Nintendo of America has announced a successful Soviet-designed computer game, "Tetris," will soon be offered for play on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).
Last month, Nintendo entered into a worldwide exclusive licensing agreement with ELORG, the Soviet Foreign Trade Association, to market the game created by Soviet computer wiz Alexey L. Pazhitnov.In predicting that "Tetris" would be one of Nintendo's all-time hits, Nintendo President Minoru Ara-kawa noted that Pazhitnov and "Tetris" had both been receiving a great deal of publicity - including a March 20 story in Newsweek magazine.
Arakawa said his confidence in "Tetris" was also bolstered by the fact the game has already sold more than 100,000 copies for use on home computers in the United States and has garnered numerous industry awards.
Worldwide marketing rights for the NES version of the game - which challenges players to race the clock to arrange falling blocks of various shapes and colors into neat rows - were attained after whirlwind negotiations between Arakawa and Soviet government officials.
"Tetris" cartridges will be available from Nintendo in the near future, the company said.
In a signing ceremony in Moscow March 22, Arakawa was joined by E.P. Maksakov, a senior Soviet government official and deputy chairman of the USSR State Committee for Computer Systems and Informatics.
"Not only is this relationship compatible with Soviet goals of improving computer literacy through the development of video game software," Arakawa said, "it is also a step in the development of U.S.-USSR trade relations."
Nintendo of America is based in Redmond and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nintendo Co. Ltd. of Kyoto, Japan, the world's largest manufacturer and marketer of video games.