The Real-Life Buddies Behind ‘Tetris’: From Breaking Laws in the USSR to Happy Hour at SXSW
The heart of the new movie Tetris, a retelling of how the massively popular video game came to be, lies with its two “heroes”: Henk Rogers (played by Taron Egerton) and Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov). Rogers is the American businessman who unraveled the mystery that was Tetris’ licensing rights, ultimately scoring a killer deal with Nintendo to launch the Game Boy with Pajitnov’s puzzle game alongside it. Pajitnov, a humble engineer in the Soviet Union, was just happy that people found so much joy in his block-stacking, line-clearing time-hogger.
But the movie ends in 1989, just as the two men-turned-business partners’ real-life story is picking up. After Rogers secured the coveted Tetris handheld rights and propelled the game to a worldwide success, Pajitnov moved to the U.S. to co-found The Tetris Company, creating and licensing new Tetris games for decades to come.
The pair have remained friends ever since, and that close companionship is obvious when talking to them on Zoom, huddled together around a single screen.