Subtitles section Play video
It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
It's poetry, art and math all working in magical synchronicities.
It's the perfect game, Tetris, Tetris, Tetris, Tetris, Tetris.
I am Alexi people know me as a creative of the computer game Tetris, I was really, really interested all kinds of mathematical puzzles.
Read by day, he worked as a programmer for the government of the Soviet Computer Science Center.
By night, he invented games for fun, very famous puzzle board called Mina.
They are at 12 different shape made out of five squares.
And when I start to program this two player game, I decided that it would be much more fun to make a real time game out of it close, but we need something more.
Tetris is the story of how uh the rights to the video game Tetris came to be in the possession of Nintendo and it's really almost a spy thriller.
Only 10 other people in the world have seen what you're about to see.
It's called the Game Boy package of A Tetris that was brand new industry and brand new stuff.
For me.
It was a symbol of future.
The Soviet Union had worldwide rights.
Nothing gets out easily.
We have barely idea about intellectual property.
None of even software industry market didn't exist.
Alexi and a couple of buddies from work made the game IBM compatible, which meant color graphics, eight bit music and floppy disks that people copied and shared for free.
It spread like wildfire.
Basically.
At this time, Tetris was like a small point of future growing up through the layers of bureaucracy of, of the greed.
Mr Hodges, have you ever negotiated with the Soviets?
We're here for Tetris.
We've seized this.
What do you say?
I don't speak Russian.
Really use the atmosphere of the time.
I'm gonna make you a millionaire.
I do not have right to receive money from my game.
That's criminal.
No, it is.
The challenge for us was to make places like London look like Soviet era Russia, thousands of reference images, everything from propaganda posters to vehicles to wardrobe.
In my opinion, it feels so authentic.
It almost like we had a time machine to go back and shoot it because it, it, it feels that that close to home.
I think, you know, the word good ideas have no borders.
The atmosphere of the movie was very truthful.
That was a very dark time when the Soviet Union is going to collapse.
The world is changing and the Soviet Union will not be left behind.
But it also was a very helpful time.
You could feel the spirit of the hope in the movie, the Cavalry is coming.
We don't have time.
I have a plan.