26年前，俄羅斯方塊這款“簡單”而迷人的游戲橫空出世。四分之一個世紀過去了，它的魅力卻沒有因歲月的流失而減退。時至今日仍有各種各樣的研究機構圍繞它展開相關的研究，甚至哥倫比亞大學的碩士研究生論文已經得出結論：人們無法最終贏得俄羅斯方塊！下面，就讓我們來看看這款老少皆宜、男女同愛的經典游戲為何能夠長興不衰？它又是如何被那個聰明的俄羅斯人發明的呢？
When Alexey Pajitnov put the finishing touches on Tetris 26 years ago Saturday, he had no way of knowing his modest video game would become Russia's most entertaining export. Yet June 6, 1984, has become a landmark date in the history of videogames: That's the day the then-29-year-old computer programmer completed his first playable version of the fiendishly addictive game that would launch a thousand clones.
26年前的一個周六，當阿列克謝·帕基特諾夫敲完俄羅斯方塊游戲程序的最后幾個代碼時，他根本想不到這個不起眼的視頻游戲將成為俄羅斯最引人入勝的出口產品。但是，1984年6月6日已經成為視頻游戲史上一個具有里程碑意義的日子：那天，這位時年29歲的計算機程序員完成了這款極易上癮的游戲的最初版本，這款游戲隨后將催生數以千計的克隆產品。
What made Tetris different?
與眾不同
The game was graphically elegant and easy to grok. To play, you arranged seven different kinds of falling blocks into a tower without letting them pile too high. The game was so straightforward and simple that anybody could pick it up, yet as play progressed Tetris became more and more challenging. The game's simplicity and appeal has made it the archetypal videogame: referenced in popular culture, studied by scientists and still wildly popular.
這款游戲圖形優雅、易于理解：游戲時，你要把不斷落下的七種不同的方塊壘成一個塔，同時不要壘得太高。這款游戲如此直接、簡單，每個人都能很快上手，不過，隨著游戲的進行，俄羅斯方塊會變得越來越富有挑戰。這款游戲的簡單和魅力使其變成了視頻游戲的典范：在流行文化中被頻頻提及，科學家對其進行研究，時至今日仍廣為流行。
Tetris was unlike any other videogame, mostly because it was (and still is) played by as many women as men, as many adults as children. More than 125 million copies have been sold so far on more than 50 different gaming platforms, which Guinness World Records recognizes as the most versions of any single videogame.
俄羅斯方塊和其他視頻游戲不同，主要是因為它的玩家中男女老少一樣多，這一情況在過去和現在都不曾改變。這款游戲迄今為止已通過50種不同的游戲平臺被售出了超過1.25億件，被吉尼斯世界記錄載為單款游戲銷量之最。
The first version of Tetris
俄羅斯方塊的誕生
At the Academy, Pajitnov's work involved computer science research like artificial intelligence and speech recognition. In his spare time, he loved to play with puzzles and math riddles. When his department got a new Elektronika 60 computer, a Russian clone of the PDP-11, he began to create computer game versions of several of his puzzles.
在科學院，帕基特諾夫的工作是包括諸如人工智能和語言識別的計算機科學研究。在業余時間，他喜歡玩拼圖和數迷游戲。當他的部門獲得一臺新的Elektronika 60電腦 (俄國仿制PDP-11的產品) 時，他開始為他玩的幾款拼圖游戲設計電腦游戲版本。
Since the Elektronika couldn't display graphics, Tetris' tetromino pieces had to be created out of text brackets. But even in this primitive form, Pajitnov found that the game was already tons of fun. Along with some programmer friends, Pajitnov soon began work porting the game to the MS-DOS platform. This version of Tetris spread like wildfire around the world on copied floppy disks, catching the attention of many game publishers.
因為Elektronika電腦不能顯示圖形，俄羅斯方塊的四格拼板只能用字符串來構造。不過即使在這種原始狀態，帕基特諾夫就已發現這個游戲的無窮樂趣。帕基特諾夫和他的一些程序員朋友很快開始將游戲移植到MS-DOS平臺上。這一版本的俄羅斯方塊通過軟盤拷貝以野火燎原之勢在全世界風行開來，引起了很多游戲發行商的關注。
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（來源：新浪博客 編輯：Julie）
