From Russia With Addiction
Music: Korobeiniki
Composer: Random Slavic Dude
Arranger: Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka
Plattform: Anything
Melodic and Harmonic Profile: Russian
Boom! Тетрис for Game Boy
Inaugurating our music program from the portable console of Nintendo that took over the world is none other than the incredibly addictive, infinite, play anywhere, anytime Tetris phenomenon. The only sneaky way the Soviet Union ended up conquering the West during the Cold War and, ironically, creating the best selling video game in the capitalist market during the process—before being taken over by Minecraft proving once and for all that if you wanna sell a lot you have to develop games about cubic building blocks—It was the Game Boy killer app long before you could carry monsters in your pocket. It is also a very profound allegory of the Berlin wall and how if you fit into its system you can construct a solid wall, the primary goal of the game; if you climb it all the way up and don’t fit into the system it means you escaped and did not help the Motherland. Game Over.
The history of how such a game from the most unexpected region ended up conquering the Western market is a saga in is own right, full of conspiracies, betrayals and espionage. So much that even a film and books have been made about it. The gist of it is that it was developed circa 1984 just for fun at the Soviet Academy of Sciences by a computer researcher, comrade Alexey Pajitnov, who didn’t receive a penny from it for many years. He was just trying to have fun and recreate a favorite puzzle game from his childhood featuring pentominoes but that was too complicated so he scaled the concept down to tetrominoes. The game was titled Tetris, a word created from a combination of “tetra” the Greek word for “four” and his favorite sport, tennis. The game exploded in popularity across the institute and then to pretty much any other institute with a computer, going so far as to decrease the productivity of the workers and making bosses ban it. By serendipity, a copy of the game ended up catching the attention of a visiting Londoner from a software company; he got addicted and had to do a lot of research in order to uncover its origin. After very difficult and confusing negotiations riddled with (Tetris) stumbling blocks due to language and cultural barriers, the man got the license (or at least he thought he did) for the game and began exporting it to the rest of the world. The Russians had never done software licensing before; somehow, lots of guys ended up claiming that they also got the copyright, people were selling rights they didn’t actually own and everything became a huge mess, with many versions of the game circulating on multiple platforms. Meanwhile, in Moscow, the government took over the negotiations since the Academy of Science was an academic institution and couldn’t indulge in commerce anyway, making things more complicated.
Amidst the chaos Nintendo entered the picture, also by serendipity, to try and secure an actual, real contract for the game. They wanted something easy to plug and play for their then-top secret and upcoming Game Boy system; something that appealed to the everyday salaryman. The game was brought to their attention by an European associate and they basically sent him to infiltrate the negotiations, uncover who actually owned what and bypass all the middlemen in order to get the actual rights, at least for the handheld since it appeared other rights were already given. In a few days, the spy got the rights to the handheld versions, and made the discovery that the Soviets had never actually licensed anything except the PC version. The ruthless president of Nintendo saw the opportunity and also got the rights for home console, suing everybody else who thought they owned those rights, including Atari who had to stop production of its Tetris game, and whose version quickly became a collector’s item. The rest as they say is history. The Game Boy was a smash hit, and Tetris became as well known as Mario, even displacing Super Mario Land as the pack in game. Years later that Nintendo ambassador helped Pajitnov, the Tetris creator, emigrate to the United States. Pajitnov was able to secure the trademark and rights to the Tetris name soon after, eventually buying the rights fully. It was not until 1996 that he began receiving royalties for his own intellectual property. He formed The Tetris Company in the late 1990s, and it continues to release Tetris games today, which are found in pretty much every electronic device you can think of, from calculators to the most powerful consoles to even an entire building—and people have the nerve to say Doom is the game that runs anywhere; OK, maybe running on a pregnancy test takes the cake.
Soundwise, the original music for Tetris was…absolutely nothing; just the sound of silence. Not even sound effects. The first version of Tetris with music was from Spectrum Holobyte in the United States, who were eager to exoticize and emphasize the Soviet origins of the product; a puzzle from a far away land. The art was full of red and yellow, images of the kremlin, they plastered the iconic Saint Basil’s Cathedral all over the place among other Slavic imagery and started the trend of including Russian music, putting in Tchaikovsky’s “Trepak” from The Nutcracker and Reinhold Glière’s “Russian Sailor Dance” from The Red Poppy. Those are the original Tetris themes. This particular approach differed from other versions of Tetris from other countries at the time: Mirrosoft’s Commodore 64 version in Europe used an atmospheric soundtrack, and Sega’s arcade version in Japan used a synthesized pop-influenced soundtrack—as you can see the rights were all over the place—Yet, other developers jumped on the bandwagon, always including Russian folk songs arranged for the different systems.
The first game to use what is now known as the “Tetris Theme” was The Sharp X68000 version of Tetris developed and published by the Japanese company BPS in 1988. The song was named “Peddler”due to its origins. It is not a gameplay cue but the title screen of the game. Like other versions of Tetris the idea was using either a classical or traditional folk Russian piece that was in the public domain. This one was based on the folk tune Korobeiniki which has been around since at least the nineteenth century and has been famous for being addicting. It is your prototypical Russian tune that you would see played alongside the traditional Prisiadki or squat dance; one of those songs that get progressively faster as people clap, like Kalinka:
The song even has lyrics talking about a Korobeinik, Russian for “peddler” seducing a girl. Using straight arrangements of classical music and well known songs as opposed to original music was more common in the 80s; everything was fair game as long as it was free to use. Even the Legend of Zelda opening theme almost ends up with the classical piece Bolero by Ravel, it just turned out it was not in the public domain because it was not that old. This is technically the first cover we cover over here.
Musical Analysis
Korobeiniki” has become primarily associated with Tetris as its main theme and is used in most significant versions of the game, as it is mandated by the Tetris Company Guidelines.
Nintendo’s versions for NES and Game Boy continued this pattern of using Slavic music. The NES version uses Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” also from The Nutcracker as Music A. On the other hand, the Russian-influenced Music B and the mellow Music C were most likely originals written by Hirokazu “Hip”Tanaka, the man in charge of the sound for the Nintendo versions. And he managed to capture the feeling; they sound Russian enough. Music B has a nice traditional Russian sound to it that you would even think it is also a staple of Slavic folk music, while Music C is a very mellow, mystical tune; and also the same song played when you were put on hold for calling Nintendo.
Not even arguably, the most famous version and what the Tetris Company even copyrighted as the “recording” of the Tetris Theme is the Korobeiniki version for the Game Boy, also arranged by Hip Tanaka; the Tetris Type A music, this time used during gameplay. In the game original release though, Type A was also an original composition by Tanaka but maybe they made him replace it with the Russian song since the first version was a 3/4 minuet that did not sound as action packed or Soviet enough. There was not only Russian music there but also other classical compositions like Type C which is an arrangement of the Bach’s minuet French Suite no. 3 and also the cue played after a Game B victory is Toréador Song from the opera “Carmen” by Georges Bizet. The game shares a couple songs with the NES version, the Toreador Song and Tanaka’s ‘Type B’. However, despite being done by the same composer, the arrangements are much different and they are used in different contexts. Tanaka explained how he originally had trouble coming up with ideas for the in-game music but finally settled on three different kinds of music; a waltz, a baroque, and a Russian-themed song. Nevertheless, the waltz track was later replaced with Korobeiniki, as mentioned above. The remaining pieces are original and try to capture that Russian sound.
The Game Boy arrangement of Korobeiniki differs slightly from most of the traditional versions, specifically in the rhythm of the melody which is based around the pattern of a quarter note followed by two eight notes; the traditional arrangements are based around dotted quarter note rhythms. The originals also often begin with a lower E as opposed to the Hip Tanaka arrangement which begins with an E one octave up. There are other notes that differ in the melodies like the accidental G# which only appears on the Game Boy at the very end and also some syncopation on the notes. As typical for the few channels of the 8-bit era, the soundtrack has to be made fuller and richer not with orchestration but with inventive use of counterpoint and the way the three different voices interact with each other; a melody, a countermelody, a bass line and the noise channel doing the Russian rhythm.
The piece uses the A Harmonic minor profile. There are just two sections; Section 1 uses the propulsive bass played only in octaves. Harmonically, the piece travels through the chord progression:
E – Am – E – Am
Dm – C – E – Am
The melody consists of two phrases. First phrase based around the quarter note plus two eights pattern and a tail made of descending quarter notes. The second phrase creates variety with the syncopated note that puts the whole pattern upside down, with emphasis on the upbeat, as if your Tetris piece has just been turned around too. Both conclude with the same tail to create that balance between repetition and variety that is the key to catchiness.
For Section 2 the contrast is given by making the melody notes longer and less caffeinated, first with a descending contour and then ascending. The harmony is just a vamp between Am and E emphasizing the harmonic minor profile that sounds more exotic. The accompaniment now plays in a higher register than the melody.
Even though the Game Boy was meant to be a portable NES, its sound chip was different. It could do stereo sound if you connected headphones—not that many developers used this feature anyway; It was absolute left and absolute right panning after all—it also had four channels, omitting the mini sampler of the NES and using instead a channel that could output different kinds of waves, including the triangle one from the NES. In total there was pulse wave generation channel with frequency and volume variation, a second pulse wave generation channel with only volume variation, A multiwave channel and the noise channel for percussion and sound effects.
For Super Smash Bros Brawl, famous Square composer Yoko Shimonura made a brand new arrangement of the piece that for some bizarre reason only plays on the Luigi’s Mansion stage. Only connection is that tetriminoes also have the spooky power of appearing and disappearing.
Nowadays everyone just recognizes this tune as the “Tetris Theme”. The game continues to be a juggernaut and the gold standard for puzzle games. It is game design at its purest form, a simple concept and rules everyone can grasp but that can grow in difficulty and depth as much as you want. Play anywhere, anytime.Just remember to fit into the system as just another brick on the wall and disappear; this will score the most points for your nation.
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