Ever played a Soviet video game? Of course you have! It’s Tetris, quite possibly the most played game of all time, and arguably the closest thing to a “perfect game design” that the world has (will?) ever seen. Alas, the game’s creator, Alexey Pajitnov, never saw a penny from the unprecedented global phenomenon that he created (everything went to the Soviet government).
The way in which Western game companies discovered and acquired the rights to Tetris has to rank as one of the strangest Cold War-era stories ever. David Sheff’s amazing biography of the early days of Nintendo dedicates an entire chapter to this insane East-West encounter, where several important players in the game industry fought each other while trying to charm the Soviet government, which in turn grew increasingly suspicious of their motives, since they could not understand why a bunch of random capitalists appeared so eager to purchase rights to the game.
By the way, Sheff’s book is an absolute must-read for anyone that’s even remotely interested in gaming or Japanese culture in general.
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