The story of bringing Tetris to the Western world is a tale fraught with aggressive lawyers, sluggish government politics, desperate races against time, and some Finnish beer.
(For the record, there's an abbreviated version at the bottom of the page and similar info on Wikipedia here.
A significantly more elaborate version of the story is told at the Digital Antiquarian's blog, starting here.)
It began with a young Muscovite by the name of Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov (Алексе́й Леони́дович Па́житнов in Cyrillic spelling). As a young man, he excelled in mathematics (he was a finalist in a citywide mathematics competition at age 14), and he created his first computer program at 15 — a number game. Though he enjoyed the worlds that math held, he also hung out with his friends to play cards, drank vodka, and was a normal schoolboy in every sense of the word. After his university studies and graduation, he took up a job at a technical Moscow university where he worked in the field of math applications. Though he enjoyed his work, he soon discovered his passion for computers and programming. In his words, "It doesn't matter to a hacker what he is working on — it could be a game or an abstract math problem, but if a computer is involved, he is a god and can do whatever he wants in that world."
He quit his university job and was instead hired by the Computer Center at the Moscow Academy of Science. There, he spent much of his time working with an Electronica 60, working on AI and voice recognition. In his spare time, he created games and puzzles — the latter of which were a particular passion of his. To many of us, they are diversions, but to Pajitnov, they were reflections of life and metaphors for the real world. Having read about puzzles called Pentominoes, Pajitnov bought a set from a local toy store and brought it home. As expected, taking them apart from each other is easy; getting them back together in the right way is much more difficult.
He imagined a computerized version of Pentominoes, where instead of having to make them into a rectangle, they would be randomly generated and fall from the sky. Quick thinking would be needed as the pieces moved quicker and required fast rearrangement to fit into what was already there. Experimenting with several permutations, Pajitnov eventually settled on a simpler version, with all the seven possible combinations of four squares instead of five. From this, and a form of the Greek word for four (tetra), Pajitnov named his new creation Tetris.
With the basic game mechanics in place, and a prototype on the text-only Elektronika60 working, Pajitnov realized that the game needed graphics if it was going to go any farther (currently, the pieces were just outlined with brackets). A young hacker named Vadim Gerasimov, who was 16 at the time, worked closely with Pajitnov for around two months to get Tetris to work on an IBM-compatible computer. By the end, the pieces lit up in bright colors, and another programmer (Dimitri Pevlovsky) added a high score table. When the bugs were squashed, Pajitnov distributed the game around the Computer Center. Friends and coworkers congratulated Pajitnov on his amazing game, and soon Tetris was spreading through Moscow's computer circles like a virus.
Eventually, Pajitnov voiced to one of his superiors that they should do something about copyrighting Tetris for release outside the U.S.S.R. "We had no copyright laws at all. Certainly, by the spirit of our law we had no right to sell anything to anyone. We could do nothing for personal gain," according to Pajitnov. Still, it would be a large accomplishment for a program to be published outside the country. A colleague of his sent an evaluation copy of the game to the Institute of Computer Science in Budapest. Robert Stein, the man who ran the London-based software company Andromeda, was visiting at the time.
Stein mostly worked as a go-between, buying and selling software rights for several English and Hungarian companies. He noticed Tetris on a nearby computer and sat down to play it.
He found it very difficult to stop. As he said, "I was not a gamer, so if I liked it, it must be a very good game." Asking around, he was told it came from the Computer Center of the Academy of Science in Moscow. Deciding to go to the source, Stein sent a cable to the Computer Center. A colleague of Pajitnov's saw the telex and showed it to him. Replying to the message was met with a series of bureaucratic stumbling blocks, and it was several weeks until Pajitnov sent back the simple reply of "Yes, we are interested. We would like to have this deal."
Stein was already building up interest in the game. Mirrorsoft decided to license it for Europe if their sister company, Spectrum Holobyte, would do the licenses for the US and Japan. Phil Adam and Gilman Louie ran said sister company. Phil sat down to play it one day at three. At seven, his dinner companions had to literally unplug the machine to get him to stop playing. Louie also played and loved it. They told Stein to "put it in a red box and get the rights".
This next part is where it starts to get confusing: Stein offered the Russians 75% of whatever he got and a $10,000 advance. The Russians responded with a telex saying they were ready to transfer the copyrights, and that this deal was for the personal computer versions only. Stein, taking this as a go-ahead, began production of the game. Pajitnov claims that the telex he sent was not a firm go-ahead, but more of a "sounds good".
Stein also wanted to set up a more permanent partnership between the Computer Center and himself, similar to his Hungarian deals. When he visited Moscow, the Russians had never done software licensing before, but they compensated with caution and obstinacy. Stein left Moscow without a signed contract and wondered if he should just try and license from someone else (Hungarian programmers had licensed a Commodore 64 version from the Russians). He said later that his biggest mistake was not making this happen.
Spectrum Holobyte, however, was moving along. They packed it into a slick red box and added some things to the game: war backgrounds and a small scene with Matthias Rust landing in Red Square. A boss key was also added, along with high-quality graphics and music. The game was then released to rave reviews, and one even commented on The Tetris Effect: "After a poor night watching shapes float down past my closed eyelids I had to be firm with myself and refuse to play it again for at least 48 hours. I cannot give a higher recommendation."
So, to reiterate: Stein had sold the rights to Tetris, which he didn't actually own, to several companies who were now producing and releasing the game in Europe and America, despite his continual attempts to secure the rights. He did eventually secure the personal computer rights, but not any of the others (home video game console, coin-operated arcade machine, and handheld).
Meanwhile, in Moscow, Pajitnov was told that Electronorgtechnica (henceforth referred to as Elorg), the recently-formed ministry for the import and export of hardware and software, would be taking over negotiations, since the Academy of Science was an academic institution and couldn't indulge in commerce anyway. Stein and Elorg negotiated an actual contract for the PC rights which was signed a few months later (the fine print defined a computer as having a keyboard input, something Stein overlooked).
Eventually, a third party — basically the James K. Polk of this whole story — Bullet-Proof Software joined the fray for the rights to the game. Its founder, Henk Rogers (an American-educated Dutchman living in Japan), saw Tetris at the 1988 CES and brought along his buddies at Nintendo to secure an actual, real contract with Elorg for the game. Why, you ask, were this tiny company and the giant Nintendo suddenly involved? Because Bullet-Proof was one of the first developers to sign on to develop for Nintendo's then-top secret and upcoming Game Boy system. Nintendo higher-ups Minoru Arakawa and Howard Lincoln had seen Tetris at a trade show and had Nintendo make an in-house prototype. The two were a match made in heaven, and Nintendo needed someone to navigate the tricky world of software licensing and get the handheld rights.
Henk Rogers had acquired the rights to Tetris for Japanese home computers from Mirrorsoft and for home consoles from Atari Games (who had sublicensed them from Mirrorsoft, who had sublicensed them from Stein, who didn't actually own them), and thus was a natural fit to acquire more. He'd had a personal relationship with Nintendo's Japanese president for years now, and he was well versed in both the licensing and programming aspects of video games. Rogers originally tried to go through Stein, but Stein was having trouble getting the handheld rights, so Rogers cut out the middleman and went to Moscow himself. In a few days, he'd sewn up the rights to the handheld versions, and made the discovery that the Russians had never actually licensed anything except the PC version.
At this point, the chart of licensees looked like this: Stein owned the PC rights worldwide, and he had sublicensed them to Mirrorsoft & Spectrum Holobyte. He did not own the arcade or console rights, but had sublicensed them anyway to the same companies, assuming they were forthcoming. Mirrorsoft had sublicensed the arcade and console rights to Atari Games, who had sublicensed the Japanese arcade rights to Sega and the Japanese console rights to Henk Rogers. They kept the American arcade and console rights. In addition, Atari was producing its own version of Tetris on the NES under its subsidiary Tengen.
Rogers saw opportunity, and so did Nintendo when he told them about it: They could get the home console rights right from the source AND sue Tengen, who was currently suing them on anti-trust allegations. They could both make a bunch of money, and get some sweet revenge.
After a series of tense negotiations, Nintendo emerged with the worldwide home console rights, and sublicensed the handheld version through Henk Rogers. The Russians hadn't been paid by Stein anyway, so his contracts to the PC versions and arcade versions (which he eventually did get) were lost a few years later. Nintendo took great pleasure in suing Tengen to stop production of its Tetris game, and winning. Tengen's version quickly became a collector's item.
Mirrorsoft and Spectrum Holobyte dissolved a few years later after their parent company empire fell. Stein kept on doing his licensing thing. The Game Boy was a smash hit, and Tetris became as well known as Mario.
As for the creator Pajitnov - who got no money from the original deals, as it was made as a company project for the Russian government - during the negotiations for Nintendo, Rogers and Pajitnov became fast friends, and years later Rogers helped Pajitnov emigrate to the United States. Pajitnov was able to secure the trademark and rights to the Tetris name soon after, eventually buying the rights fully from Elorg — it was not until 1996 that he began receiving royalties for his own intellectual property. He and Rogers formed The Tetris Company in the late 1990s, and it continues to release Tetris games today.
TLDR, since it was promised: Russian man invents game. Game spreads outside Russia. Other men want game. Russian government handily plays all sides, eventually gives licenses to man hired by Nintendo, who sublicenses it for the Game Boy, which is probably how you know about it. He then releases it on virtually everything else. Eventually (around 10 years later), Russian man gets paid for the game he invented.
