“俄罗斯方块”是怎么来的？-英语点津

26年前，俄罗斯方块这款“简单”而迷人的游戏横空出世。四分之一个世纪过去了，它的魅力却没有因岁月的流失而减退。时至今日仍有各种各样的研究机构围绕它展开相关的研究，甚至哥伦比亚大学的硕士研究生论文已经得出结论：人们无法最终赢得俄罗斯方块！下面，就让我们来看看这款老少皆宜、男女同爱的经典游戏为何能够长兴不衰？它又是如何被那个聪明的俄罗斯人发明的呢？

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年前的一个周六，当阿列克谢·帕基特诺夫敲完俄罗斯方块游戏程序的最后几个代码时，他根本想不到这个不起眼的视频游戏将成为俄罗斯最引人入胜的出口产品。但是，1984年6月6日已经成为视频游戏史上一个具有里程碑意义的日子：那天，这位时年29岁的计算机程序员完成了这款极易上瘾的游戏的最初版本，这款游戏随后将催生数以千计的克隆产品。

What made Tetris different?

与众不同

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.

这款游戏图形优雅、易于理解：游戏时，你要把不断落下的七种不同的方块垒成一个塔，同时不要垒得太高。这款游戏如此直接、简单，每个人都能很快上手，不过，随着游戏的进行，俄罗斯方块会变得越来越富有挑战。这款游戏的简单和魅力使其变成了视频游戏的典范：在流行文化中被频频提及，科学家对其进行研究，时至今日仍广为流行。

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.

俄罗斯方块和其他视频游戏不同，主要是因为它的玩家中男女老少一样多，这一情况在过去和现在都不曾改变。这款游戏迄今为止已通过50种不同的游戏平台被售出了超过1.25亿件，被吉尼斯世界记录载为单款游戏销量之最。

The first version of Tetris

俄罗斯方块的诞生

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.

在科学院，帕基特诺夫的工作是包括诸如人工智能和语言识别的计算机科学研究。在业余时间，他喜欢玩拼图和数迷游戏。当他的部门获得一台新的Elektronika 60电脑 (俄国仿制PDP-11的产品) 时，他开始为他玩的几款拼图游戏设计电脑游戏版本。

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.

因为Elektronika电脑不能显示图形，俄罗斯方块的四格拼板只能用字符串来构造。不过即使在这种原始状态，帕基特诺夫就已发现这个游戏的无穷乐趣。帕基特诺夫和他的一些程序员朋友很快开始将游戏移植到MS-DOS平台上。这一版本的俄罗斯方块通过软盘拷贝以野火燎原之势在全世界风行开来，引起了很多游戏发行商的关注。