I’m only just after finding out that Tetris has hit the grand age of a quarter-century!  That’s just one year shy of my age!  Anyway, I remember Tetris as one of the first games I had for my GameBoy Pocket, and for that matter, still have.  It happens to be one of the most cloned games ever, and has appeared on multiple systems and has also seen a lot of remakes and also sequels and spinoffs.  For instance, there is at least one Tetris game for the DS out pretty recently and I’m fairly sure there is one for the PC that is more recent too, along with a mobile release.  And although I don’t have an XBox, I’m sure that it has one too.  So, not only has it appeared on practically system (illegally or not), it’s also become one of the world’s most recognizable games as well of the most influential.  I say influential as it seems that everyone and their dog has wanted to make a Tetris-type game.  If not that, then they’ve wanted to do Breakout, Pong, Space Invaders or Asteroids.  As well as being influential in their day, they have another thing in common; simplicity.  The games are simple to pick up and play.  All you need are the controls, and no more than 2 sentences to explain the game.  This also makes them accessible to the masses, which is why Tetris is still so popular to this day… although the game has been updated each generation, the playing principles remain the same.  This was supposed to just be about Tetris’ 25th birthday, but it’s evolved into talking about simplicity in games also, which to be fair is a logical progression.

Anyway, simplicity is why the Wii is popular (I imagine this has its own take on Tetris too), as the games are easy to understand and get into.  I’d even go far as to say that Tetris is perhaps one of the main reasons why some people became gamers.  Of course, you can still see the influence of Tetris in other puzzle games, even if it’s not obvious.  I’m pretty sure that Tetris was in the back of the developer’s heads for games like Peggle and Zuma, to name a couple of games I’ve played recently.  The major influence of Tetris in games like that is simplicity and accessibility, which is at the core of casual games.  Addictiveness is another factor too… how many of you can honestly say you haven’t looked at the clock and thought “just one more game/level and I’ll stop, and it turns into 3 hours?  I know I have had that many a time.  Granted, it may not be towards our birthday game, but it has been towards a game.  Another aspect of Tetris that is also recognisable is the music.  How many of you reading this remember the Tetris music, the A one?  I bet anyone who has played the game remembers it quite well.  It’s like the original Super Mario Brothers song; it’s catchy and hard to get out of your head, although admittedly, there’s not a lot of music in SMB, so it’s all most likely remembered.  For me, anyway the A Song is my most remembered song of tetris, apart from the main theme.  The B Song, while I heard it and know it’s there, I don’t remember quite as much.  I just read up about Tetris and there was a C song too… I don’t remember that at all!

Anyway, although Tetris for the most part is simple, there have been some spinnoffs, clones and sequels, some of which I’m aware of, and others not.  Some of these have brought something new to the table, like for instance Welltris, which was developed by Tetris’ creator Alexey Pajitnov.  This was a sequel to Tetris, albeit with a twist; it was set in a well with a 3D prespective.  I had the C64 version, although I wasn’t able to understand it as I was much younger than I am now.  Either way, this game hasn’t really been mentioned a lot, as the original Tetris and its any clones, on many systems have pretty much taken over.  Also, if you look at the Wikipedia article for Alexey Pajitnov, you’ll notice that 2 years ago, he recieved an award for “pioneering the casual games market”.  This is pretty impressive, given casual gaming ony took off over the past few years or so.   Nearly all games were considered to be for “hardcore gamers”, which explains why there was such a low penetrations of female gamers and also people who don’t usually play games.

These days, this has changed slightly, with the introduction of the Nintendo Wii.  As I have mentioned before, games on the Wii are usually quite accessible to anyone, so the Wii generally has the perception by many gamers as a non-gamers console.  Nintendo systems in general had the perception of being aimed at kids, due to the lack of violent games for the systems, which was in line with Nintendo’s family-friendly image.  If you wanted to play “real games”, you generally had to go for the alternatives, which at the time of the SNES, was the Megadrive; N64 had the PS1 and Dreamcast and the Game Cube had the XBox and PS2 to contend with.  These days though, Nintendo has relaxed those rules in order to appeal to a larger demographic.  However Microsoft’s and Sony’s console offerings have a larger market share.  I can’t say who is currently at the top, as I haven’t checked recently, although I did expect that over the Xmas periods of 2007 and 2008, the Wii would experience a surge of ownership.  I still expect that in 2009, the Wii should again see an increase of ownership, along with perhaps the PS2, as they tend to be cheaper systems.  That said however, the XBox 360 has also come down in price, and also has an arcade model, so now it’s competing with the Wii.  I seriously doubt the PS3 price will be able to go low enough to compete, so the PS2 will be Sony’s offering there, especially as it’s still being supported.

The mobile gaming market, despite being a great place for casual gaming development due to the limited resources on the mobile phones compared to the consoles, is still somewhat of a niche market, although this market has being steadily growing as everyone nowadays has a mobile phone, nearly all of which are Java enabled.  Java-enabled phones are pretty much the major reason why the mobile gaming market is taking off at all, due to Java being a universal language, meaning developers no longer have to develop games for each individual system, which saves them money.  However, despite the mobile gaming market’s growth, it still won’t be as big as the console market in certain ways.  The only competition within the mobile games market would be similar games, whereas within the console market, it’s a bettle between the consoles themselves as well as the games.  There is a battle within the mobile market however, as mobile phone manufacturers try to outdo themselves with developing features for phones.  Even the mobile networks are in on it too, trying to make sure that a particular, new device is exclusive to them, such as the iPhone woth O2, the G1 with T-Mobile and the HTC Magic with Vodafone, to name 3 recent examples off the top of my head.

One thing about the mobile market however is that mobile phones themselves aren’t games systems, they’re tools.  And despite the intense competition between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, it’s practically nothing compared to mobile phone manufacturers and network providers.  For starters, in the UK, there’s at least 2-3 times as many network providers as there are console manufacturers.  Andf there’s a hell of a lot of phones out there too.  It’s very much a cut-throat industry, very much like the video games industry; if you make a mistake with your product, you’re screwed.  The PC market has its own battle, on scale with the console wars almost, though there’s one less competitor, but there’s a duplicity at play; for processors it’s Intel vs AMD and for graphics cards, it’s AMD/ATI vs Nvidia.  Seems that whereever you go, it’s competition, but that’s the nature of the technology markets; one company wants to develop better technology to the others.  I guess it’s inevitable though.  Either way, despite such intense competition, there will always be those gems that stand out, be it gaming or technology and Tetris is one of those.   It’s remained in the public consciousness and the mainstream for 25 years and may it remain there for another 25 at least.

Happy 25th Birthday Tetris.