The Battle for Tetris: How a Soviet Game Took Over the 1980s

In the mid-1980s, a Soviet engineer created a simple puzzle game he called Tetris. What was made for fun quickly spread throughout the USSR, and little did he know, but he had created something that would ignite a global frenzy that would include major companies like Nintendo and Atari.

But that was just part of the story, as the battle for the rights to Tetris would spread beyond the Iron Curtain. It's a story that includes an international licensing war, Cold War espionage, lawsuits, shady business deals, and the highest levels of the Soviet government.

This all resulted in a final showdown right as the Soviet Union was about to collapse...

Was all of this worth it for a simple game of falling blocks? It turns out, it would be, as Tetris was about to become one of the most popular and successful video games of all time...

• Predator movie review: Patreon.com/80s