Tetris (NES video game)

Tetris, also known as classic Tetris, is a 1989 puzzle video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Based on Tetris (1985) by Alexey Pajitnov, it was released after a legal battle between Nintendo and Atari Games, who had previously released a console port outside of the terms of their Tetris license. Bullet-Proof Software had previously released Tetris for the Family Computer in December 1988, while Nintendo had released Tetris for the Game Boy earlier in 1989.

Nintendo licensed exclusive home console rights for the Tetris intellectual property from Soviet authorities, leaving Atari Games unaware that they did not possess these rights from their own license. Being forced to quickly recall their version of Tetris for the NES was a major setback to Atari Games and their involved subsidiary Tengen. American reviewers held Nintendo's version to be an inferior product to the recalled Atari Games version.

This Tetris port is unusual because it was designed to end by becoming too fast to play after a certain amount of progress is made. Score must be accumulated through efficient play, rather than pure endurance, before the game ends after a short, predictable timeframe. These characteristics have led to its use as an esports game. Although the highest game speed was intended to be unplayably difficult, it was shown to be manageable with novel button-mashing techniques developed in the 2020s, dramatically extending play sessions.

Though initially overshadowed by its Game Boy counterpart, NES Tetris has had renewed media attention since 2018 after a resurgence in popularity and breakthroughs by young, high-level players, who are now playing for so long that the software behaves erratically.