Still addictive, still timeless: Tetris turns 30

Before there was Candy Crush, Angry Birds and Cut The Rope, there was Tetris.

Simple by design, with no flashy graphics or even a colour screen, the premise was simple: clear lines of tiles by fitting the falling shapes, known as Tetriminos, together to make a continuous horizontal line.

And if you are of a certain age, a few simple sounds will instantly transport you back to your wasted youth.

Today, the game - which originated in the former Soviet Union - is officially 30 years old. June 6th is World Tetris day, marking the anniversary of its first playable release.

The brainchild of Alexey Pajitnov, Tetris was created when he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow in 1984.

Since its launch, it has remained a firm favourite. It has sold more than 170 million copies worldwide and been named as one of the greatest video games of all time. Hours of your day could be lost to the game, which has been made available for almost every gaming console and computer system out there. It even made it into the Guinness World records as the most ported game, translated for 65 platforms, including mobile phones.

It’s even making its way on to the next generation of consoles. Both Sony and Microsoft have confirmed that versions of Tetris will be available for the PS4 and Xbox One this year, tapping into the nostalgia that is sure to follow this year.

But with such a simple concept, why has Tetris managed to hang around for so long? Its success may be puzzling, especially given today’s big budget blockbuster games that spend millions on development.

According to one academic, the game has endured for 30 years because it appeals to the basic mental instinct to tidy things.

“Tetris is the granddaddy of puzzle games like Candy Crush saga — the things that keep us puzzling away for hours, days and weeks,” said Dr Tom Stafford, Sheffield University.  “Tetris is pure game: there is no benefit to it, nothing to learn, no social or physical consequence. It is almost completely pointless, but keeps us coming back for more and more.”

The game delivers the same kind of psychological satisfaction as scratching an itch, he said.

“Tetris is so moreish that one writer called it ‘pharmatronic’ — an electronic with all the mind altering properties of a drug,” Dr Stafford said. “The so-called Tetris Effect is when you close your eyes at night after a few hours of playing the game and you can still see the blocks falling down, in your mind’s eye. Or you look at patterns on the floor and you make tessellations of the Tetris blocks in the tiles.”

(Additional reporting - PA)