While legendary puzzle game Tetris was created by Russian programmer Alexey Pajitnov, it spread around the world largely thanks to the efforts of Henk Rogers of Bullet-Proof Software. Through a complicated series of negotiations with Russian authorities in the late '80s – which are now the subject of a feature film – Rogers secured the rights that led to the iconic Game Boy and NES versions of Tetris from Nintendo. That seems to be part of why he was "pissed off" when Nintendo made its own clone of the puzzle game in Dr. Mario.
Rogers tells PC Gamer he was "good friends" with Game Boy designer Gunpei Yokoi since, after all, "I helped him launch Game Boy and he helped me launch Tetris. So that was a mutual thing. But I was a little bit miffed when Nintendo tried to come up with a game to beat Tetris."
That game was Dr. Mario, whose development was led by Yokoi. It's a falling block puzzle game, similar to Tetris, but instead of fitting together oddly-shaped pieces to clear lines, you're matching colored pills to eliminate little virus creatures. It's a quality puzzle game that sold well and spawned numerous sequels, but Rogers is correct in suggesting that, well, it ain't Tetris.
Rogers says the instruction to create Dr. Mario as a competitor to Tetris came from late Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi, who "tried to buy Tetris" outright. "I said no, like 'OK, I'll trade Mario for Tetris. ' Meaning sort of over my dead body. And then Mr Yamauchi gave instructions [to his team], 'you go make a game that's as good as Tetris' and, you know, blah blah blah. Dr Mario is sort of a blatant attempt at making another Tetris. And it's not as good."
He laughs about the situation today, but Rogers says he "was pissed off" at the time. "And I can't really blame Yokoi for that! I mean, I don't know whether it's under him or under another team, whatever, but yeah: that's business."
Rogers went on to co-found The Tetris Company alongside Pajitnov, which handles licensing for every version of Tetris released to this day. The company says Tetris has sold over 520 million units over its long life, so I'd say he got the last laugh in the end.
Tetris tops our list of the best Game Boy games ever made, and there's an argument to be made that it's the best game on every single platform it's appeared on.
