Tetris - From Russia with Love 5/6

[HomingMissiles]

I came here thinking I'd get some videogame trivia history and, lo and behold, I've just been schooled bigtime on history, politics and economics. Wonderful documentary.

[DariusIulius]

Belikov is smart and has really great antreprenorial skils..!! Russia needs people like him

[Rijksband]

While I have exactly zero respect for the russian state and organisation of Elorg for taking the profits away from creators (to go to high-ranking russian bureaucrats, a.k.a. the "State") I start to feel alot of respect for Belikov, who didn't kowtow to the whiny rich.

[IceFritzLanger]

A summary of this incredible story would hace been cool to read when seeing the end credits =)

It reminds me the film "Pirates of Silicon Valley" ( You see why Xerox should have been the Microsoft-Apple of today )

[GameDocumentaries]

indeed, that was a pretty good movie with similarly dramatic storyline :)

[wratched]

I like this guy Belikov. It must have sucked to be in his position, but he got out by being honest and not giving in to Robert Maxwell. How many other mid-level aparatchiks in his position would have either handed Tetris to Maxwell or "ceased to exist"?

[XyleJKH]

i really cannot believe the work that went into this game

wonder what would have happened if things would have been different?

Would we have been playing Atari Wiis?

[GameDocumentaries]

interesting idea! seeing that the atari version for nes is so much better than the bland nintendo version, we might have seen something surprising

[XyleJKH]

yeah i think so... if only atari had good negotiators. Would atari be the giant instead of nintendo?

[GameDocumentaries]

oh i don't think so. at least when it came to tetris, negotiators had little to do with it. as explained in the documentary maxwell, who believed they bought all necessary licenses from stein, contacted atari and offered them a tetris license. in this case atari had little options. it's kinda like buying a stolen car from a car dealer. you just have to trust your dealer that the base of the sale is absolutely legal

[corinthian16]

No.

It didn't matter how much atari made on this game, you have to understand that at this point in time, Nintendo WAS videogames. And Atari's name was shit, one of the reason's the atari version came out under the Tengen brand, as atari was still associated with failure.

Keep in mind, atari still had the capital at this point to give huge marketing pushes too two systems, both of which were incredible failures (lynx and Jaguar).

[AccordionManiac]

Such a big, global and political story behind TETRIS! Hard to believe huh ;-) Thanks for the vid