Tetris (NES video game)

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This article is about the official Nintendo game. For the unofficial Tengen game, see Tetris (Atari). For the Famicom game, see List of Tetris variants.
Tetris
Tetris NES cover art.jpg
North American box art
Developer(s)Nintendo R&D1
Publisher(s)Nintendo
Producer(s)Gunpei Yokoi
Composer(s)Hirokazu Tanaka
SeriesTetris
Platform(s)Nintendo Entertainment System
Release
  • NA: November 1989
  • EU: February 23, 1990
Genre(s)Puzzle
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer

Tetris is a puzzle video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) released in 1989. It is the first official console release of Tetris to have been developed and published by Nintendo. It was released after two earlier NES versions of Tetris, an official Family Computer version released by Bullet-Proof Software in Japan (December 1988)[1] and an unofficial Atari version released by Tengen in North America (May 1989).

Development[]

By 1989, about six companies claimed rights to create and distribute the Tetris software for home computers, game consoles, and handheld systems.[2] ELORG, the Soviet bureau that held the ultimate copyright, held that none of the companies was legally entitled to produce an arcade version, and signed those rights over to Atari Games, and it signed non-Japanese console and handheld rights to Nintendo. Tetris was shown at the January 1988 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where it was picked up by Dutch-born American games publisher Henk Rogers, then based in Japan. This eventually led to an agreement brokered with Nintendo that saw Tetris bundled with every Game Boy.[3] The Nintendo home release was developed by Gunpei Yokoi.

Music[]

The soundtrack was written by Nintendo composer Hirokazu Tanaka, who also scored the Game Boy version. The soundtrack features arrangements of "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker and from Georges Bizet's opera Carmen. The former arrangement replaces the arrangement of "Korobeiniki", present in the Game Boy version, which has become strongly associated with Tetris.

Classic Tetris World Championship[]

Main article: Classic Tetris World Championship

The NES version of Tetris is featured in the annual Classic Tetris World Championship. Players compete with this version of Tetris in a 1-on-1 competition to score the most points.[4]

Reception[]

In its first six months of release by 1990, Nintendo's NES version of Tetris had sales of 1.5 million copies totaling $52 million (equivalent to $109 million in 2020), surpassing Spectrum HoloByte's versions for personal computers at 150,000 copies for $6 million (equivalent to $13.1 million in 2020) in the previous two years since 1988.[5] As of 2004, the NES version had sales of 8 million copies worldwide.[6]

References[]

  1. ^ "Products: Family Computer". Bullet-Proof Software. Archived from the original on 2000-08-23.
  2. ^ "From Russia with Litigation". Next Generation. No. 26. Imagine Media. February 1997. p. 42.
  3. ^ The Guardian, June 2, 2009, How Tetris conquered the world, block by block
  4. ^ "Official Classic Tetris World Championship Site". Retrieved May 8, 2021.
  5. ^ Dvorchak, Robert (17 June 1990). "Soviet Game Conquers the Free Market : Technology: Tetris, an electronic Rubik's Cube, proves to be addictive. Sales are sizzling. Sequel is coming from East Bloc". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 2020-01-10. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
  6. ^ Director/Producer: Magnus Temple; Executive Producer: Nick Southgate (2004). "Tetris: From Russia With Love". BBC Four. Event occurs at 51:23. BBC. BBC Four. The real winners were Nintendo. To date, Nintendo dealers across the world have sold 8 million Tetris cartridges on the Nintendo Entertainment system.
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