Welcome back to Throwback Thursday, where we take a game that might have been forgotten and refresh your memories. This week, we have a game that is short but sweet and one that revolutionized the gaming world: Tetris.

 

Whether it is the addictive musical score or just the idea of getting all the blocks in a row, people have come to love the game. Having various shapes fall down–always made of four blocks–at an increasing speed sounds simple enough when it comes to clearing lines of them, but when the blocks hit the floor, things tend to go crazy.

 

This is partially due to the musical score associated with it. Both of the themes, appropriately named “Theme A” and “Theme B”, are mesmerizing to listen to because of its repetitive nature. Once people jump into the game, they become sucked in by the beat that rarely gets old. The music instead puts them in a trance where they are focused on the blocks.

 

 

Although these are simple blocks, people have come to love and hate some of them. Everyone who has played Tetris has that one block they regret getting in almost any situation, and almost everyone has begun to worship the coming of the ever-gracious line piece. It is this situation that makes you realize just how deep this game is.

 

The reason Tetris was revolutionary was that the game was the launch game for the Nintendo Game Boy and was the first game played in space. This Russian game was made at the Academy of Science of the USSR and was taken into space by a Russian astronaut on a trip to the ISS. Because of this, the game has been put down in history alongside the likes of Pac-Man and Pong. The plethora of handhelds out these days, including smartphones, where pioneered with Game Boy, with simple button controls and removable media. Since Tetris was the first game on the system, it makes sense that the game would also be put alongside the system in history.

 

 

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Shawn Richards studies games to understand how they work. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook.