Today marks the release of Henk Rogers’ memoir, The Perfect Game—Tetris: From Russia With Love. Rogers is widely recognized in the gaming world, primarily for his pivotal role in bringing Tetris to the West and ensuring the game’s creator, Alexey Pajitnov, received the acknowledgment and financial rewards he was entitled to.

The memoir is an engaging read, with the Soviet-era anecdotes nearly resembling a John Le Carre novel in some instances. As I delve into the book, I anticipate sharing my insights shortly. The launch has also provided an opportunity to chat with Rogers about his career and the renowned figures he has encountered throughout his journey, especially surrounding the topic of Tetris.

Interestingly, the version of Tetris we are familiar with today was substantially different when it originated. Although it retained many fundamental elements, changes introduced by Rogers and Nintendo were vital to shaping the game’s current form. I mentioned to Rogers that for me, Tetris is forever associated with the Game Boy, prompting me to ask about the contrasts between the original and contemporary versions.

“So the original Tetris was a survival game,” Rogers said. “It’s about how long you can survive. In the first Elektronica 60 version, it wasn’t primarily about scoring points. Rather, it focused on how long you could last before the screen filled up. You obtained bonus points for hard-dropping pieces, where the aim was to push a button that made the piece plummet to the bottom. Each line that it dropped corresponded to a point.”

The Elektronica 60, a Soviet computer resembling a bootleg PDP-11, was prevalent from the late 1970s into the 1990s and beyond. Pajitnov programmed the original Tetris for it, but due to the machine’s limitation of not supporting raster graphics, the game pieces were crafted from letters.

Rogers elaborated, “That was the initial concept. There was no scoring for clearing lines until later on. My experiences in Japan with arcade games like Pac-Man or Space Invaders showed that players usually engaged with the game until a point where their scores were totaled, making the scoring clear to everyone.”

Rogers’ primary contribution to Tetris was instituting a scoring system. He went further by introducing single, double, triple, and Tetris line clears to enhance scoring, especially during slower game levels, allowing adept players a way to earn points despite the slow pace. This addition helped players comprehend how their scores were accumulated, unlike the original iterations which were essentially endless and lacked breaks.

The concept of survival gaming is more prevalent today, and while Rogers isn’t equating Tetris with contemporary survival games like Valheim, he accurately describes the original mechanics. In its essence, Tetris fundamentally revolves around how long you can endure before reaching failure.

While Pajitnov is credited as the creator of Tetris, Henk Rogers’ role in shaping the game we cherish today was far more significant than mere licensing.