Tetris. Meanwhile, Robert Stein, after learning that he couldn't acquire the rights from the Hungarian programmers, finally decided to go to Russia to negotiate for all rights on Tetris. Also, Kevin Maxwell, after hearing that Stein was going to Russia, decided that Stein never had the rights in the first place, angered and frustrated by this backstab. Hoping to get the rights himself before anyone else can, Maxwell went to Russia himself as well. All three men, Robert Stein, Kevin Maxwell, and Henk Rogers, flew to Russia at the same time. Stein and Maxwell had their own personal limos and such to get them towards Elorg, but Rogers didn't. "Man, It was a total adventure game," he said, "It was just grey and dull. I didn't even know how the hell I could get to where I needed. People around were just very quiet." Interesting help arrived in the form of the actual creator, Alexey Pajitnov.

Having known who actually created Tetris from the signed rights before, Rogers managed to into contact with Pajitnov. Through some discussion, and acquiring of a friendship between the two, they set off to help Henk win the rights from Elorg. From the word's of Rogers, "It was basically...they were interviewing Kevin Maxwell, but not Robert Stein because of previous deals, so it was my turn to have meetings with the Russians, and then others were having meetings. I mean, we were all having meetings, completely suspenseful!" Rogers' turn arose, in which he explained that he didn't have as much money as the Maxwell's, but that he could give them a much fairer share of the profit as well as a good pay. Because of this down-to-earth answer, with the addition of Pajitnov's friendship with Rogers, Elorg gave the handheld rights to Henk Rogers and Nintendo.

As the dealings were finishing, the head Russians spotted the NES cartridge of Tengen's version of Tetris that Rogers carried, asking as to the meaning of this. Rogers explained that Tengen made it for NES. The Russians, however, said that they hadn't given such rights to anyone. Total silence came from Rogers, who said later, "It was then that I was like.....oh.....crap. I was sitting here, they thought I was one of the companies that had been pirating the game because they didn't give rights to anyone. And, so, I just thought that they could send me to Syberia or someplace to jail now. Truly terrifying, I mean."

However, the Russians didn't get angry and instead asked Rogers if he wished to sign for both the handheld and console rights. Rogers slowly realized this and his thoughts were 'absolutely "Hot potato!"'. Rogers proudly left Russia with the rights of Tetris for console and handheld, as well as the knowledge that Tengen had been making illegal and pirated versions of Tetris the whole time. Robert Stein and Kevin Maxwell, however, left with nothing, with Maxwell all the more furious that a person like Rogers got the rights. Having no other options to turn to, Kevin turned to his media mogul father, Robert Maxwell, to do something about the rights. Robert Maxwell, in turn, then asked for an appointment with then-USSR Head of State Mikhail Gorbachev, which would happen with a result of Robert Maxwell asking Gorbachev to do something about it, due to it breaking the pride of the Soviet Union........that is, until an earthquake happened on the day of the appointment, therefore never letting the Maxwell's speak out because of Gorbachev evacuating the area.

Proudly, Nintendo finished work on the NES and Game Boy version of Tetris, the latter breaking numbers of sale records, then the highest amount sold with 3 million copies. Tengen sued, however, saying that they had the proper rights and claiming a backstab. Nintendo sued back, stating that Tengen was selling an illegal and unlicensed game. These lawsuits between the companies continued until 1993, which led to Nintendo winning handsomely.

After all of this long-routed and snaky path, finally things settled down. Pajitnov did not receive any money from Tetris, however. But, because of the friendly help of Henk Rogers, Pajitnov acquired a green card to live in the United States and created The Tetris Company with Rogers in order to gain further royalties from his puzzle game. However, in 2001, Pajitnov left the company and joined Microsoft in order to create more puzzle games for their online center, like Hexic and Mozaki Blocks. Tengen lost all money made and slowly dissolved due to copyright issues and pirating. Nintendo still moves on with consoles and games, such as the Nintendo Wii.

So, what to learn from this peculiar debacle? People fight over things that they CLAIM to be theirs and only theirs. When, in the words of Arthur O'Shaugnessy, "WE are the music makers. And WE are the dreamers of the dreams." In the lot of fuss, Alexey Pajitnov didn't get the praise he deserved for years on end. Now, he, and his game, both deserve a great deal of recognition.

SOURCE:

http://atarihq.com/tsr/special/tetrishist.html