Do the Russians Love Their Children Too?
WARNING: The following post may involve you losing hours of your very valuable time.
It’s debatable what the most popular video game in history is. Super Mario Bros. has to be up there. PacMan has few equals in the annals of addiction. Some might argue that the omnipresence of Windows in the world make Windows’ included games the most popular by definition. (Just imagine how many millions of hours of workplace productivity have been lost to Minesweeper and Solitaire alone.)
My personal favourite is still Tetris. Poor Alexey Pazhitnov, the brilliant inventor of the game, didn’t profit as much as he might have, considering the success of the game. Maybe that’s not so shocking since he lived in the USSR, but a famous legal battle also helped eclipsed his claim to profit.
Even for a game nearly twenty-years-old, there are an astonishing number of Tetris imitations out there. (I’m guessing Mr. Pazhitnov isn’t seeing a cut of any these either.) If all you need is a quick fix, there are good, free versions for OS X and just about any other operating system. Yet just about every version misses one of the attractions of the original releases.
A key component of Tetris for me is the catchy Russian folk music that played behind. And even then, not every Tetris was made equal. For my money, two versions stand out: Tetris for Game Boy, and the original Spectrum Holobyte Tetris that was released for various computer platforms, including the Mac Plus and the Atari ST, the two computers I grew up with.
Game Boy Tetris is astounding in that the music managed to be superior to all the other Tetrises released by Nintendo. Perhaps it was the very limitations of the Game Boy’s sound system that demanded extra ingenuity, but the music was deceptively deep with counter-melodies, harmonies and it was achingly catchy. Unlike a lot of video game music, you never tired of hearing it (at least not if you were the one playing). Don’t believe me? Go ahead, listen to the best video game music ever composed with nothing more than simple digital tones.
As luck would have it, it’s impressively easy to play Game Boy Tetris on your modern, 21st century computer. Download KiGB, a free Game Boy emulator. Then go here to find the ROM (that’s emulator speak for a software version of those little cartridges you used to plug in).
While I was looking for this, I stumbled across a website that lets you download Spectrum Holobyte’s Tetris for both Macintosh and DOS, and also offers just the music, which, again, is pretty good for the tinny two-bit samples that passed as “sound” in the late-1980s computer world. (Unfortunately, the site has the music embedded in the page, and on my computer at least, each song plays at the same time in a grand cacophonic din.) Apparently you can still run the Mac versions as is (!), but if you want sound, you’ll need vMac, a Mac Plus emulator (OS X version, Windows and other versions).
I tried it, and, holy smokes, it works. The black-and-white USSR-themed backgrounds are worth the download all by themselves.
Ah, the wonders of modern technology, that, with the aid of some very sophisticated software, we can reach back and use old, crusty technology from fifteen years ago. What’s really astonishing, though, is that while companies like Spectrum Holobyte bit the dust long ago, Nintendo, thanks largely to Tetris, still sells new Game Boys.
Previously: Fusilli
Subsequently: It’s Only January
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