Tetris (Atari)
It’s like Siberia, only harder.
Developer: Atari / Tengen
Platforms: Arcade, NES
First Release Date: February 1989
By early 1989, Atari was eager to bring their own version of Tetris to the North American arcade market. Their take didn't mess with the basic gameplay, but added a few wrinkles. Instead of purely increasing speed, difficulty increases through new complications every few rounds. Start with extra blocks on the board, or have small blocks appearing on top as you build, or- as a Tetris First- deal with rising garbage blocks! They’re not in a versus setting where you’d expect, but it’s still the rising lines that became the series standard. Another round has the starting blocks spell out the top player's initials, which is adorable. There are some unique scoring systems at play that give more points for placing higher blocks, and a rainbow meter on the side that increases your score the higher it gets. All around, it’s a perfectly fun version of Tetris! It’s hard to mess that up, at least for me.
Intermissions between some rounds show a Russian dancer in a window at the top. I love this guy. He’s so well animated with several moves, backflipping all over the place. He’ll also show up during the game rarely, just to watch. If you win a round while he's there, he'll celebrate. But if you lose, he'll throw his hat to the ground and stomp on it. It's a lovingly animated bit of flavor. Putting this guy in the in-progress gallery of beloved Tetris characters. The soundtrack is a mix of real traditional Russian music and original themes. The frantic themes Bradinsky and Loginska are named after Brad Fuller (the composer) and Ed Logg (one of the designers for the game, and for some very early arcade titles like Asteroid).
Connie’s Courtroom:
At this time, Atari was split into two separate branches, and the branch that worked on arcade titles was not allowed to use the Atari name for console releases. As such, they created Tengen to get around that limitation. That loophole was nothing compared to what they tried to get around Nintendo's strict publishing rules for the NES, which limited developers to very few releases a year and demanded exclusivity.
Atari hoped to bypass the lockout system that kept unauthorized cartridges from running. They made an audacious move- they requested the code for the lockout chip from the U.S. Copyright Office, claiming it was needed for litigation against Nintendo. Mysteriously, Atari soon had their own version of the lockout chip, were able to produce their own cartridges, and sold them under their Tengen brand.
Among the first of these games was a port of Atari's arcade Tetris. Atari sued Nintendo over their publishing monopoly, and Nintendo countered over the unauthorized games. Tengen Tetris had its own case, and the game was suspended from sale after only being briefly available. When a deal was made for the handheld rights to Tetris, it resulted in other Tetris rights being left up in the air, conviently for Nintendo. They bought up the console rights as well, something Atari had no idea was in contention. The Tengen release was now even more delegitimized. Nintendo won the Tetris case, and the game was recalled, with the remaining stock destroyed.
Unfortunate fate aside, the NES version is quite a good port. Multiplayer modes both competitive and cooperative offer the ability to play against the computer as well. Co-op mode has you building at the same time, a fun gimmick that has reappeared in some other games. It’s far too easy to mess each other up, but that’s all part of the fun. Although Nintendo’s NES Tetris was by no means bad, and would later foster a dedicated and very competitive following, some at the time saw it as a downgrade from the more feature-rich Tengen release. It feels odd to have this game and so many others easily available now, without having to think about the limited access people had at the time, and the hard work put into projects thrown away by background litigation and dealings. I try to keep that all in mind. Anyway, play Atari Tetris for the dancing guy.
Thank you for reading!
