Tetris facts for kids

A Tetris playfield.

Tetris is a video game developed in the Soviet Union in 1984. The goal is to drop blocks, called tetrominoes, down into a playing field to make lines. Tetriminoes are made of four connected squares each, and there are seven different shapes of tetrominoes. A player uses the tetrominoes to make unbroken lines of squares across the bin from left to right by stacking them in the playing field. When a player makes a line, it clears. After a clear, squares over that line fall. As play goes on, the tetrominoes fall faster.

Tetris has appeared in many video game systems. It has become very common from back when Alexey Pajitnov first made it in 1984. Over 100 million copies of the game have been sold

Gameplay

The seven types of tetrominoes

The goal is to drop blocks, called tetrominoes, down into a playing field to make lines. Tetriminoes are made of four connected squares each There are seven different types of tetrominoes. Levels have a set goal, or number of lines to clear. When the goal number reaches zero, the player moves to the next level. As the levels go up, the tetrominoes fall faster. A player receives bonus points if he can clear more than one line with a single tetromino. Clearing four lines is called a "tetris", three lines a "triple" and two lines a "double". Clearing two tetrises in a row is called a back-to-back tetris. The player can also turn a T-shaped tetromino into a hole, called a T-slot, to get more points. This move is called a "T-spin". A player loses when the tetrominoes make it to the top of the playing field. See "Issues" for information on the Level 29 Problem.

Music

On the Game Boy, there are several musical themes played. The theme for level 1 is often called the "Tetris Theme". It is actually a Russian dance called Korobeiniki, or "the Peddlers." Other themes include music by Johann Sebastian Bach and the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Issues

When one reaches Level 29 on the GBA or DS, the level starts to offer pieces that seem to fall indefinitely fast, hence disallowing the player to move in a lock, or quite possibly, move the tetrominoes at all. This means that all the uncontrolled pieces will pile up on the playfield and cause the player to top out.

Images for kids

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  Extract of a game of an open-source Tetris clone

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  Original algorithm

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  Algorithm with chain reactions

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  The very first version of Tetris, released in 1984, run on an emulator of the Soviet DVK-2 computer

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  Screenshot of the 1986 IBM PC version released by Andromeda

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  The version designed by Spectrum Holobyte contained Russia related images (Amiga version screenshot, 1988)

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  A-Type game screenshot of the official NES version of Tetris

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  A 5th generation iPod featuring Tetris (2006)