© Apple TV+& Imagine Entertainment No?
It was a game invented by Alexey Pajitnov, a software engineer in 1985 when the Soviets ruled Russia.
Compared to today's games, the graphics were pretty basic involving players trying to fit pieces of falling blocks from the top of the screen to create walls.
© Apple TV+& Imagine EntertainmentIt was also hugely addictive.
A huge success in its homeland, Tetris would become a videogame phenomenon across the world, thanks to the explosion of hand held gaming devices.
However it was also the subject of a messy battle over arcade, home computer and hand held rights involving the media tycoon Robert Maxwell's Mirrorsoft, a London firm called Andromeda Software, an American firm called Broderbund, Nintendo, Atari and Sega.
That battle is the focus of Jon S Baird's Apple TV+ movie 'Tetris' which has a lot of fun with the story.
© Apple TV+& Imagine EntertainmentTaron Egerton is cast as Henk Rogers, a Tokyo based, Dutch born but American raised videogame entrepreneur who is first alerted to Tetris at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Eager to acquire its rights, he discovers Toby Jones' publisher Robert Stein of Andromeda Software in London has acquired them worldwide.
But with his wife Ayane Nagabuchi's Akemi's blessing, he puts their house up as collateral to acquire the rights for Nintendo's home console system Famicom and also for arcade machines.
Nintendo, however, is developing a revolutionary hand held device, the Gameboy and when he is given a sneak peek by Ben Miles' Howard Lincoln and Ken Yamamura's Minoru Arakawa of the prototype, he pitches Tetris as its featured game.
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© Apple TV+& Imagine EntertainmentRogers is given the green light to pursue the rights travels to London to meet Roger Allam's media mogul Robert Maxwell and his son, Anthony Boyle's Kevin.
They confirm Stein has the worldwide rights and is licensing home computer game versions through Mirrorsoft.
Rogers offers Stein $25,000 to give him the rights for hand held devices, only to discover he has subsequently reneged on the deal and struck one instead with Atari for $100,000.
Desperate to acquire the rights, he travels to the Soviet Union on a tourist visa, with the blessing of Nintendo's CEO Togo Igawa's Hiroshi Yamauchi.
© Apple TV+& Imagine EntertainmentHenk has no contacts in the Soviet Union and a basic knowledge that a state controlled software company ELORG is behind the original game.
What Rogers does have going for him, though, is a fierce determination and he turns up at ELORG's headquarters with Sofia Lebedeva's translator Sashs unannounced to negotiate the handheld rights.
He meets initial resistance from Oleg Shtefanko's ELORG chairman Nikolai Belikov who is suspicious of him.
However he point outs to the ELORG chairman that his game is being exploited by the Maxwells and Stein, promising a fairer slice of the profits.
© Apple TV+ & Imagine EntertainmentWith Kevin Maxwell and Robert Stein in Moscow at the same time to pin down the rights for hand held devices, Belikov begins to dig deeper into previous agreements - realising the Soviet state has been suckered into receiving less of the worldwide profits.
His efforts to secure a better deal and Rogers' aggressive lobbying soon attracts the attention of Igor Grabuzov's corrupt Head of the Department for Foreign Trade for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Valentin Trifonov.
With Matthew Marsh's Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev preparing to dismantle the Communist state, Trifonov spots an opportunity to line his pockets with the help of Mirrorsoft and Stein.
However that means doing everything in his power to prevent a deal being reached between Belikov and Rogers.
© Apple TV+ & Imagine EntertainmentShooting from a script by Canadian screenwriter Noah Pink, Jon S Baird delivers a really fizzy tale of business dealings during the fall of the Iron Curtain.
He adopts a tongue in cheek approach in 'Tetris' that mostly works, with the London based Coffee and TV visual effects company providing some wonderful 8-bit computer graphics depicting characters as if they are in a 1980s computer game flying around the globe, heading to various company headquarters or being pursued through the streets of Moscow.
The cast deliver vivacious performances, with Egerton proving a likeable lead.
Allam, Boyle and Jones are also worthy villains.
@ Apple Plus TV & Imagine EntertainmentCovered in prosthetics and donning a fat suit, Allam is wonderfully shifty and belligerent as the larger than life Czech British publisher Robert Maxwell.
Grabuzov enjoys playing a Soviet pantomime villain too, while Shtefanko amuses as the initially wary ELORG chief who realises how elements inside and outside the state are ripping off their homeland.
Fellow Russian, Nikita Yefremov is also good value as the genius programmer behind Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov who Rogers befriends.
Lebedeva has a lot of fun as a translator who is not what she seems, while Akemi gamely holds the fort as Rogers' loyal and patient wife.
@ Apple Plus TV & Imagine EntertainmentYamamura, Miles, Igawa and Marsh deliver amusing performances in a film where locations in Glasgow double up for Moscow and which also toys with Cold War spy drama tropes.
Not everything success, though.
In the final act, Baird and Pink succumb to 'What's Up Doc?' style slapstick, with a frantic car chase through the streets of Moscow.
This strains the movie's credibility, appearing too skittish.
@ Apple Plus TV & Imagine EntertainmentThere's also a rather buffoonish punch up in the offices of the Mirror Group between Kevin Maxwell and Robert Stein which seems too cartoonish.
These don't help the cause of 'Tetris' when you measure it against an astute business movie like Ben Affleck's enjoyable Nike tale 'Air'.
Although it does outgun Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash Jr's soft toy story 'The Beanie Bubble' and David Yates' recent opioid film on Netflix, 'Pain Hustlers'.
If you can overlook these flaws, 'Tetris' is an enjoyable ride.
It may even have you reaching for your smartphone to download the game and wallow in the nostalgia.
('Tetris' premiered at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas on March 15, 2023 before being made available for streaming on Apple TV+ on March 31, 2023)
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