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The Wild History of Tetris · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Das Vidania and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Jerry's here too, man, this is stuff you should know. Comrade.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the Tetris edition. How much Tetris have you played?
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: What's your background there?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I was a very casual Tetris player. I mean I
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: didn't even realize there were as many levels as there are.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: I tend to flip out when things start to really
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: go fast, So I wasn't very good at Tetris, but
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: I did enjoy it when I played it.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: And where'd you play it?
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: What system?
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: The classic nees? Okay, how about you, Chuck, what is
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: your relationship to Tetris?
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: Well, the only way I ever played it was on
• 0:56
  Speaker 4: a game Boy. I don't know if I had a
• 0:59
  Speaker 4: game Boy. If it was Scott's.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: I know he had one.
• 1:03
  Speaker 4: But at any rate, I played it on the game
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: Boy only and really really loved it and got into
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: that for a while. I wasn't like obsessed with it
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: or anything, but I did have the Tetris streams. I
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: did walk around seeing things as Tetris on the landscape,
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: so it definitely invaded my consciousness for a while. But
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: I never played it on anything but the game Boy,
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: so I don't know how to play it with a
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: regular controller or whatever.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I couldn't. Like I tried playing it on computer.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: In it, I was like, I don't I can't get this.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: I'm just used to the NYS controller for it.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I was gonna try and play it today, just
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: like whatever.
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: I'm sure there's some free online version you can play
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: on your desktop, but I was afraid I was a
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: little behind.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: Today.
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: I was like, I'm not going to do it because
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: I'll be thirty minutes later I will still been playing
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: Tetris because it's a very addictive game, and part of
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: why it was successful is because it seems like every
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: body that ever tried Tetris early on at least loved
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: and became pretty addicted to Tetris.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I was asking you and me. I was like,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: did you ever play Tetris? And she just kind of
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: gave me this. She didn't even look over at me.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: She just looked at them at me out of the
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: corner of her eyes and was like, I was pretty
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: good at Tetra.
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah I could see that.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, come on, I never I didn't ask her if
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: she had the dreams, but I could see her having
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: the dreams. Apparently that's a really common phenomenon, right, I
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: think it's actually called the Tetris effect.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: Uh, yeah, for sure.
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: When it starts invading your dreams or you start you know,
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: if you're walking around a city and you start looking
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: at an alleyway that you could drop a long I
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: beam into, then it's in your bones.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. So yeah, we'll talk a little bit
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: about why it's so addictive. People have come up with
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: theories for it, like it's a video game that's so addictive.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Psychologists have actually come up with theories to explain why
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Tetris in particular, not video games, Tetris in particular has
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: that Tetris effect and it's so addictive, which kind of
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: give you an idea of why. I think we talked
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: about this in our Minecraft episode that where I got
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: everything right that Tetris is actually the best selling game
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: of all time. Yeah, closing in on five hundred and
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: fifty million copies. Wow.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that is a stackering number of people, man, right.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: And this video game hasn't been around since like the
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: eighteen hundred. It's like it's from nineteen eighty four.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: It's not Oregon Trail right right exactly.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: You can't catch dysentery playing it.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: No, and big thanks to Olivia for this one.
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: I had this idea when I recently remembered that I
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: had not watched the Tetris Cold.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: War thriller movie.
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: That is a very loose sort of story about how
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: this game was developed, because it's a very interesting story
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: set against the backdrop of the Cold War. They really
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: it's a fictionalized version, so it sort of loosely follows
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: some of it. But it looked like a really fun
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: movie that I'd kind of forgot about. So I asked
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: Lvia to put this together, and I'm gonna watch the
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: movie sometime this week, I think.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: So.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Is that huge chase scene where Alexi Pajetnov is chasing
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: the CIA agents across rooftops in Istanbul and catches up
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: with them and kills them with the garrot is made up?
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: I think it is. And he was throwing Tetris pieces
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: at them and building Tetris walls. That's what the movie
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: they should have done.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, that would have been pretty cool. He
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: just like holds his hand out and instead of a
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: web coming out, it's Tetris pieces right in your face.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: So you mentioned a guy that's very key to this.
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: In fact, he's the most key because he is the creator,
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: Alexi Pagetnov. The year's nineteen eighty four, very big key
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: year in American history in a lot of ways. And
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: he was working at a place called the Jerrod Nitsen
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: Computer Center CenTra, which is a part of the Soviet
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: Academy of Sciences, and he came up with this game
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: that he originally called Genetic Engineering. Great name eventually would
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: land on Tetris, but it was a copy initially of
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: his favorite puzzle game when he was a kid, called Pentomeno.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: I'm glad, yes you said it. It took me a
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: little while and I was like, oh, like Domino, but
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: with five.
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. And it was like any other puzzle. It
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: was a wooden box and you had these pieces, twelve
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: wooden tiles, each represented a different shape that can be
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: made with five squares, and it was just a physical thing.
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: It was in a rectangular, horizontal box and you would
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: just you know, it was one of those puzzles where
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: you would put the things in there and it wouldn't
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: make like an Elton John album cover. It would just
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: fit and you would be like, hey, I won I
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: fed all the pieces in here, right.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: So yeah, he basically took that and adapted it into
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: He's like, well, I'm going to totally evolutionized this. I'm
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: going to change the shapes from five boxes to four.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: And so you can't call it pentomeno anymore because pent
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: is what five in Greek or Latin something.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: Like that, right, yeah, five squares.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So he called it Tetris, named after Tetra. Yeah,
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: the Greek prefix meaning four, And apparently he also liked
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: tennis and wanted to give tennis a little shout out.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: So that's what the iss is from Tetra Tennis Tetris.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: In this initial version, like I said, it was called
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: genetic engineering, and at first it was just a horizontal
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: but he just basically did the exact same thing digitally
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: that he had in his physical I guess sitting in
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: his closet somewhere with pentomeno. It was a horizontal square
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: with these pieces that you would you know, click, I
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: don't know if you dragged at that point or not.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: Did they even have the mouse at that point, I
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: don't know.
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: Anyway you could get it over into that box and
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: fit it that the pieces didn't fly down and they
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: didn't disappear when you would complete a line like the
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: classic Tetris. That would come later when he would make
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: it a big And that was sort of the key
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: basically was he found that that first version of genetic
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: engineering was boring, and if he made it vertical, he
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: made the piece of small, and if he made those
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: lines disappear as you went, that created this addictive quality
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: that made Tetris tetris.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: That's it. Did you say that there weren't any graphics,
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: that they were like characters and punctuation marks instead.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: Of ground, So, yeah, that was the first version.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: The whole thing was made up of brackets, Like each
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: line was brackets, and like the pieces were like exclamation
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: points or periods or greater than symbols. It was pretty primitive,
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: rough first version, but yeah, it had had kind of
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: the bones to it, but it wasn't until you start
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: clearing lines that that's what tetris is all about. So
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: around the same time he had a colleague called Dmitri
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Pavlovsky was also working on games, and there was a
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: sixteen year old involved, young lad named Vottom Garashimov who
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: was a summer intern and just happened to be at
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: the right place at the right time, And the three
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: of them got together with another guy, a psychologist named
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Vladimir Pokilko, and you put the four of them together
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: and you have the earliest developers of tetris.
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he was interested in doing puzzles in relation to
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: his psychological experiments. Gerasimov and the other guy at Pavlovsky
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: were poorting games over to ibmpcs, which a lot of
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: people in the Soviet Union or not a lot of people,
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: but that was sort of one of the main computers
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: that they could have access to at the time, and
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: they had this idea like, hey, we might be able
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: to like profit from this one day, but that's going
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: to be a tricky thing because you know, this is
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: a Soviet.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: Union and everything that we do belongs to state.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: That was a great Yakov Smirnov, by the way, I
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: appreciate that. Yeah, so as we'll see the developers. Pajetanov
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: apparently was like, hey, you know, I think it'd be
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: a great idea if the USSR owned the rights to
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: this game that we developed for the first ten years.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: What do you think? He had said that it was
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: basically an impossible choice, like if he didn't do that,
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: they would cheat him out of it and he would
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: probably be investigated by the KGB anyway, So he just
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: went along with that. But before that ever happened, there
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: was the game started to spread. We mentioned Pokylko, he
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: was a psychologist, and he took it to a copy
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: to the Moscow Medical Institute where he worked and was like, Hey,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: why don't you guys try playing to see what you think?
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: And apparently the workers played so often that they had
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: to delete it from their computers because they just couldn't
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: be trusted with Tetris on their computers to get their
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: work done.
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that became kind of a common refrain in this
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: as it goes along, as more and more people are like,
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: why are all my employees crowded around the computer monitor
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: and they would go in and find them playing Tetris.
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: It spread to like I said, IBMPC users in the
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: Soviet Union, was copied onto floppy disks, transported across borders,
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: and eventually got named Robert Stein, who owned a UK
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: based company called Andromeda Software Ltd. He saw this in Hungary.
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: He was like, hey, Hungary gave us the Rubik's Cube,
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: here's another puzzle game. This is pretty interesting to me.
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: So in nineteen eighty six he realized that he had
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: a I guess. He got a hold of a telex
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: number that could reach paget Nov and he sent him
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: telex and they started telexing back and forth saying like, hey,
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: I'm interested in this. He ultimately got a reply that said, yes,
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: we are interested, we would like to have this deal.
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: And Stein didn't realize in broken Russian that just meant yeah,
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: let's keep talking.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: He thought that meant, hey, sounds like we have a deal.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Right, So he actually started creating copies of it, right,
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: and getting ready to sell it in the West. Is
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: that correct?
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: Here's where it gets a little confusing, because this whole
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: story about who has the rights gets really in the weeds.
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: And what happened was Stein started he thought they had
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: a deal, so he started developing the launch of this
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: thing because he thought he had a deal when he
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: did not even have these rights. Like they literally made
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: a deal with a guy named Robert Maxwell. British newspaper mogul.
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: There's a lot more to this guy than you know.
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: We could probably do a whole episode on him. But
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: he had a couple of companies, one called spectrum Holobite
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: in the United States and one called Mirrorsoft in the UK,
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: and he made licensing deals for PC and console rights
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: with Mirrorsoft for the UK and Europe for three thousand
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: pounds plus royalties, and then for spectrum Holobite for North
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: America and Japan for eleven thousand plus royalties when he
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: didn't even own the rights to do so at this point.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So apparently they were out there selling units and
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: then the Russians got word of this. Something called l
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: ORG electron or Technica, which was the Soviet organization for
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: developing things like games like Tetris and then owning the
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: rights to it, got in touch with Stein and were like, hey,
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: you can't do this anymore, like we own that this
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: is even Cold war stuff says that this is wrong,
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So in January twenty nine to eighty eight, spectrum
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: Holobite released it in the US and he didn't get
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: his deal signed with l ORG because they weren't like, hey,
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: shut this down.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: You can't do it. They said, hey, let's talk.
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: He didn't get his actual deal signed with them until
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: the end of February, so he was selling these things
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: for a month in the United States before he even
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: had a deal with l Org l Org And at
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: that point he got to think like a ten year
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: licensing deal from them, so it was all that part
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: of it was legit by this point.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and at the time, it was almost one hundred
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: dollars for a copy of Tetris for IBM and sixty
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: eight dollars. These are in today's dollars, I should say, Yeah,
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: for the Commodore sixty four that's not cheap, No, for
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: sure not, but people were buying it because people liked it.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: And apparently also Mirosof made deals with Atari and Sega
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: too to basically start producing Tetris cartridges for those consoles.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: And again I think this was within that window where
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: he didn't officially own any of the rights at the time.
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he didn't have those rights, so you could have
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: it gets a little confusing, but you can have like
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: PC rights, but not rights to do it on like
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: a handheld game or like a stand up console arcade
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: game or something like that, or what would to come,
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: which was, well, they already had Atari and stuff like that,
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: and Sega like you mentioned, but you know, all these
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: are different licenses, and this guy Stein was just kind
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: of going full steam ahead without even owning these licenses,
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: basically saying like, hey, I'll get these, don't worry.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: So yeah, So at the time, there was another guy
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: that we've got to introduce and then we'll take a
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: break after well after that. His name was Hank Rogers
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: h N. K. Rogers. He was Dutch born but grew
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: up in America, and at the time he was working
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: for a company called Bulletproof Software, a Japanese company, and
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: his job was to find games to basically develop for
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: the Japanese market. And one day in nineteen eighty eight,
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: he was at Cees in Las Vegas looking for ideas,
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: and one of the ideas that he came across Chuck.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Was Tetris.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: What a pro.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back, Okay.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: So when we last saw Hank Rogers, he was wandering
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: around Cees with a pennant that said Bulletproof's number one,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: eating some popcorn, and he had just stopped in front
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: of this booth that was playing Tetris. And he dropped
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: his popcorn and his pennant at the same time as
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: mouth agog and he was like, I have to own
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: this game, Like, we have to buy this game. And
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: he wanted it himself so much so that he talked
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: his in laws into putting up their house for collateral
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: so that he could have seed money to buy the
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: rights to this game. And he actually traveled to Moscow,
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: and this guy is where the Cold War stuff really
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: starts to kind of come alive, because he showed up
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: in Moscow and was like, let's make a deal and
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: they're like, that's not how it works, spy.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty much.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: I mean at this point he did make a deal
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: with Spectrum Hollabite for the Nintendo Famicom console, right, and
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: you know this is all early days, so the game
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: Boy had not quite debuted. That launched in eighty nine,
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: So it was the timing of it was really really
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: key because as we'll see the game Boys where it
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: really really took off. But he made a deal, sort
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: of a handshake deal with the president of Nintendo of
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: America to put Tetris in game boys. And he was like, hey, listen,
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: you know you sell on these game boys. You're including Mario,
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: which the boys love, but if you want to appel
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: to everyone and sell more of those include Tetris and
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: I think that led to like thirty five million units
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: of Tetris game Boy being sold.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was essentially the same thing. When Apple loaded
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: that YouTube album onto their iPhones, it was one of
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: the greatest commercial successes of all time. This is basically
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: the predecessor of that.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you said he was sort of bumbling.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: You can't leave that that was a joke, Like that
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: was a huge fo oh. Everybody hated that just being
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: like loaded on their phone and apparently you couldn't get
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: it off either.
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, I remember that. I think I was
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: one of the few people it was like, oh nice,
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: I like you too, Thanks for the.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: Song, Thanks suckers for the free album that I paid
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: one thousand dollars for.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: Goodness me.
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: So, you mentioned that he was sort of bumbling around
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: Moscow and they were like, hey, no, thanks spy. He
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: eventually did get that meeting with l ORG because he's
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: still trying to secure all these different you know, license rights,
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: and he they weren't too pleased with him. But luckily
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: for him, Pagetnoff was in that meeting and he liked
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: Rogers and they became buddies, and that helped them secure
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: the rights on the Game Boy.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because at the time, all of a sudden, there
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: was a huge competition in Moscow forgetting these rights because
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: it became clear Stein didn't known the rights. Therefore Maxwell
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: didn't known all of the rights, Nintendo didn't known all
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: the rights yet. So Stott Rogers was there like making
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: these deals and it is questionable whether he would have
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: come out on top had paget nonof not taken a
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: sign shine to him, but he did, and like you said,
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: he talked the head of Nintendo America in installing the
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: game on every unit. And yeah, when you sell thirty
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: five million units of something, it's suddenly popular. That's when
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: it finally blew up in the United States because again
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: it had been around for a few years by then,
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: but when the Game Boy came out with it, that
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: was it for Tetris. And also Nintendo is like, we're
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: the Tetris platform now from that one.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah for sure. And by the way, I did go
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: to eBay.
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: I haven't picked the one out yet, but are there
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: are plenty of game Boys with the Tetris cartridges. They're
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: supposedly in good shape, so that's awesome. I'm definitely looking
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: forward to that, although Emily says I still have mine somewhere.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: It's like, all right, I'll just get it on eBay.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Like how hard can you look for that?
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: And they range in price, I think, you know, some
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: of the more dubious ones are like thirty to forty bucks,
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: and I just wonder about the stickiness of buttons and
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: pads and things. But the one that's like one hundred
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: and ten, I feel like it's probably a safer bet,
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: but who knows.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to look out for that forty year
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: old caramel sauce.
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: Oh god, yeah, and cotton candy and stuff like that.
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: But the Game Boy when though, The reason I bring
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: that up again is because that's the one with that
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: classic type a theme songh yeah from sound engineer hiro
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: Kozu Tanaka, which is hard to believe, but it's an
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: actually a Russian folk song called koro b a niki
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: which means pedlars, and you can hear like a symphony
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: doing that in a Russian symphony and you're like, oh,
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: wait a.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Minute, I know that song, that's the Tetris song.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty cool.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: It is, and it's if you haven't heard it in
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: a while ago, just look up Tetris type a theme
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: on utube and it'll take you back for sure.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: So there was one more challenge for the rights to Tetris,
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: and that ended up being between Nintendo and Atari. Like
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: I said, Nintendo was like, we're the platform for Tetris,
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: just try it, and Natari was like, We're going to
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: try you so much. We're so confident that we're going
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: to produce hundreds of thousands of copies of this game,
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: and a judge was like, nope, it's Nintendo's and Natari
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: had to eat the cost of all those.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: The judge was like, don't you have a burial site
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: for the game?
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly right? Can you repurpose that?
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: So they've sold a lot of these. But marketing of
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: the game initially was a challenge. It didn't have like
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: cutting edge graphics or anything. You really had to play
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: it really to kind of understand how addictive it was.
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: So just looking at the game and selling the game
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: was tough. So they sort of, weirdly at the time,
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: really leaned into the Cold War and the Soviet stuff.
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: They re skinned it to have Saint Basil's Adril and
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: Moscow on the title screen. They had all sorts of
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: little Russian Easter eggs in there. At trade shows, they
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: had Reagan and gorbache Off impersonators, like playing against each
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: other and stuff like that, and that actually helped sell
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: the game as this like this weird import from behind
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: the Iron Curtain, Like what are they doing over there?
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was funny. There was a New York Times
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: article on it from oh, I don't know, I think
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: the like eighty six maybe, and they were they threw
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: a little bit of shade. They're like, it's kind of impressive.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: This is the first software from the Soviet Union being
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: sold in the US, which indicates that their computers are
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: finally catching up to American.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: These ibmbcs.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Right, So Tetris indisputably ended the Cold War, brought down
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: the Soviet Union single handedly. There were no other factors
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: involved whatsoever. And like we said, the rights for the
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: game stayed with the US are for the first ten years,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: and then finally when they came back around to or
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: for the first time. I guess ta pajet noov he
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: just started lighting ten cigars at once with one hundred
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: dollar bills because this is already just a worldwide smash
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: hit and now all of the royalties were going to
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: start to come to him.
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, he didn't try to fight this early on,
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: Like you know, if it was in the United States,
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: somebody would have taken him to court, probably over the
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: fact that like, yeah, I was your employee at the time,
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: but blah blah.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: Blah, Like he knew that was a lost cause.
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: So he never even tried to fight back, and I
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: think wanted to get in line as a good Russian
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: state employer and was like, okay, ten years, you've got it.
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: And you know, it turns out patience is a virtues
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: because he made you know, he did pretty well on
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: the thing in the long run.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Right, So these guys started drifting over to the United States.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: And there's a really sad like kind of appendix to
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: this whole thing. In nineteen ninety eight, Pokyoko, who was
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: psychologist who is involved in developing it, found that he
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: had he was being looped out now that the rights
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: were coming to Paget and off Anne Rogers, who made
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: a separate deal without him. He was running a relatively
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: unsuccessful software company and apparently killed his wife and son
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: with a knife and then killed himself with a knife,
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: which is a weird enough thing that there's still today
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theories that he was killed by Russian mobsters or
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: the government or something like that, but a couple of
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: autopsies confirmed, like, no, this was suicide. It's really really
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: sad and just a weird, little bizarre kind of side
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: thing to be tacked on to, you know, what's just
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: widely considered such a fun pastime around the world.
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a documentary or docuseries rather called The Tetris
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: Murderers about this, and I did not watch it, but
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: I looked more into this, and I'm not conspiracy minded
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: at all, but this seems very very pinky. There were
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: three murder weapons to kill his wife and kid and himself.
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: There were two different hammers and a hunting knife. Multiple
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: murder weapons is just strange. There were documents burned on
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: a grill. Everybody to a person, they talked to her
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: like this guy was a super good dude, loving father
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: and husband, Like, there's no way he could have done
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: something this brutal. Apparently the blood spatter analysis made no
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: sense at all, and there were other people that were
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: asked to sign off that were like, I'm not going
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: to sign off on this, Like, there's no way this
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: guy slit his own throat, look at the blood. And
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: they also found a note that they initially said was
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: not a suicide note, but they would eventually say it was,
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: and it said I've been eaten alive, Vladimir. Just remember
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: that I am exist the devil. It's very strange, it is,
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: so I don't know, a lot of this stuff doesn't
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: add up.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: So I'm not really sure what the deal is.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: No, for sure. I think the one criticism is that
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: the docu series doesn't actually say why anybody would have
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: wanted to kill him and his family.
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: But yes, everything I say, Russian mobs, that's all you
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: need to say.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it does kind of explain a lot. So,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: like you said, there's a movie I think it's on
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Apple TV that came out last year about this that
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: you can see. I can't remember what it's called, Tetris something, right,
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: I think it's just Tetris.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: Oh, okay, what's his name? The Kingsman, Tarin Jaron Edgerton.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: Yet I think of a more resultant John.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: I do too. I like that guy. I think he's
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: a very talented actor.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Oh god, I hope he's not a monstrous scumbag.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: I do too.
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: We walked that fine line of like saying something nice
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: about someone, are they a monstrous scumbag? Or say something
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: bad about someone and we'll just get back to them, right.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you have a good track record of calling it though.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: Well I got one. I got Jared back in the day.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: That's about it, because that was a mega one. That
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: was a huge way to nobody was thinking that about
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: that guy.
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: Speaking of that guy, should we take another break or
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: should we talk about gameplay first?
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: We'll take another break.
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: It feels like, all right, let's break and we'll talk
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: about how you actually play this thing right after this. Okay,
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: So if you want to play, if you've never played Tetris,
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: you know, a lot of this kind of assumes with
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: that many hundreds of millions of games sold, plus many
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: more people that played that didn't actually buy it, that
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: most people have probably played this game. But the idea
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: is that you know, you have this horizontal screen and
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: these different shape blocks are coming down, and when you
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: do a complete horizontal line across with these different shape blocks,
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: that line will disappear, and all this time more blocks
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: are falling and falling and falling. And the key is
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: to get to different levels by you know, completing more
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: and more lines, and they start going faster and faster,
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: and you can you can spin them to get them
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: into position and into place, and in different versions of
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: the game, you can see what's coming. Sometimes just one,
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: sometimes a few, and there are other variations along the years,
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: But that's the basic gameplay of Tetris is very very
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: simple game.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: That was the best, basic, most succinct explanation of Tetras
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: I have ever heard.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Really.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: Was it good though?
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: For sure? Yeah, okay, that's what I'm saying.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: It was the best.
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: I just thought you meant that was short and that'll suffice.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: No, No, I thought it was great. Okay, thanks, because
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: you could have gone on longer. But why you said
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: it all just precisely so. It was very economical and efficient,
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: and I appreciate that.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: Thank you, friend.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: There's also multiplayer versions with which means that there's a
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: lot of competitive Tetris championships. There's one in particular, and
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: the Classic Tetris World Championship, I believe is the biggest
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: of them all, but some of the things that they've
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: come up with. So Tetris was just basically the same
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: for a very long time, and then when the rights
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: reverted to paget Nov, they started experimenting with it making
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: it a little different some of what you included in there.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: But one of the things that is pretty cool about
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: multiplayer play is that when you start doing things like
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: if you clear multiple lines at once, it's a Tetris combo,
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: you can be rewarded by garbage being thrown to your
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: player's screen and that'll be you know, a few lines,
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: sometimes a bunch of lines that have like a really
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: inconvenient break in the line which makes it really hard
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: to clear. And also it just pushed their regular screen
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: up that much closer to the top, which is where
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: you die if you can die in Tetris. So there's
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: like a lot of like kind of interesting things that
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: they did with this really basic game that it didn't
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: seem like it could be improved upon without really just
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: being unnecessary. They seem to have come up with some
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: really good ideas for it.
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think did you mention that a true
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: Tetris is when you get what is it, I guess
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: four levels at once.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when you throw down that coveted eye piece and
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: you're satisfying and yeah, exactly, that is a Tetris.
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: Oh boy, that's satisfying. I remember that feeling. I can't
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: wait to get that game boy. Should we talk about
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: the pieces because you found some kind of cool stuff,
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: as did Libya. That I never knew is that these
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: pieces have names.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a bunch of slang names. There's a Tetris
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: wiki that has a bunch of slang names. But somebody
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: posted on Reddit a few years ago and the original
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Nintendo manual for it, and it has like the official
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: Nintendo name. So we'll give you all of them or
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: some of them.
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: All right, the J and the shape also refers to
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: or the letter refers to sort of the shape of
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: the piece, right, yes, okay, So the J is the
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: blue one. I never knew that there were colors because
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: on Game Boy obviously it was not colored. The initial ones,
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: but the blue one can also be called the gamma
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: or the the gee or ge or I think the
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: is official, the blue Ricky, the blue Ricky.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the official one. There's an orange Ricky. That's
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: the L piece, which is basically the mirror of the
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: J It's also called jed or right elbow orange Ricky.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: You don't really, you can't improve on that. It sounds
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: like a disgusting drink. Yeah, you know, like a creamsicle
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: cruise ship drink gin Ricky.
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, oh boy, you might be onto something.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: What is a gin Ricky?
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: It's gin lime and I think a little sweetener. Maybe
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: it's really simple, and I think club soda. It's a
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: pretty old drink, so.
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: Kind of like a Gin and Tonic without but with
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: soda instead of tonic and a little sweet.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, I believe so. I think that's a pretty
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: good disc. Man, you're just killing it with the descriptions today.
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: How about this the yellow cube. It's a square, Oh
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: my god, genius. That's known. You can call it square
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: or the zero or the smash Boy.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the official name of smash Boy. Can't improve
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: on that one either. The S is the green piece.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: It's the right facing zigzag piece.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: Huh.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Some people call it the right zigzag er right squiggly.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: But the official Nintendo name was the Rhode island Z.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: That sounds like a sex position.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: It does for sure. Wow, that's great. Z.
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: There is a Z is the mirror, the red mirror
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: of the Z, and that is you can call a
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: lightning bolt or the left dog or the left snake
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: or the Cleveland Z also, but I said.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Before, yeah, it's just more disappointing than the road. Oh
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: there's the T, the T piece that actually is used
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: in the Tetris logo. And the tea is called the
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: te wei.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: The tee wee.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: And then that god that I called it the I beam,
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: But that's the Cyan four line clearer. That's also the
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: one that if you if you put it in the
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: wrong place, it can really screw you.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: But that can produce that full Tetris. You call it
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: the stick, the line, the slim gym, the long skinny one.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: The hero is the official name for it though.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: Oh okay, that makes sense.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm. That's where that song, that Enrique Iglesias song
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: comes from. It's about Tetris. A little known fact.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: So did you mention the championship?
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: No, yes, I did. The classic Tetris World Championship. That's
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: the big one. And they still use the original n
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: Ees version, the one that I played, and you and
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: me played, and everybody but you played.
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: Apparently that's right, which is a key distinction when it
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: comes to competing. I guess because that would have been
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: I would have been pretty lost, although there's no way
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: I could. I wasn't like competition level. I was just
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: okay at it.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: But dude, competition level is inc when it comes to Tetris.
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: No, when you watch like real time speeds of what
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: these people are doing, it's crazy. Like that's when I'm like,
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: I mean, I'm way done by that by the time
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: they start going that fast.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Because the Nintendo controller, the original one, the rectangle
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: with two buttons like two red buttons, and then a
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: dpad the directional pad like it's it works for certain
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: kinds of games and certain kind of movements, usually with
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: two thumbs. But with Tetris, the big part is to
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: move the piece around, and you want to move a
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: lot of pieces really fast and move on to the
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: next one.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: Which you're sending them.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Yes, which means that you have to you have to
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: press the d pad really fast, and the deep pad
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: was not made for being pressed fast. So, like you said,
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: people have come up with some amazing techniques for competitive play.
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, if you're trying to get something going down that's
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: coming down very very fast all the way over and
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: fitted one on the left side of the screen, it's
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: dropped on the right. You got to hit that deep
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: aad like go go, go, go go, And you can
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: only do that, like you know, there's humans can only
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: go so fast until they invented hyper tapping, which is
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: about twenty eleven. According to Libya's research, which I found
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: that to be pretty much true for early twenty tens.
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: It checks out. That means you're like.
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: You're sort of vibrating your thumb actually instead of pressing it,
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: you're sort of vibrating your you're like flexing your bicep,
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: so you're not fully releasing and pressing.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: It's just like a hyper press, a hypertap.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Right, So if you if you're trying that right now,
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: and you're like, I don't see how that works. Apparently
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: a very very few gifted individuals can actually yah hyper tap,
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: which means that hyper tapers dominated competition for a good
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: ten or so years. About ten years there was a
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: kid named Joe Seeley or Saley I'm sorry, Joseph, and
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: he was sixteen at the time. Back in twenty eighteen,
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: he reached level thirty one. I don't think we said
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: just using like normal movements on the Nees controller, no
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: one makes it past level twenty nine. Yeah, you just don't.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: This kid made it to level thirty one using hyper tapping.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: In twenty eighteen he made it to level thirty five
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: and twenty twenty so at the time, that makes him
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: the greatest Tetris player of all time to that point.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: So then in twenty twenty comes along a guy named
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: Christopher Martinez, also known as Cheese capital Z capital Z.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the capital Z makes it cheese Z.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: Oh that you're probably right, that's my take on it. No,
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: I think you're totally right.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, well we should say Christopher Martinez aka Cheese aka Cheesez,
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: and we'll get it in there somewhere.
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: So he introduced a technique called rolling. It's also called
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: fly hecking HCCI after a guy named Hector Fly Rodriguez
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: who developed this technique on arcade game consoles, not even
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: for Tetris, just on arcade game console. Like, you know
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: how to press the buttons faster, and I'm gonna do
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: a little audio, Josh, if you'll allow, because did you
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: see how this was done? Did you see Hector's fingers?
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: I did.
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: It's amazing. This guy has like they look like break
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: dancing fingers. They're just so fluid. But it's if you
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: imagine like a stand up arcade game and those big
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: round buttons. If you want to press that really fast,
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: you can go tap tap tap tap tap tap with
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: one finger, or you can do this with your fore fingers.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: Very nice.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: Did that come through you? So that's what he's doing.
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: He's using all four fingers to you know, kind of
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: like the on board thing when you do that on
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: a table. He did that on a button and found like, boy,
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: that's even faster than the fastest hyper tapping and cheesy
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: geez uh No, I don't know stole that, but he
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: got that from him. So what you do in the
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: case of a Nintendo, because they have tiny little buttons,
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: you can't do that with your poor fingies. No, you
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: hold the dpad down just enough for it to engage,
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: and then you do that to the back of the thing,
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: and it essentially is making your dpad move that fast
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: because it's already engaged and you're going really fast.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: Right to the back of the controller.
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: Right to the back of the controller, making the back
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: of the controller essentially one large button.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's just kind of jumping up and hitting
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: your thumb. That was another great explanation, Chuck Man.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: That's a tough one because you really got to see
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: it in action.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: But you still you did it great hyper tapping. The
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: best hyper tappers can hit the button about seven times
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: a second, boggling. What about roller with rolling People like
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: Cheesy can hit it twenty times a second? What times
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: a second? And Cheesy obviously was starting to reach new
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: heights as well a least I believe, still one of
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: the premier Tetris players in the world, and it started
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: to get people like between Joseph Saley and Christopher or
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: Cheesy like they were like, okay, people can get past
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: level twenty nine. How many levels do you think there
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: are in Tetris? And of course there's not like some
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: point where the Nintendo developers were like, Okay, that's it.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: You won the game at level of hundred. Just like
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: many other games, they just let it go and go
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: and go, and then eventually the game just stops functioning.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: There's some zero that doesn't get carried, or some number
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: of resets, you reach some crazy bit configuration and the
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: thing just crashes. But that's just never been done with
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Tetris because they figured out using bots that it was
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: somewhere between level one hundred and fifty five and the
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: mid two hundreds. Right twenty nine is where the best
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: normal players max out. In the thirties is where Joseph
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: Saley was maxing out. This is like up to like
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty. And there was a kid.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Who, oh man beat the game.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: A human, not a bot.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: A kid.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: I've seen him with my own eyes on the TV
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: and he was not a bot.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: How old was he? What's his name? Give this kid
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: his due?
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: He was thirteen years old at the time. This was
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: December of twenty twenty three, so about a year ago.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: He was in Oklahoma. His name was Willis Gibson. Blue
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: Scootie was his player name.
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, are you going to drop the level? I think
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: you should, all right. This guy, after playing for thirty
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: eight minutes, hit level one fifty seven and crashed five
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: times as much as the best players in the world
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: and crashed the system and every that's a system.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: That's how excited you are.
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: That's very weird.
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: I was, and everybody was going crazy over this kid,
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: except for paget no Nov who said, yeah, well, you
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: know you beat the forty year old version of game.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: Nice accomplishment, right, Yeah, he said, the Tetris itself, the
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: pure like the theoretical version of the game, you could
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: never beat it.
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I get it, I guess, But come on, man.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: I know I thought that too, Like it's a thirteen
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: year old you're talking to buddy.
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: All right, So we talked a little we'll finish with
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: Tetris on the brain, because we started the show talking
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: about Tetris getting into your dreams, getting into your when
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: you're packing your car. I still call that tetrising, as
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: do a lot of people when you're packing stuff, packing
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: moving trucks. It's kind of the vernacular now, but it
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: does have very distinct impacts on your brain, right, and
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: usually in a good way.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, again, we said it was called the Tetris effect.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: There's a guy named Jeffrey Goldsmith who's a writer who
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: is known for coining I don't know if he coined
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: a term or it just was the first to apply
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: it to Tetris, but he called Tetris a pharmatronic, which
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: is like an addictive drug but in software form. Yeah,
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: I'm peasant and off. Ever, the contrarian said, like, no,
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: it's more like an earworm.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: Right, is it with this guy?
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: I don't know. He likes to be right, I think,
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: but so yeah, So people have taken wide note of
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: the fact that Tetris seems to be way more addictive
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: on way more people than just about any other game,
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: and so people have kind of investigated what the what
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: the deal is behind that. I know at least one
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: writer chalked it up to what's called the zigger Nick effect, that.
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: Is super cool that was coined by a psychologist in Russia. Bluma, well,
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: biggerin I'm sorry, Ziggernick.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: What a great first name.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: I think it's Zigernick.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, you know me and eis and European pronunciations.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: This is in the nineteen thirties, and she noticed that
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: at restaurants, when a server had a large table of like,
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: let's say, twelve people, they could remember their orders, which
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: was remarkable, but then when it came time to deliver
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: food to the table, they had forgotten them. So the
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: idea here is that the you know, with the Zygernic effect,
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: is that the brain really really wants to store information
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: about a task that isn't complete yet, right like taking
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: an order for twelve or in the case of Tetris,
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: they're exploiting it by like constantly creating a little unfinished
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: mission to create a line of blocks that you get
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: fulfilled and then they drop another one. So it's just
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: triggering this constant feeling of satisfaction because you're completing these
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: tasks by completing these lines over and over and.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: Over, and then after you complete one, you have another
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: task to do, so your brain is activated again, like
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: you said, moment by moment, over and over and over again.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: Pretty cool.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: It is super cool. There is another guy named Richard
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: Higher or I'm sure in your pronunciation, Heyer, who in
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one back in yeah, in ninety one, at
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: uc Irvine, he actually the brains of Tetris players and
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: he found that the brain is much more engaged when
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: you're new to Tetris, which is probably a reason why
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: it became such a popular game. It just sucks in
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: new players and that you start using way more energy
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: in your brain when you start playing Tetris and then
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: it kind of goes down over time as you get better,
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: and that apparently is when most people stop playing tetris
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: after a while, when they get really good at it,
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: because the brain's no longer being challenged like it was
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: originally thanks to the Zygernick effect.
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there have been other studies, of course. There was
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: one that found that tetris may reduce the strength of cravings.
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: This is in twenty fifteen by the British and Australian psychologists.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: Oh the British Indus is that a band?
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: I thought that was the name of me. Yeah, it's
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: like a British seapower. One of my favorite bits, right.
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so just by psychologists in Britain and all Tralia,
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: I think basically where they used iPods to check in
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: with undergraduates seven times a day to see if they
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: are craving drugs, food, sex and other things.
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: They just said, yeah, that you might create.
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, They're like, we're undergrads, duh h and playing Tetris
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: for three minutes lessen the cravings. I am curious if
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: that's just because they're preoccupied with it. They argued that
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: it was effective because it involved because cravings involve working
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: memory and visualizing the object of desire.
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: So maybe that is it.
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: You're occupied with another cognitive task so much that you're
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: not thinking about the heroin you want to do, and
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: you're destroyer.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: Right, And one of the great things about cravings is
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: if you can write it out or distract yourself or
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: something like that, when you come back from that task,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: your brain very rarely goes right back to the craving. Yeah,
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: that's amazing. They also figured out, for probably the exact
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: same reasons or similar reasons, they believe that it can
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: prevent pts from forming, which is a little weird. It's like,
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: you just had a traumatic experience. Quick play tetris, right,
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: More likely it will help you get treat PTSD. Very
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: similar to EMDR where you watch like a pen or
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: a ball on a screen or something like that. This
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: is playing tetris while you're recounting your traumatic experience. Your
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: memory recatalogs into something far less traumatic thanks to your
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: working memory being occupied while you're doing this other thing too.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: It's we should do an episode on em d R someday.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: It's just insane how effective it can be.
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, I'd be a way into that. They
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: also found that potentially your brain might physically change, and
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: then if you play Tetris enough, you might have a
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: thicker cerebral cortices and more flexible cortical corticoll matter. So
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: maybe your cognitive functioning and memory could improve. Although there
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: have been other studies Weirdly, this is very strange to
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: me that found that playing Tetris does not improve things
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: like a spatial cognition, and you would think that's the
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: one thing it would help with.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it still helps with visio spatial arrangement,
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: like you said, packing a car. Oh okay, but it doesn't.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: You can't see something and be like, how what's right
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: side up? For this shape that I'm showing you a
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: picture of. You can't just immediately say like, oh, it
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: should be to the left or something like that, like
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: just that specific thing. I think it still does help,
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: although I didn't see any studies. It's just how could
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: it not? You know?
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: I agree?
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Studies?
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: Be damned you got anything else on tetris?
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: I have nothing else. I can't wait for that game boy.
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: I'll report back with pictures at Chuck the podcast or Instagram.
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: Oh nice, I gotta put this Kutsu pictures up. Hadn't
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: done it?
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you need to, man, Yeah, yeah, you got to.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: You put it on the podcast. You got to deliver, Chuck.
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: I have to deliver, Josh.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Well, since Chuck says he has to deliver, and that
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: was an agreement to me saying he has to deliver, obviously,
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: we've unlocked listener mail.
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: This is a timely one because our bet date has
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: passed and we got a few of these from people.
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: Hey guys, I'm from Brazil and I started listening to
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: your show during the pandemic. But I love those older
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: episodes and I was recently listening to one from November
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: twenty nineteen, Augmented Reality Coming Soon. At the beginning of
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: the episode, Josh and Clark, we get that a lot.
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: That's okay.
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: I'm sure my tombstone's a Charles w Chuck Clark Bryant.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: I will see to it that it does.
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: If I outlook you, well, I'm gonna be between you
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: and you me so you can constantly just be talking over.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: Me, Okay, kid, that's what we should do.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: It should do you me, me, you Emily.
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: Okay, and then we're not going to talk about pets
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: or children, because that's too sad.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: What if we just did like a mass burial together
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: and save some money?
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, just or skybarell plow us all up in
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: the mountain and then let the crozyatus or whatever vultures.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'm sure shipping our cadavers would be kind
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: of expensive.
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: That's true. All right, Well, we'll work this out anyway.
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: Josh and Clark made a bet that in five years,
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: augmented reality glasses would be all the rage, because Josh
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: said that he thought they would be commonplace by Halloween
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: twenty twenty four.
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: Here we are, Josh, what do you.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: Think that doesn't sound like something I'd say in retrospect?
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: Well, Elisa says, I think Chuck won this one. It
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: is funny though. Recently, as someone I know saw me
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: had my camera because it was an event. I was
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: taking pictures and I said, can I take your picture?
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: And he said sure, and I took his picture. Then
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: he went, now can I take yours? And he touched
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: his glasses and looked at me and walked away. And
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: I was like, that dude's wearing photography glasses.
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: No, I knew the guy.
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: Those meta ray bands that you can like whatever, interact
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: online through your glasses basically what there's Yeah, that's what
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: you would be commonplace.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: I think you didn't chase after him and say like, hey,
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: I never said yes.
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: No I didn't. Well, I just thought i'd expose it. Here.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: There you go. Now we know you want to say
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: his name in street address, I do not. All right, Well,
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: since Chuck told an anecdote about an anonymous friend using
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: Google glasses and I lost a bet, then we have
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: to sign off by thanking whoever wrote this email? Who
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: was it again?
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: Alisa from Brazil.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: Oh that's right, Thanks a lot, Alisa from Brazil. We
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: appreciate it big time. Thank you for pointing out that
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: I lost to Betsy Chuck. Hopefully there was no money
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: on it, was there?
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Do you know?
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: No money as far as I'm concerned.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: And if you want to be like Alsa from Brazil,
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: you can email us as well at stuff podcast at
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.