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The Beige Years

Tetris and the Game BoyThe Check Written in Moscow

Tetris was licensed to Mirrorsoft in 1987, while there was still no contract with the Soviets.

In the Tetris licensing war the game was sold before it was licensed; the man who won put his cartridge on Elorg's table and paid.

Subject
The Tetris licensing war, 1984 to 1989: Alexey Pajitnov's game at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Robert Stein, Andromeda and Mirrorsoft, Elorg's contracts, Nintendo's Game Boy deal with Henk Rogers, the Tengen version and the lawsuit that decided who owned it, 1984
Chapters
9
Sources
8
Credits
11
Corrections
0

Sources

8
  • Article3
  • Interview3
  • Encyclopedia1
  • Book1

Numbered in the order the description lists them. Read dates are when the page was consulted; the live page may have changed since.

  1. [1]
    Article BBC Four

    Tetris: From Russia with Love

    No online copy on file
  2. [2]
    Interview Phil Hoad

    Tetris: how we made the addictive computer game

    No online copy on file
  3. [3]
  4. [4]
    Interview undated personal page Vadim Gerasimov

    Tetris Story

    No online copy on file
  5. [5]
    Encyclopedia Wikipedia Read

    Elektronorgtechnica

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektronorgtechnica ↗
  6. [6]
    Book David Sheff (with Andy Eddy)

    Game Over: Press Start to Continue

    No online copy on file
  7. [7]
    Article Alexei Sinitsky and Dmitry Lyudmirsky

    Интеллектуальная собственность / Тетрис

    No online copy on file
  8. [8]
    Article Reuters

    Soviets Play Capitalist Game With New Computer Puzzle

    No online copy on file

Image & music credits

11
  • CC BY-SA 4.04
  • CC BY 2.03
  • CC BY-SA 3.03
  • License unknown1

11 photos, from the hosts linked below. Each file name links to the file's page, which carries the full license terms.

#UseFileAuthorLicense
1 Photo Nintendo Entertainment System - Mattel Version (42532353740).jpg Matthew Paul Argall from Australia CC BY 2.0
2 Photo Alexey Pajitnov, Games Designer & Creator of Tetris.jpg ImagineCup CC BY 2.0
3 Photo E60M.JPG Sergei Frolov,Soviet calculators Collection,http://www.rk86.com/frolov/ CC BY-SA 3.0
4 Photo RX50-AA 5 ¼” dual floppy disk drive.jpg Mister rf CC BY-SA 4.0
5 Photo Michael S. Hart's Teletype 1.png Rcc8j CC BY-SA 4.0
6 Photo Ed Logg.jpg Photo taken by Aaron Hightower (Ahigh), Lead Programmer of Rush 2049 Coin-op CC BY-SA 3.0
7 Photo 1989 year. USSR. Moscow, Red Square.tiff Dmitry Makeev CC BY-SA 4.0
8 Photo 1989 year. Moscow, Red Square. img 02.jpg Dmitry Makeev CC BY-SA 4.0
9 Photo Russian Tea Room.jpg LH (talk) CC BY-SA 3.0
10 Photo Alexey Pajitnov GDC 2024 (cropped).jpg Official GDC CC BY 2.0
11 Photo assets/supplied/henk rogers 2020.jpg ThinkTech Hawaii, via Wikimedia Commons (File:Henk_Rogers_2020.png, CC BY 3.0) License unknown

Corrections

No corrections logged since publication.

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