{"id":39,"date":"2006-11-18T21:50:31","date_gmt":"2006-11-19T04:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vocaro.com\/trevor\/blog\/2006\/11\/18\/from-russia-with-love\/"},"modified":"2006-11-30T21:04:20","modified_gmt":"2006-12-01T04:04:20","slug":"from-russia-with-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/vocaro.com\/trevor\/blog\/2006\/11\/18\/from-russia-with-love\/","title":{"rendered":"From Russia with Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in July, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldlinktv.org\/\">Link TV<\/a> aired one of the most fascinating documentaries I&#8217;ve seen in recent years. It was the story of fiendish addiction, intimidation, and high-stakes legal feuds set against the backdrop of Cold War tensions. And the cause of this real-life drama? A video game.<\/p>\n<p>The BBC documentary, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tetris_%E2%80%93_From_Russia_With_Love\">Tetris: From Russia with Love<\/a>, chronicled how a simple, black-and-white, silent <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tetris\">computer game<\/a> started out as a prisoner behind the Iron Curtain, then suddenly escaped and went on to become one of the most popular titles of all time. Well-written and artfully photographed, the first half of the show focused on the birth of Tetris, explaining how <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alexey_Pazhitnov\">Alexey Pazhitnov<\/a> came up with the original idea and programmed it on his Electronika 60 (a Russian clone of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/PDP-11\">PDP-11<\/a>) while working for the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow.<\/p>\n<p>The second half of the show was arguably more exciting, but it focused on the business aspects\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcontract disputes with the Kremlin, million-dollar royalties, that sort of thing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand ironically, that&#8217;s when I got a little bored. I was much more interested in the <a href=\"http:\/\/vocaro.com\/trevor\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/11\/tetris.mov\">video clips<\/a> of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ancient\u00e2\u20ac\u009d computer systems. For instance, check out how big the floppy disks were back in the early 1980s:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.vocaro.com\/trevor\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/11\/big_disk.jpg\" height=\"296\" width=\"450\" border=\"0\" hspace=\"0\" vspace=\"0\" alt=\"Floppy disk of the 80s\" title=\"Floppy disk of the 80s\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Still, the documentary is well worth watching, especially if you played Tetris as a kid or have any interest in video game history. If it ever comes back on the air, I highly recommend tuning in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in July, Link TV aired one of the most fascinating documentaries I&#8217;ve seen in recent years. It was the story of fiendish addiction, intimidation, and high-stakes legal feuds set against the backdrop of Cold War tensions. And the cause of this real-life drama? A video game. The BBC documentary, Tetris: From Russia with Love, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7,12,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-reviews","category-software","category-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vocaro.com\/trevor\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vocaro.com\/trevor\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vocaro.com\/trevor\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vocaro.com\/trevor\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vocaro.com\/trevor\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/vocaro.com\/trevor\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vocaro.com\/trevor\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vocaro.com\/trevor\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vocaro.com\/trevor\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}