Talk:Tetris

Tetris Mobile sales

according to several news articles quoting Henk Rogers (one of the founders and President of the Tetris Company), the mobile version of Tetris has over 425 million paid sales (not counting free downloads) that would make it the best selling game in history (at leas this version of the game), I don't know if anybody else has been able to find more sources. here are some links about the interview:

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/tetris-now-at-425-million-paid-mobile-downloads

https://venturebeat.com/games/mr-tetris-explains-why-the-puzzle-game-is-still-popular-after-three-decades-interview/ Zettus (talk) 14:33, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

My question is whether that is for the current mobile app or all mobile versions combined, many of which have been discontinued and no longer function (like Tetris (Electronic Arts)). If the latter, then I wonder if it's really a valid comparison. oknazevad (talk) 16:57, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Looking at the interview in question, judging by Rogers's answers to VentureBeat, this figure includes all mobile versions combined. However, although it makes Tetris being the best-selling game of all time doubtful, it might be worth noting in the article itself. Lazman321 (talk) 17:48, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Discussion of the original creation date in the article

Recently the original creation date listed in the article was changed from 1984 to the much more likely 1985. While I believe that this was a correct change, I also think that the controversy over the creation date should be mentioned in the article, perhaps even in its own subheading. The company that owns the game[1] and several high profile sources[2][3] claiming a different creation date than the one listed in the article is significant and notable, and should be mentioned in the article. Leaflemon (talk) 03:35, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

I can't disagree with your thoughts on the matter. If you want to try to hash up a paragraph here to describe the situation feel free. I'll gladly take a look. oknazevad (talk) 03:51, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that seems like a good idea. I'm the one who changed it from 84 to 85. The only reason I didn't add a paragraph in the article is because there's no real easy way to source it, and the leading theory for the reason TTC gives an incorrect date (while almost certainly true) is speculative. Explodingcreepsr (talk) 07:12, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

The official Tetris website lists the launch date as 1984: https://tetris.com/history-of-tetris GraemeCod (talk) 08:04, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

And that claim is what is disputed. Please familiarize yourself with the sources already included before reposting them. oknazevad (talk) 08:34, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

I am simply responding to what has been said above: the dispute can be referenced, with the original founder and now owner of the rights to Tetris claiming the game was designed in 1984 (and first played on 6 June 1984 to be precise) - and then link to his website to show this claim; whereas public and commercial references to the development of game indicate a 1985 launch date. GraemeCod (talk) 09:44, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

If the 1985 creation date is to be challenged, I would suggest only sources that predate 2009 are valid - these would predate the year the Tetris Company changed their minds. —Flicky1984 (talk) 08:51, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm strongly against any sort of statement that we pick and choose which sources from what year are valid on this without some source backing the unreliability of them. This sounds like WP:OR. Andrzejbanas (talk) 13:00, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Numerous sources giving a vague year as a release often just refer to a copyright date and aren't really historically in-depth research. I don't even see anything about the Russian version of Tetris being released commercially, as I think the idea of even selling something like that within Russia is a bit of an idea that didn't exist at the time. Andrzejbanas (talk) 05:04, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Your summary of the situation is inaccurate. Numerous sources from before 2009 give the same year of creation, nothing vague about it. This including the original Tetris US trademark/copyright filing. —Flicky1984 (talk) 00:20, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

That's the issue. The US release is a lot more traceable, but we'll have to try and find something specific for its "release" if it had such a thing in the Soviet Union. That said, we go by the earliest known public release for media, not for a copyright or a in-development model. Andrzejbanas (talk) 12:59, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

There is a BBC documentary about Tetris called Tetris: From Russia with Love (2004). In the documentary, the following bits are stated:

• Around 5:40, the narrator states the first colour version of Tetris was developed in the summer of 1985, and it was the version that Pajitnov lent to friend outside the computer center, and in turn, copied it to their friends. I don't believe the Elektronika 60 is even capable of producing colour. If I had to guess what this 1984 year comes from, its from the original version Pajitnov was working on. More research will have to go into the distribution of Tetris across the Soviet Union as its not uncommon that old computer games are transferred this way, but we should clarify this in prose with sources. Andrzejbanas (talk) 13:13, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

The leading theory for the 1984 date within the Tetris playing community is that Blue Planet Software (Which is now merged with TTC but was at the time the licensing company for Tetris) was facing a pretty bad decline, and hired a PR company called Graylink to try and get it back on the upswing. They wanted to do a 25th anniversary thing for E3 that year and just sorta fudged the numbers a bit for it to happen that year, which is why you will only find sources after 2009 citing the June 1984 date. The campaign was very successful, for what it's worth. Explodingcreepsr (talk) 18:12, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I mean, all totally fair, if not potentially against WP:OR. Regardless, we don't have much content related to any sort of public release to the game, and I'm not sure Pajitnov passing it back and forth between co-workers and friends and such is really an official release. And if it is, that's probably going to become more traceable at some point or we just haven't dug out any really specific details on this. Regardless, currently the article states it was released in 1985 for the said computer above, which appears to be false. Andrzejbanas (talk) 18:51, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I think there a several aspects that would benefit from clearer delineation and discussion:

1. the date of the first version (originally 1985, as sourced on Wikipedia prior to 2009; later 1984, stemming from the one source: E3 2009),

2. the date of the first release (1988; naturally, outside of Russia),

3. whether or not Tetris Company changed the date.

If Wiki lists public release for media would that mean it should be listed as 1988? Assuming we can find an applicable source in the pre-internet age, and no other Russian release comes to light. Then the rest of this mess can be clarified as well as possible, with sources old and new, in the body text. Not WP:OR but I do know the when Vadim first started at the Computer Centre, September 1984, Tetris did not yet exist. —Flicky1984 (talk) 23:37, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Good input! That said, video game release dates are often repeated, errenously and furhter information comes out of the wood work. Just like how we can't even confirm US release dates for games as popular as Super Mario Bros.. I've spent the afternoon digging up some content we can try to apply to consider information.

• Crookes in Retro Gamer (2018):
  • "To go into the ins and outs of what happened between 1984 and 1989 would likely take over the entirety of this issue...the breakthrough was a PC version in 1985, created by Alexey with the help of colleague Dimitry Pavlovsky and a young programmer called Vadim Gerasimov."
  • "From there, the game found its way out of the USSR. It was ported to the Apple II and Commodore 64 by Hungarian coders then, in 1987, it was converted to many machines for the North American and European markets. The following year, Bullet-Proof Sofware's boss Henk Rogers spotted the game at the consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas and became determined to secure the rights."
• "Grannell in Retro Gamer (2007):
  • "Released: 1985"
  • The Tetris on Alexey's [Elektronika 60] at this point was, by his admission, something of a prototype. However, all of the game's important mechanics were there, and the game had been surprisingly easy to create. "I give you such details about the game, but all the decision were done in one day in a couple of hours," claims Alexy. "in reality, somehow, all these decisions were made so naturally."
• "Hitting Reset: Devising a New Video Game Copyright Regime" (2016)
  • "Created in 1984, Tetris has become one of the best knonw games, and has since been released on myriad platforms, including smartphones."
• "How to Lose at Tetris" (1997)
  • "[Tetris is] designed by Soviet mathematician Alexey Pazhitnov in the late eighties and imported to the United States by Spectrum Holobye, Tetris won a record number of software awards in 1989."
• "Soviet Invents Intriguing Game" (1988)
  • "Tetris was invented in the Soviet Union by Alexi Pasnitv, a 30-year-old researcher at the Computer Centre (Academy Soft) of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Scientists in Moscow. The program was originally written by Vadim Gerasomiv, an 18 year-old studen at Moscow University. [...]Tetris is a Join product of Academy Soft in Moscow, Andromeda Software ltd. in London and Spectrum Holobyte in California."
• "Eastern Bloc Nations start to join Microcomputer Revolution"
  • "According to officials of Spectrum Holobyte, the American distributor, Tetris was written on an International Business Machines Corp. PC by programmers at the Computer Centre of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow. [...] Whether the young programmers of Tetris, identified as Vagim Gerasimov, an 18-year-old computer student at Moscow University, and Alexi Paszitnov, a 30-year-old researcher at the Academy of Sciences will follow their American counterparts to great wealth remains to be seen. Robert Stein, the British entrepreneur who brought the program to the attention of Western computer companies last year, said he plans to visit the Soviet Union soon to see whether there are other programs that might catch the fancy of the Western world. [...] Stein, head of the company called Andromedia Software Ltd., discovered Tetris during a visit to a Hungarian company that develops software for Western computer companies."
• From The Tetris Effect: The Game that Hypnotized the World (2016)
  • "Tetris had a stunning global impact. In 1984, a lone computer scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, working in his off hours on painfully oudated equipment programmed it." (page 6)
  • "Pajitnov has programmed his game on his Electronica 60 computer. Tying the game to this very idiosyncratic computer, itself a knockoff of any already outdated Western computer, made it very hard to share Tetris. Few people, even at the RAS had an Electronica 60, and certainly no one purchasing a computer for the first time would choose this machine or platform." (page 61)
  • "Even if you were lucky enough to be on of a handful of Muscovites with access to a personal computer at work or at home, and you had somehow managed to get a hand on a copy of Alexey Pajitnov's code for Tetris, it would likely have done you no good. The Electronica 60 was a rare machine, even at the RAS, and the original 27-kilobyte file was written to work on that specific computer. It wasn't compatible with the IBM PC machines that were starting to become the de facto standard for computing both in Russia and the West. Alexey's code for Tetris simply wouldn't run on the computers most Russian programmers and technology enthusiasts had access to." (p 36)
  • "The IBM version had been coded from scratch and was vastly superior in every way. It looked better, played better, kept score like a standard video game."
• Game Developer (2010)
  • "Alexey Pajitnov is, of course, the creator of Tetris -- a game he originally developed while working at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow in 1985. Of course, during the late '80s the game's popularity exploded internationally." here

So from this, even in the past, there is a lot of contradicting information, either from sources making assumptions, or other bits. The potential details are that Pajitnov made Tetris really quickly and all his choices for it were made lickity split for his Elektronika 60. While in the early Retro Gamer game, he says Tetris was everywhere and the 2006 Retro Gamer article suggests that tons of Elektronika 60's had it, later, an entire book dedicated to Tetris, suggests otherwise that it was more likely the DOS version that spread, as the Elektronika 60 was a very oudated computer and it was very hard to just "transfer" Tetris, even if you had the code somehow. He also only got Vadim on board later for an IBM PC compatible version which added several features from his own game, including colour, so that balances out with the BBC documentary that it was the colour version that spread, not the Elektronika version. Despite this, I do not have full access to that Tetris book (christmas is around the corner), but may investigate further to see if it has any details on when that was made as even if it's not a release date, it can help give the user and understanding of when at least some people were playing a version of Tetris. Andrzejbanas (talk) 04:12, 5 November 2024 (UTC) Andrzejbanas (talk) 04:12, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

The Elekronika 60 version was just a prototype, and supposedly he worked with Vadim immediately after it was created, to port it to an IBM PC, and the first MS DOS version was done mere days after the Elektronica version. The link I sent, from Vadim's website, also says it was worked on from 1985-86. I had to use an archive of it though, because the day after E3 2009, the website was changed to say 1984-86, with no other changes. Explodingcreepsr (talk) 07:43, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

I read this a while ago, but had forgotten the details. This would explain why Tetris: From Russia with Love talks about the first color version being developed and distributed. Supposedly the Elektronica version and the color MS DOS version were developed a few days apart, and the MS DOS version was the one that was distributed, not the Elektronika version like Retro Gamer claims. Explodingcreepsr (talk) 07:48, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

I think we'll need to take a look at the The Tetris Effect book to be sure as it goes into the most details about the development of the game than any previous source I mentioned. As for Gerasimov, he does say he developed his version shortly after, but it looks like the initial MS-DOS version went through several drafts, as he states "In fact, I still enjoy programming in the descendant of Turbo Pascal - Borland Delphi. The last version of Tetris, we worked on together, was compiled with Turbo Pascal 4. That last version of the game had number 3.12. Although 3.12 is pretty much an arbitrary number as we did not have a strict versioning policy."

That said, I also have this article in The Guardian with Pajitnov saying "In June 1984, it occurred to me that they might be a good basis for a computer game." here." While this doesn't indicate that he started coding or completing the code, as he has said, he made similar Tetris-like games that did not really pan out, it at least gives us a bit of a timeframe of when he may have started fiddling with the idea. I have no idea what specifically The Tetris Company wants to do with an anniversary, or what the anniversary is celebrating (as Tetris has a very convoluted release history and with their connection with Pajitnov, it seems like they are linking the 1984 period to not really a release, but the earliest development of it. Strange, but hardly impossible. As for Gerasimov's write-up, he could have easily realized he was wrong about the date, or mistyped it, and changed it. That said, your theory about the 25th anniversary of the game could have somehow put pressure on him or something/anything to change it. That said, we have no proof of either and we can't just assume some conspiracy is happening regarding the dates without some sort of proof. Andrzejbanas (talk) 14:19, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

The book seems like an interesting lead. I also don't think Gerasimov mistyped or realized he was wrong, because in 2018 someone emailed him about it and he said he believed it was 1985, and was puzzled by the anniversary being in 2009. It's probably still possible to email him and clarify further. Explodingcreepsr (talk) 20:54, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

I mean, we could, but this isn't really following policy specifically WP:STICKTOTHESOURCE. Regardless, unless these guys are keeping their own diaries, he has no concrete data outside he belives it was 1985 too. I think I'll look into the book to hope to find more. Andrzejbanas (talk) 23:03, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

It was my understanding that Vadim changed his website on request of Pajitnov/Tetris Co. The issue with the Tetris Effect book, for me, is that it was made after 2009 and so uses the revised timeline. Same with the article/interview in The Guardian, etc. I'm wary of this as I've previously mentioned, it feels too much like rewriting history. About the new timeline Henk said to Nintendo Life, and I'm paraphrasing, "well that's what Alexey said" which feels no better or worse than a date from the hand of Vadim. With each source it's almost as if we need to figure out are they referencing the E3 2009 revised timeline or the one that existed for ~20 years before that. I'm up with helping add to a spreadsheet of source data, if one is created/owned by somebody else. As whatever date is settled on should be supported by a variety of sources, and at this point we've got ~20 years of mostly printed sources that said 1985 and ~15 years of mostly online sources that say 1984, my hunch is that 2009 will be a quite obvious split date. Another thing I've just remembered is that there are timestamps on the original versions that have been preserved. I can't remember if it's the IBM PC version or Electronika 60 version, sorry. There's also likely to be supporting material in the forthcoming Tetris game compilation. The earliest Tetris book I have is a Japanese one from 1989 (pre-Game Boy version) but it doesn't list the creation/release date of the original. Even in year one outside of Russia, Tetris epoch, the creation date was mysterious. There's also a Russian book from 1987 about the Computer Center that mentions Tetris in passing, but sadly no date. —Flicky1984 (talk) 01:11, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Oof. Yeah, as said the release date of this material is down to just what the creators memories. I doubt we'll have an earliest release date, but we can at least go by what the developers state and note when they have given different answers to tell readers that generally, there have been contradictions. I've done similar things for the article on "Planet Rock where I couldn't confirm what a specific date was. I felt comfortable throwing away the ones that were just flat out off by other historical timelines that made sense with news articles of the day. If anything, the uncertainty might make someone closer to materials to confirm the details in some sort of publishable form. Andrzejbanas (talk) 03:02, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this already in the discussion, but right as this started gaining steam, Time Extension posted an article on the release date confusion. Based on their investigation, which included reaching out to Henk Rogers himself, they concluded that Tetris was released on 1985. Lazman321 (talk) 01:24, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Tetris Forever draft

I've created a draft article for Tetris Forever, a new compilation of Tetris games if anyone was curious about looking over it, or what it would require before moving it to the main area. Andrzejbanas (talk) 14:44, 3 September 2024 (UTC)