Sat, Dec 8, 2018, 9:41 AM

Hello,

I'm contacting you because me and some friends are a bit confused by the early timeline of the game. All of my life, I remember Tetris's birthday being in 1985, but the 25 year anniversary was in 2009, putting the date in 1984. We know from the book "Game Over," that Tetris won 2nd place in a video game competition in November of 1985.

From the book "The Tetris Effect," we know that Xonix was popular at the Computer Center. It claims that you wrote Antix for IBM PC at some point after. Then shortly after that, Pajitnov told you and Pavlovsky about the Tetris idea. According to the book, he coded it over the span of weeks. The book then says that the IBM version's development took two months to reach 3.12.

Now we know Xonix 1.0 was released in March of 1984. According to this timeline, that makes just enough time for Pajitnov to finish the Electronica 60 version in June of 1984. However, that only works if Xonix was popular at the computer center within a month of its original release, and only if Antix was written very quickly after. Antix would likely have had to been written in early April of 1984.

Was it common for a western game to become popular in the Soviet Union so quickly? Does this timeline seem accurate to you? Thank you so much for your time, and especially for your contribution to the game.


Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 4:31 AM

You are right. Pajitnov's version of Tetris's birthday is off by 1 year. Not sure why. I first visited the computer center and started working with computers in September 1984. So, the "official" June 6, 1984 birthday just ain't possible. I'm also not sure what exact competition did Tetris win in 85. I believe Pajitnov is the only source of this information. I have never heard about this competition from any other independent source. 3.12, by the way, is a fudged number. We didn't have accurate versioning or build numbers and just picked a plausible number for the final official version.

Interesting that you have noticed the discrepancy. I was puzzled by this in 2009 too, but never discussed this with anyone. And nobody asked until now. :)

Best regards,
Vadim