‘Tetris’ Creator Alexey Pajitnov and Company Co-Founder Henk Rogers Celebrate Game’s 40th Anniversary at Lucca Comic and Games Convention

variety.com:

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor As “Tetris” celebrates 40 years of falling blocks at the Lucca Comic and Games convention in Italy, Variety sat down with its creator Alexey Pajitnov and the Tetris company’s co-founder Henk Rogers to discuss the beginnings of the most successful computer game in the world.

Despite the difference in their appearance, Pajitnov, pale with a white beard, and Rogers, tan with a colorful trilby, make a formidable team who overcame great odds to bring their puzzle game – in which players pair and eliminate a series of multicolored falling blocks – to the world in 1984.

Such were the adventures, there’s even an Apple+ film “Tetris,” starring Taron Egerton and directed by Jon Baird. Pajitnov smiles at the memory: “Noah Pink [the screenwriter] was very attentive to our notes, but it was still a long and difficult fight with them, because they desperately need all this Hollywoodish bullshit.” Rogers understands the compromises necessary: “Their job was to take a year and a half of our life and squeeze it into two hours.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have any control on the shooting, because of COVID.” “When we watched the movie, we were surprisingly pleased,” Pajitnov says. “We had low expectations.