NES30 #3: Tetris

In 2015, Nintendo's hugely successful Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) turns 30 years old. The NES, an adaptation of Nintendo's already successful Famicom console, re-invigorated console gaming internationally after the collapse of Atari and went on to sell 43 million units worldwide. NES30 celebrates this anniversary by counting down my favourite 30 games for the system.

In 1984 Alexey Pajitnov was an artificial intelligence researcher working in a Soviet Union laboratory. He had a tendency to program small computer games to test new hardware when it was installed. One day he created a simply puzzle game comprised of falling blocks. He made the shapes tetronimos - objects comprised of four squares arranged together. When it became clear that his screen was rapidly filling up with tetronimos he programmed his game to erase any row on the screen that became completely filled with squares.

When Pajitnov's little game proved hugely popular among the laboratory workers, a few of them ported it to the PC. It suddenly became an enormously popular game across Moscow, under the now legendary title Tetris. Today Tetris is almost certainly one of the most famous and well-played videogames in the entire world. and for many gamers it is a brand synonymous with Nintendo.

How I Ended This Summer (2010)

Pavel and Sergei both work in an isolated meteorological station in Russia's far north. Every day they step out into the frozen coastal tundra to take radiation readings from a group of sensors in the area. When they head out, they have to go armed in case of polar bear attacks. Once the readings are made, they use a radio to report them back to Russia's science ministry. Sergei has worked here for years, and is a gruff, impatient bully. The much younger Pavel only took the assignment so that he could write an article about it, and spends most of his days either playing first-person shooters on the station computer or listening to pop music.

Sergei heads out to go fishing for ocean trout, leaving Pavel behind to cover for his absence. While he's gone, the ministry radios in to inform him that his wife and child have been killed in a car accident. Pavel, who's terrified of the violently aggressive Sergei, can't bring himself to pass on the message. The longer he waits, the worse the situations gets.

Tetris at 30

On this day 30 years ago, the Soviet Union's greatest contribution to videogaming was released. Tetris was a tile-laying puzzle game designed by Alexey Pajitnov and released on 6 June 1984 for the Elektronica 60 computer. It is a fairly simple game: a series of geometric shapes fall from the top of the screen - each is comprised of four connected squares - and the player must rotate each shape as it falls and fit it in among the shapes already sitting on the bottom. Once a complete line of squares is formed, that line vanishes - and so on. It's simple, yes, but it's also quite difficult once the speed at which the shapes (or 'tetrominoes') fall increases.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to call Tetris the greatest puzzle videogame of all time. There have been many others, but I'm not sure any of them are as instinctively easy to learn but as wonderfully challenging as Tetris. It's also one of the highest-selling games ever made, with an estimated 170 million copies sold across countless platforms and consoles.