Tetris First Trailer Reveals Shocking Truth About Iconic Game

Tetris is probably one of the most famous games that ever existed. Everybody around the world has already played it, at least once. But one thing people might not know about this game, It's that its creation hides very dark secrets. In fact, the game has been programmed during the cold war and was directly linked to the fall of the USSR.

Sounds crazy right? Well, that's exactly what the first trailer about the Tetris creators tells us: "The Story You couldn't make up". And in this first trailer, we already learn a lot of things about the creators and importers of the game, and it seems like its release was the most dangerous video game release in history. But let's analyze each point.

The trailer starts with something that every Tetris player has experienced: addiction. Henk Rogers tells it himself: "I played it for five minutes, I still see falling blocks in my dreams". He then continues to sell it with more scientific terms: "It's poetry, Art and math, all working in magical synchronicity, it's the perfect game". Then, multiple people he tried to sell the game to, start to pronounce the name of the game and say they don't understand why is it called that way.

And that's already an interesting point, where does Tetris come from? According to the trailer: "It's a combination of tetra, Greek for four, and tennis". For the first point, we totally understand since each block is made of four cubes, but like the investors in the film, we don't really understand what tennis is doing here. Well, the Russian co-creator likes tennis, It's as simple as that. Concluding on the addiction, Henk says: "This game is not only addictive, It stays with you".

Then, something even more magical happens in the trailer, we discover that Henk Rogers, played by Taron Egerton, the first person who later imported Tetris for Japan, has been one of the first people on the planet to see the Game Boy before it was released. And when we know the influence it has on the future, It's crazy for tech fans to see that part of history. In this sequence, Henk is shocked like anybody at that time would be, but after that, he stays focused on his business and ask the creators of the console to package Tetris with the Game Boy. A brilliant idea. However, this is only the good part and the surface of the iceberg, since the release of Tetris around the world has been very complicated, and full of conflicts between countries.

After a minute of pure magic, reality strikes us in the trailer. We're in the 80s and the Soviet Union is still the number one enemy of the US. But what is the connection between Tetris and that situation ? Well, the game has been created first by the Russian programmer Aleksei Pajitnov. He was inspired by a real game called 'Pentominoes' where you put wooden blocks inside a box. When he presents the game to his colleagues, they love it and the game becomes a success in Moscow. At that time, the game is edited by Elorg.

But Robert Stein, owner of Andromeda Software at that time in the UK, also loves the game and decides to sign a deal with Elorg to import it into the UK and the US, making it the first-ever Soviet Union game to be sold in the USA. However, this contract only implies computers and not consoles, and Stein wants to make it available for Atari and Sega consoles. But at the same time, here comes Henk Rogers, owner of the BulletProof Software company, who also wants the rights of Tetris to exploit it in Japan, for Nintendo.

Henk Rogers gets the rights for Nintendo but there's a problem. He didn't get them from the Russian editor Elorg, but from Stein directly, and Elorg had no idea this was happening. And that's how a big conflict, in the times of the cold war, starts between these countries, just for a game. As it is said in the trailer, the world changed along with that game, and we might get very interesting pieces of history in it. However, if you want to know how this story ends, you just have to wait until next month on Apple TV+.