While legendary puzzle game Tetris was created by Russian programmer Alexey Pajitnov, it spread around the world largely thanks to the efforts of Henk Rogers of Bullet-Proof Software. Through a complicated series of negotiations with Russian authorities in the late '80s – which are now the subject of a feature film – Rogers secured the rights that led to the iconic Game Boy and NES versions of Tetris from Nintendo. That seems to be part of why he was "pissed off" when Nintendo made its own clone of the puzzle game in Dr. Mario.
Rogers tells PC Gamer he was "good friends" with Game Boy designer Gunpei Yokoi since, after all, "I helped him launch Game Boy and he helped me launch Tetris. So that was a mutual thing. But I was a little bit miffed when Nintendo tried to come up with a game to beat Tetris."
