Top 20 Adventure Games of All-Time!!1!

#14: Tetris

Alexey Pazhitnov – 1985

A complete, unedited history of one of our greatest games ever:

June 1985

Inspired by a pentominoes game he had bought earlier, Alexey Pazhitnov creates Tetris on an Electronica 60 at the Moscow Academy of Science’s Computer Center. It is ported to the IBM PC by Vadim Gerasimov and starts spreading around Moscow.

April 2004

Tetris achieves recognition and is named the #14 best adventure game by Adventure Gamers! Yes, that’s right. We believe Tetrishas some of the best puzzle design ever seen. Some have called it communist propaganda. Others like to see it as a cleaning simulation for bored housewives. However, we, at Adventure Gamers, recognize this game for its brilliant puzzle design. It doesn’t even have an inventory.

The plot is fairly simple. The player is cast as a… well… to put this another way, the game is set in … well, it boils down to an invasion of colored blocks, which disappear when they’re lined up in rows. But you know, sometimes less is more, and this is particularly evident in Tetris. A poignant critique on consumerism indeed. Hooray for Russian angst.

Iguana.

(M.B.)