Tetris
Introduction
Tetris was originally designed and programmed in June 1984 by Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov, and its Western publishing rights became the subject of a famously tangled licensing battle in the years that followed, with Andromeda Software, Mirrorsoft, Atari Games subsidiary Tengen, and Nintendo all fighting over who actually held the console rights. Tengen released its own unlicensed NES cartridge in May 1989, but Nintendo won the legal dispute over exclusive console rights and released its own officially licensed NES version later that same year, which went on to sell roughly 8 million copies worldwide and became the version most players associate with the console. The game itself needs little introduction: falling tetromino pieces must be rotated and slotted together to clear horizontal lines before the stack reaches the top of the well, with speed increasing every level to keep the pressure constant. Its addictive, endlessly replayable simplicity made Tetris one of the best-selling and most influential puzzle games ever made, and its Nintendo NES release played a major role in cementing the format’s mainstream popularity in North America.
