Pi in the Sky

Tetris from first to last

Posted on July 11th, 2007 at 8:36am by Pi.
Categories: Gaming.

Most people who know me, already know that I like Tetris very much, and it’s in fact one of my favorite games. I do not claim to be the best Tetris player in the world, although I had my days of glory: I was the first one in the arcade where I used to play to reach to 1000 lines in the 1988 arcade rendition by Sega.

Tetris is one of those games which are truly masterpieces: easy to learn, hard to master. While the game mechanics are very simple, mastering Tetris requires subtle knowledge of many variables, fast mental reflexes, and polished game strategy.

First it was the egg…

The story of Tetris began in 1985. Tetris was created by Alexey Pajitnov in 1985, when he was working at the Academy of Science of the USSR. He wrote it in an Electronica 60, a popular computer in the USSR at the time. The legend says he wrote it in an afternoon; actually, the game is so simple that it can be written in any language in an afternoon.

Althought the programming was simple, Pajitnov took his time to create the game concept. He was inspired by a pentomino puzzle he bought, but Tetris uses tetrominos instead. Actually, the name Tetris is the combination of “tetromino tennis”, the piece name plus Pajitnov’s favourite sport.

A 16yo kid called Vadim Gerasimov ported it to the IBM PC, using a text mode approach and adding a couple more features. At Gerasimov’s site, he explains a bit more about the origins of Tetris in Original Tetris: Story and Download. Actually there you can download the original version for IBM PC compatibles, it’s a very small download of the very last version he developed initially. It’s Tetris 3.12, and you can’t get more oldskool than that, unless you dig up the Electronica 60 binary ^_^

Everyone knows the game rules: you have to move falling tetromino in a playing field, and stack them so they form full lines from left to right; once a full line is made, it’s clear away and the rest of the blocks fall.

The game is very simple, but it has some subtle depths. For example, tetrominos from a maths point of view give interesting polynomial problems. Tetris can be seen from a purely mathematical point of view, which can be useful for a Tetris player or fan to know certain things.

For example, the infinite play problem. Is it possible to play Tetris infinitely, given a standard set of rules and totally random pieces? The answer is no. If the pieces are totally random, sooner or later you will get many Z or S pieces in a row. When you get enough of these, you’re forced to leave a hole in the stack. If you get too many of these consecutively, you lose, no matter how good you are. So, even if you play Tetris perfectly, or you program some kind of machine or computer to play Tetris perfectly, sooner or later the game will be over.

I remember seeing someone who had made a Tetris playing machine which worked with optical recognition, and it made quite impressive scores during hours. I can’t find the link, but it was very cool. Yet the machine got a game over in the end! The problem is that Tetris games usually do not have completely random pieces, specially after the last games contain a piece generator which ensures even distribution of pieces. You can read more about playing forever.

Endless Tetris games

Back to the history of Tetris. After Gerasimov’s version got spread outside of the USSR, it was ported to several platforms. Before any rights could be secured, some commercial versions saw the light. The very first commercial Tetris was the Spectrum HoloByte IBM PC version, released in 1986. The game was an instant hit and top seller.

More companies started to market commercial versions of Tetris, and even selling licenses to do so, yet no one had the real rights for it. Even the soviet goverment created an organization called Elektronorgtechnica (commonly known as Elorg) to try to market the rights of Tetris. While it was unsuccessful with some platforms, it secured the rights for arcade versions, selling them to Atari. At the same time, it sold the rights for consoles in non-japanese markets to Nintendo.

Yet, Tengen (Atari’s console division) made a highly popular although short-lived version for the NES. It was retired from the market, while Nintendo made a new NES version. Bullet-Proof Software made the Game Boy version for the japanese market, becoming the most famous Tetris game to date.

Between all these license wars, litigations, copyright infringements and loads of money moving, Alexey Pajitnov did very little money with Tetris. However, in 1996 he created The Tetris Company LLC with entrepeneur Henk Rogers in an effort to get royalties from Tetris games. The company, commonly called TTC, trademarked successfully Tetris in several countries, and continues to license the brand to other companies.

However, TTC became widely unpopular when it began to send cease-and-desist letters to any site holding any freeware or shareware Tetris clone, no matter if it carried the name Tetris or not. TTC has the trademark on the Tetris brand, so actualy no one can make a game with Tetris in its name; but the game rules themselves can’t be copyrighted or trademarked. Only the name Tetris is protected; anyone can make a similar game, and call it The Tetromino Falling Stack Game. The idea of the game could be patented, but it hasn’t been to date. These facts are explained in The Tetris Company’s Activities, a page with legal details to understand the whole deal.

So in the end, there are many, many games based on Tetris, with or without that word in the name. There are also quite original spin-offs, like TONG!, which is a very clever mix between the traditional Pong game, and Tetris itself. The result is not only original, but playable and fun.

Beyond the simple look

In the beginning of this article, I mentioned that Tetris had many subtle things under that extremely simple ruleset. The piece falling speed (called gravity), the rotation direction and speed, the position of the appearing pieces, all these are variable settings which can change the feel of the game, and also the methods of playing it. There are actually many more things; different rotation systems, delays in line clearance, extra features like instant drop, lock delay, infinite rotation, initial rotation… Many concepts and jargon which is only understood by Tetris fans.

But all these subtle details mark the difference between a dull Tetris clone, and a fun and challenging Tetris game. The TTC publishes a set of guidelines which games need to follow to carry the Tetris brand. This set of guidelines and rules is called the “world” rules. Although probably the reference is not the world rules, but a game: Tetris: The Grand Master.

Commonly known as TGM, it was created by Arika, a small company created by Capcom ex-employees. TGM was released only as an arcade machine, becoming a huge success in Japan. It was followed by more games with the same spirit, which have marked a before and after in Tetris playing. TGM rules feature furious gameplay, and certain TGM jargon such as ARE, wallkick, DAS, IRS, IHS, and several rotation systems like ARS (in the first TGM games) and SRS (in the last games).

Knowing this TGM jargon and the dozens of modern game modes is probably worth only to serious Tetris games. As a not-very-serious gamer, I have to say that TGM is among the cream of the cream from Tetris games, but casual players will have a hard time playing it. Yet, modern Tetris gaming is dominated to references to a very few set of games, and TGM is the most used reference.

Playing Tetris for professionals

A Tetris clone quite simple is VerTris, a freeware game available in english and spanish, featuring simple gameplay and rules for the average player. And it’s open source, GPL licensed, and with active development. There are dozens of similar Tetris and freeware.

But if normal Tetris is not enough for you anymore, then you need some above-the-average Tetris games to keep on the challenge. There have been some famous Tetris games like Tetris Worlds (which implements the TTC guidelines of the time), but being famous doesn’t mean good. If you want real Tetris action, there are two choices nowadays: Heboris and Lockjaw.

Well, the TGM series are also a good choice, but both Heboris and Lockjaw are freeware. Since they don’t use the Tetris trademark, they are completely legal and free to use.

I discussed Heboris in a previous article of mine called Heboris: Tetris for professionals. I suggest you to read it to know a bit more about Heboris, Heboris Unofficial Expansion, and how to get them. Heboris is very popular in Japan, but not very known outside Tetris circles (actually, a Google search on Heboris brings my own article in second place!) Heboris itself is a TGM style game with four simple modes of play. However, it was written in a script language, and after development stopped, members of the 2ch forums (a very active gaming community in Japan) created modifications which were merged into what’s known as Heboris Unofficial Expansion, or Heboris UE. UE is the actual game I’m recommending, although you need both the original Heboris and UE installed over it. Heboris UE is highly customizable, and has many game modes: grandmaster, mission, death/doom, puzzle, versus (against a clever computer player if you want), with endless variations, including the famous and fun BIG mode. It also has all known rotation systems, and every rule aspect can be changed.

But even without touching anything, Heboris UE has enough gameplay for Tetris fans. IMHO Heboris with UE on top of it is the current best choice for Tetris players who want to experiment some different stuff while playing the best Tetris. The only downside is that Heboris has mostly japanese documentation, and although it can be run in english, one doesn’t get to know what all the game modes and rules mean at first. The advantage is that Heboris Unofficial Expansion is in active development and it’s frequently updated, bringing new game modes and rulesets, mimicking many well known Tetris games. For example, many of the starting modes have TGM-based rules, but you can also find the puzzles from Flash Point.

The other option is Lockjaw, an open source “tetromino stacking game”, where every aspect of the game is absolutely customizable. This means that you can have any kind of ruleset from other Tetris games, as long as you know the specifics of these rulesets. The look is a bit dry, but there are many skins and specifics on simulation settings. I’d recommend Lockjaw only to more experienced players who master the subtleties of Tetris.

Becoming a professional player

Well, by professional I don’t mean getting paid to play. I mean knowing all these concepts, understanding the subtle details of advanced Tetris playing. The first resource I’ll mention is TetrisConcept.com, a wiki site (with forums too) where lots of aspects of Tetris gaming are explained; there are huge lists of Tetris games, and information nowhere else to be found. TetrisConcept.com is one of the most extensive resources for the avid Tetris player, and I recommend it over other choices.

Another good site is The Tetris Taxonomy, which is actually fun to read, albeit more basic than TetrisConcept.com. Be warned that it uses adult language.

If you want to see more of TGM, you can head to Arika’s movie download page (in japanese) and get some movies of people playing amazing TGM games. The death mode (playing at 20g, pieces appear already at the bottom) for MINUTES is impressive. There’s also Tetris the Grand Master - A gameplay essay, a very throughout article about TGM.

More than Tetris

Tetris is a very famous game, and it’s probably the most ported game in the world, available in a wide variety of platforms. In fact, its so simple to program, that certain applications or games have Tetris games as eastern eggs. Somewhere in my old CD collection I have the contestants on one of those 256 bytes game contests, and I remember at least one entry being a Tetris (albeit very simple) completely coded in 256 bytes. This paragraph is 477 bytes long, in comparison.

The popularity of this game has lead to name a psychological condition called Tetris Effect, where one involuntarily thinks or dreams of falling tetrominos. This condition has been extended to include the secondary effects of any repeated mechanic task, like sorting column numbers or looking at pieces in chain production. However, studies have shown that people who play Tetris develop faster mental reflexes and more efficient activity on the brain.

To finish, I’ll point you to some links worth checking for a laugh. You can see a very fun homage in the TV series The Simpsons. Homer uses Tetris techniques to fit everyone and everything in the car. There’s another reference in Futurama when the crew visits the Robot planet.

Another fun bit is this Japanese TV tetris-like gameshow, where contestants have to make kind of Tetris positions to pass the game show test.

Again a japanese sketch is Stupid Tetris, showing the mishaps of a Tetris player. I found it really funny, it’s not needed to know japanese to crack up (if you’re into Tetris, of course).

But if you want to laugh, install Heboris Unofficial Expansion, choose any “Simple” mode, and load the speed preset called “final (lite)”. I got a real laugh…

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