Great tidbit: Nintendo is an old company, founded in the 1880s! And the Japanese word nintendo is generally translated as 'Work hard.

Perhaps one of the Tetris biographies outline it better - it is quite a challenge to show legal history and court proceedings in a graphic format!ДЈ.5 stars for a good effort to tell a difficult story. New technology: gaming consoles, personal computers, handheld devices - it was a Wild West in terms of legality and intellectual property - are these consoles computers or toys? and how the hell do we classify a Gameboy? Throw in the late cold-war politics of USSR and the US with t g e techno boom in Japan and it made quite an interesting recipe.Д«rown does a decent job explaining a technical and detailed legal dispute between Nintendo, Atari, and the Soviet government (who employed the developer of the game, Alexey Pajitnov however, as a state employee, he had no rights to his creation) but I was still confused about the particulars and how the technology of the consoles played into it all. In my childhood and youth, I had no idea about the complicated and shady rights issues surrounding the game and it's circuitious route to the American market. Like most people in my generation in the US, I spent hours lulled by the 8-bit music and descending blocks (and the anxiety of waiting for the 4-long line to complete!. While this section of the book was very entertaining, I wish it had been a separate book entirely - it was inserted into the story after the Tetris characters were already introduced and seemed out of place and extraneous. He begins the book looking at the concept of games/gaming over the millenia, tracing the earliest games and how they were created and played. Unless youвЂ™re interested in the pedantic legal wrangling behind Tetris, donвЂ™t bother with this one.Д«rown tells the fascinating - and litigous - tale of one of the most famous games in history. At least it has a happy ending with Alexey finally receiving royalties for the game he made вЂ“ 12 years afterwards but better late than never, eh? But too much of this overly-long book, documenting the tedious squabbling of suits over a product none of them created, was an utter snoozefest to read. The actual development of the game as well as some other details like the phenomenal cultural impact it had and the sad fate of AlexeyвЂ™s friend who helped him make Tetris, Vlad (who went nuts, murdered his family and committed suicide), were fascinating. First one businessman owns them, then another, then one boring businessman owns the American rights but not the Japanese, and on and on - who fucking cares?! Then from page 100 until the end 150 pages later the book becomes a dreary catalogue of the rights battles over Tetris. The thirty pages(!) of seeing Alexey develop his idea of a modified electronic version of the Russian puzzle game, Pentominoes, was compelling and informative. Nintendo was a popular format for Tetris, especially when paired with the Gameboy, though the game appeared on a number of consoles and we donвЂ™t get the history of Atari or arcade machines! ItвЂ™s slightly interesting but feels totally unnecessary. Up вЂtil then thereвЂ™s a truncated history of games from ancient times to modern and the company background of Nintendo.

Box BrownвЂ™s Tetris: The Games People Play tells its origin story and unfortunately itвЂ™s not nearly as fun.ДЇor a book ostensibly about Tetris, it takes itвЂ™s sweet time getting around to talking about it! ItвЂ™s 70 pages before we meet Alexey Pajitnov, the Russian creator of Tetris. WeвЂ™ve all played Tetris and enjoyed its blocky goodness (until the pieces start coming down too quickly and that damn long piece wonвЂ™t appear and itвЂ™s game over, man, GAME OVER!!!).

Tetris games