Tetrisis undoubtedly one of the most enduring titles in the history of gaming. It’s seen countless iterations that have been released across a slew of platforms, with each offering the same baseline puzzle mechanics with fun twists. Henk Rogers was instrumental in securing the publishing rights that helped it become so widely distributed, and co-founded the Tetris Company withTetriscreator Alexey Pajitnov. His new book,The Perfect Game: Tetris: From Russia With Love, explores his history with the game, including the series of unbelievable events that led to his first meeting with Pajitnov in the Soviet Union.
Rogers' history in the industrystarted long beforeTetris- his company, Bullet-Proof Software, is also behind 1984’sBlack Onyx,the first major role-playing game ever released. After discoveringTetrisat the Consumer Electronics Show in 1988, he made it his mission to secure the publishing rights, a journey that took him across several different countries and companies. He was also determined to meet the man behind it, which proved quite difficult - it necessitated visiting Soviet Russia and bluffing his way through many unconventional scenarios, all of which he covers in his new novel.
To celebrate the release ofThe Perfect Game: Tetris: From Russia With Love, ScreenRantinterviewed Henk Rogers to discuss the history of the iconic puzzle game, the biggest hurdles he’s overcome with the title, and what’s next forTetris.
Henk Rogers & Tetris: Love At First Sight
“I Saw The Game That Is Going To Have The Widest Audience Of Any Game Ever”
From the moment Rogers sawTetrisat CES, he knew it was special. Even though “it doesn’t look like anything from a distance,”he believed he“saw the game that is going to have the widest audience of any game ever.”He was hooked immediately, standing in line four times to play until he beat the high score of Gilman Louie,Tetris’ publisher’s president. “You don’t know what’s going on,” he recalled,“the game looked too simple. But simplicity has never scared me, because the deepest game in the world is Go - it’s just black and white stones.”
Several iterations ofTetrisalready existed at the time: “There were the ones that were created by Mirrorsoft in Europe, there were the Spectrum HoloByte versions that existed in the US, there was SEGA in Japan with the coin-op, and they were all different.” Though this variation proved its popularity it also caused problems for players, because, “it was to the point where the SEGA version and the Nintendo Game Boy version were so different that a player couldn’t move across and play the other game, it would just be annoying and difficult.”
Rogers set out to fix this problem, and “spent a lot of energy bringing all those different versions together” to make a unified experience. He created a guideline, that “exists so that people, whenever they go to a new Tetris product, they still know how to play Tetris. In other words, the gas pedal is going to be on the right and the brake is going to be on the left.” However,he also believes “a game lives to evolve,” and is delighted when licensees try something new with the framework given, sometimes even adding these tweaks to the guidelines.
One of the biggest changes of this nature forTetriswas adding in the T-Spin, a technique for filling in gaps with the T-shaped Tetrimino with a last-minute rotation, which was shown to Rogers by someone at Nintendo. “If it’s something that somebody wants to show off, let’s give people points for it," he says, a thought process which also held true for the other standout addition: combos. Rogers’ team had already changed the game’s point earning to being based around clearing lines instead of for each piece that came into play, but combos reward consecutive clears.
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His dreams for the game go well beyond esports, however. Arguably one of themost interesting facts aboutTetrisis the fact it’s been proven to help with PTSD, a development that could potentially have a lot of real-world applications. Rogers hopes something “like a Game Boy” could be developed for first responders to “hand to people that have just undergone trauma and give them something to reduce their PTSD right then and there.”
Henk Rogers’ Past, Present, & Future
Becoming A Nintendo Publisher, Keeping Up With Games, & Black Onyx’s Future
Much of Roger’s previous business experience helped him overcome the hurdles faced trying to meet withTetriscreator Alexey Pajitnov, teaching him the invaluable lesson of being able to pivot at a moment’s notice. One such incident came from a meeting with former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi after crafting an electronic version of Gofor the company. After showing him the build, the president bluntly told him, “This game is not strong enough for Nintendo.” With the power of the machine, an 8-bit computer, Rogers rebutted that it’s “a miracle that it even plays,” but to no avail.
Instead of taking it as an obligate loss,he decided to turn to a new goal: becoming a Nintendo publisher, a feat Rogers’ Bullet-Proof Software and four other companies had been rejected for a few months prior, including Square and Enix. “It may not be strong enough for Nintendo,” Rogers told him, “but it’s strong enough for my company. Let me publish it.” The bold play worked, and paved the way for futureTetrisreleases on Nintendo devices.
Somebody hands me a new version of Tetris, I’ll be back into it, and it’s like, ‘No, no, I can’t be spending this much time playing this game.’
Tetrisremains Rogers’ main focus, which has dissuaded him from pursuing any futureBlack Onyxprojects. He considersBlack Onyx“the most difficult thing [he] ever did,” and it demands a level of attention he isn’t able to give. However, that doesn’t mean Rogers never makes time for fun - he games on occasion “to make sure that [he’s] not a complete dinosaur,” and still finds himself drawn toTetris: “Somebody hands me a new version of Tetris, I’ll be back into it, and it’s like, ‘No, no, I can’t be spending this much time playing this game.’”
Despite his reticence to be sucked intoTetristoo much, his love for the game endures, and, unsurprisingly, Rogers has a favorite Tetrimino: the T. Outside the fact that it’s “the only one that’s recognizably Tetris,” his favoritism for it largely lies in its strategic elements. “It’s the one where you can actually change the profile of the blocks that are in the field. An S fits on top of an S, a Z fits up on a Z, and so on,” he says, “but the T is when you actually have to think, ‘What am I going to do?’”
The true story ofTetrisis a fascinating one, and Henk Rogers will be revealing more when his upcoming book,The Perfect Game: Tetris: From Russia With Love,releases on July 08, 2025.
