Not everything Nintendo touched in the 1980s turned to gold but quite a few of the Japanese company’s innovative releases throughout that decade became sales phenomena. Fueled by the genius of creative engineers/game makers like Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo turned out the Game & Watch, Famicom/NES and Game Boy lines.
Game Boy is a brick made almost entirely of good decisions. Its rugged construction made it truly portable, especially for children. Its upfront cost was compelling. A 15-hour battery life is amazing, even by today’s standards. (Especially by today’s standards.) The control layout resembles an already-familiar product.
And it came with Tetris.
Beast from the East
Created by Russian computer engineer Alexei Pajitnov in the early 1980s, Tetris first saw release in the USSR in 1984. The puzzler then hit Western shelves in 1986 (or 1987 depending on whom you ask). While the popular narrative says it was an near-instant smash, thrust into the spotlight of Western media like a particularly juicy Cold War defector, this is simply not the case.
Western Tetris was, at first, solely a gaming curiosity which slowly gained popularity as a puzzle favourite on expensive PCs, selling 150,000 copies in 2 years on computer platforms.
It was initially a slow burn but Tetris eventually became the cultural phenomenon we know it as today. The catalyst for this growth into a legend was a symbiosis not seen before or since.
Pack-in Power
Bundled titles are much less important these days when players have access to a greater number of games. The idea of playing mostly just one game until a birthday or Christmas rolled around is alien to most juvenile gamers nowadays but until optical media truly dug a hole in the price of console games, this was common.
Consoles could sink or swim depending on that pack-in game. Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Bros. both established their host system as forces to be reckoned with. Cybermorph showed Jaguar up for its bit claims.
Tetris is the undisputed champion of pack-in titles, though. One that matched its host system’s proposition perfectly. A title so easy to pick up that bored adult commuters who had never touched a video game before could play.
The addictive yet standalone game-play was made for the stop-start nature of travel. Tetris was a game you could play for 15 minutes or the batteries’ limit of 15 hours. A flawless demonstration of a new way to alleviate boredom on the move.
It also negotiated Game Boy’s limitations with ease – colour wasn’t necessary and a lot of the screen was static during game-play. Game Boy’s 2-bit colour and smear-prone screen didn’t affect Tetris at all.
Sphere of Influence
Aside from its role in initially selling the Game Boy line and proving the value of its limited tech to consumers. Away from its proving of portable gaming to the masses. Tetris for Game Boy was arguably the first video game that adults in general were interested in.
Before PlayStation made gaming cool, before Wii and Nintendo DS made gaming accessible, Tetris made gaming a little more democratic. Ironic, given its origins behind the Iron Curtain…
A Pivotal Decision
Of course, the general success of Game Boy, portable gaming and Tetris itself aren’t solely due to Nintendo’s choice to pack the puzzler in with the handheld console. But it certainly played a significant part in the story of all three.
Imagine a world where the smeary-scrolling of Super Mario Land was the public’s first taste of Game Boy and of true portable gaming. Imagine a world where Nintendo didn’t dominate its handheld table for 32 years.
Thanks for taking the time to read the first in a series of short pieces on pivotal decisions in gaming history. Is there more to the Tetris/Game Boy story than what we covered here? Do you feel Tetris had the impact it’s credited with? Is there a particular pivotal decision that you feel belongs in the series?
