Soundbite: Henk Rogers on randomness and dilemmas in Tetris

The Life & Times of Video Games

For the 35th anniversary of Tetris' original Russian version, I pulled out this clip from my interview with Henk Rogers — co-founder of The Tetris Company and the dude who got Tetris handheld and console publishing rights back in the 1980s (and also creator of what was arguably the first JRPG, The Black Onyx).

Listen for Henk's memories about the strategy inherent in the game's scoring system and the story of how they fixed a bias in the Game Boy version's random number generator.

The interview was originally conducted for my Polygon feature on the Game Boy's (and Pokémon's) introduction in the West.

(Also, Game Boy Tetris turns 30 next week, so happy birthday to that version too!)

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