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    Tetris: The Games People Play
    Tetris: The Games People Play
    Tetris: The Games People Play
    Ebook252 pages5 minutes

    Tetris: The Games People Play

    By Brian "Box" Brown

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    About this ebook

    For fans of Tetris on Apple TV+, read the true story of Henk Rogers, Alexey Pajitnov, and the perfect game.

    Simple yet addictive, Tetris delivers an irresistible, unending puzzle that has players hooked. Play it long enough and you’ll see those brightly colored geometric shapes everywhere. You’ll see them in your dreams.

    Alexey Pajitnov had big ideas about games. In 1984, he created Tetris in his spare time while developing software for the Soviet government. Once Tetris emerged from behind the Iron Curtain, it was an instant hit. Nintendo, Atari, Sega—game developers big and small all wanted Tetris. A bidding war was sparked, followed by clandestine trips to Moscow, backroom deals, innumerable miscommunications, and outright theft.

    In this graphic novel, New York Times–bestselling author Box Brown untangles this complex history and delves deep into the role games play in art, culture, and commerce. For the first time and in unparalleled detail, Tetris: The Games People Play tells the true story of the world’s most popular video game.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateNov 1, 2016
    ISBN9781250145895
    Tetris: The Games People Play
    Author

    Brian "Box" Brown

    Brian “Box” Brown is an Eisner Award–winning author whose comics have appeared in the New York Times, Playboy, and New York magazine. His books include the New York Times–bestselling Andre the Giant: Life and Legend, Tetris: The Games People Play, Is This Guy for Real?: The Unbelievable Andy Kaufman, Cannabis: The Illegalization of Weed in America, Child Star, and Accidental Czar (with writer Andrew S. Weiss). boxbrown.com

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    Reviews for Tetris

    4/5

    69 ratings11 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Surprisingly engaging for a book about distribution rights of a videogame.
    • 5/5
      This book was fascinating! I thought it was just going to be about Tetris but it was about the whole history of video games and Nintendo as well! The simple artwork made the story flow very well and kept everything easy to understand. This is another one tat I highly recommend!
    • 5/5
      such a fun way to learn about history, business, technology, and some other things! love the art and the structure of the whole thing.
    • 3/5
      Not as much a history of Tetris as it is a history of copyright infringement.
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this. I'm a huge Tetris fan, and was already pretty familiar with the Tetris origin story. I'm also a huge graphic novel fan, and was primed to enjoy the combination of the two. In fact, I lay down and read the book in an hour or two the night I got it, and immediately rated it 5-stars on Goodreads, even though I knew at the time I had some reservations. But I didn't write a review. I didn't think about it deeply enough to articulate those reservations to myself.

      I had a chance to re-read it this morning, and realized immediately what was wrong. Two things: 1. the story is barely about Tetris. It is some parts about Tetris, in the middle mostly, but it has a beginning that makes all kinds of statements about games and the origins of games that is written in a very declarative style. These statements are written as if they are fact: some about the origins of senet (one of the first board games); some about which came first, art or games; and some hasty conclusions about the motivations of people as they play games. I would go so far as to say that all of these statements, written as if they are absolute truths, written as if they are well-researched facts, are entirely subjective at best and downright incorrect at worst.

      Much later, after what I consider the best parts of the book in the middle, about the actual origination of Tetris, the book becomes primarily about the IP rights battle(s) that plagued Tetris for years. Don't get me wrong, there are many interesting stories in there, but I feel like they're so much less interesting than the origin of games and why we play games, ideas that the book begins with, makes poorly drawn conclusions about, and then abandons.

      The entire book is written as if there is nothing subjective about it. These are depictions of facts. History. And after those first 30 pages about ancient history... pages with lots of statements I found suspect, I found it hard to read all the rest without a hefty suspicion. My skeptical hackles were up. The seeds of doubt had taken root. It's entirely possible the rest of the book is well researched, but I wish the book hadn't started as it did.

      The second thing I disliked about the book was far more subjective. I loved the art style. The drawings in the book are awesome. But they are not, with a few pages of exceptions, at all inspired by Tetris.

      Now maybe this is weird, but I'm a Tetris connoisseur. I've played every Tetris variant I can get my hands on. I've got ALL of the Tetris board games. I've got a collection of Tetris tee-shirts. So... I like Tetris art. And I really expected to find a bunch of it in this book. Overall, I was pretty disappointed. For the most part, pentominos are really only found on pages that depict the actual game itself. The cover is an exception, it is not what we find inside.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic! A very interesting history and biography.This tells the story of the Russian man who invented Tetris, the history of the game itself, and to my surprise the history of the company, Nintendo. I had no idea they've been around since the 1880s when they were strictly a card game company. Back in the day, I remember the controversy over Tetris being a Russian game and something about the copyright problems. This explains it all and also the downfall of Atari. A very absorbing account of interest to anyone with a curiosity in the history of gaming. I'm going to buy this as a Christmas present for my oldest son, a software engineer and retro gamer.
    • 4/5
      This graphic novel title was a little deceiving. Yes, it talks about the game Tetris, but it covers a lot more. The story goes way back to the beginning of mankind to try and determine where and how the desire for gaming began and how it developed. It moves on to Japan and the history of Nintendo founded by Fusjiro Yamauchi. It began with a popular card game and grew into the technology giant we know today. About 2/3 of the way into the book we meet up with Alexey. We follow his process as he developed Tetris. It was originally distributed around Russia as Freeware, but when it was sent to a company in Hungary, it escaped to the world. The business behind the distribution of the game was daunting to Alexey and everyone was trying to make money. This section of the book is quite drawn out, but interesting to see the hoops, the many different companies involved and the politics behind this. Eventually Alexey moved to the US and got a job at Microsoft designing games. Tetris was the first game to go into space. A very interesting read.

      I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
    • 5/5
      I’m not usually a fan of non-fiction, but this graphic novel that tells the story of how the video game Tetris became a sensation across the globe was fascinating!
    • 4/5
      Had no idea there was such a story behind this ubiquitous game. The story is extremely effectively told.
    • 3/5
      graphic nonfiction - history of games, the development of the tetris game, and how many fought for the various rights to sell it afterwards.
    • 4/5
      The history of Tetris in graphic novel format. I don't think I'd want to read this any other way. Who knew the game we love so much had such an unusual back story?

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    Tetris - Brian "Box" Brown

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