In 1987, Andromeda Software executive Robert Stein approached
Soviet Academy of Sciences researcher
Alexey Pajitnov (who invented the original game in 1984-1985 alongside Dmitry Pavlovsky and
Vadim Gerasimov) with an offer to distribute
Tetris worldwide, and secured the rights to license the game. He in turn sub-licensed the rights to
Mirrorsoft for the European market and
Spectrum HoloByte for the North American market. With the rights secured, Atari Games produced an arcade version, and under its
Tengen subsidiary began to remake it for the
Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in June 1988. It was released in May 1989. In April 1989, Tengen, which had previously filed an
antitrust suit against Nintendo, sued Nintendo again claiming rights to distribute
Tetris on the NES, and Nintendo counter-sued citing infringement of trademark. In June 1989, one month after the release of Tengen's
Tetris, U.S. District Court Judge
Fern Smith issued an injunction barring Tengen from further distributing the game, and further ordered all existing copies destroyed. As a result, 268,000
Tetris cartridges were recalled and destroyed after only four weeks at retail. The Tengen cover has an airbrush painting by well known illustrator Marc Ericksen featuring St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square, Moscow, with a falling stone concept at its base that mirrors the gameplay. Atari used the same art when advertising the new release, adding a fireworks motif. Ed Logg said that the Tengen version of
Tetris was built from scratch, using no
source code or assets from the original. After presenting the game at the
Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in
Las Vegas, Tengen president Randy Broweleit requested improvements. He wanted the black-and-white pieces to be colorized, and Logg complied prior to the next CES. When asked which version of
Tetris he liked the most, Logg stated the Nintendo version for the NES "wasn't tuned right" due to a lack of
logarithmic speed adjustment, yielding overly steep increases in difficulty. ==Reception==