The 10 Most Influential Retro Games: Tetris (Alexi Pajitnov)

As a piece of shareware back in the early days, it spread around computer labs of the USSR like wildfire. By the time European geeks found out about it and Atari secured arcade rights, Nintendo was behind in the race. The only rights left available were for arcade and handheld versions, and Nintendo had to fight with Atari—their old buddy that almost released licensed the NES for release in America (which, after so many years, we learned they were likely to simply sit on it in favor of the 7800). And after the dust cleared, the Nintendo legal team stood tall, blocking Atari's attempts to take the game and—quite possibly—keeping themselves as a major force in the American gaming market.



Instead, Nintendo's grabbing the handheld rights gave the Game Boy the force it needed to sell over 100 million units by the time the little portable-that-could was finally out of gas. In a way, Tetris brought legitimacy to the portable game market unlike any previous platform ever had. The Game & Watch series had done all right; the Microvision was little more than a blip on anyone's radar; the Vectrex was an expensive oddity; and aside from the LCD cheapo games companies put out, portables weren't really seen as a viable market. Not until the addictive qualities of Tetris were unleashed onto the masses.