12 Things You Didn't Know About Video Game Soundtracks

12. The Tetris Theme Didn't First Appear On The Game Boy

Korobeiniki - colloquially known by the entire world as simply 'the Tetris theme’ - became arguably the most iconic piece of video game music of all time thanks to Bullet Proof Software’s ridiculously popular Game Boy iteration of Alexey Pajitnov’s block-buster block-adjuster. However, the portable puzzler was far from the first time the theme had appeared in the Soviet square sorter.

Andromeda began to sell unlicensed copies of the concept in partnership with Robert Maxwell's Mirrorsoft, and though the game was widely popular, it was played in silence until their 1988 Commodore 64 port.

Though the first with music, the C64 version's soundtrack for the addictive Eastern brainteaser took a markedly different approach to its successors. It was however notable for Wally Beben's 26 minute long psychedelic backing track, giving the game an altogether more alien-esque feel than its forebears. For the most part though, the scores of future adaptations traded firmly on the game’s Russian roots.

It was Spectrum Holobyte's Apple IIgs iteration that was the first to employ Korobeiniki, a folk song based on an 1861 poem by Nikolay Nekrasov, which had absolutely nothing to do with falling blocks but everything to do with the courtship between a girl and a market trader.

The track was adapted by Nintendo soon after: first of all as title screen music for Bullet Proof's 1988 Famicom version, before finally appearing as the default music for the Game Boy's killer app in 1989. The game sold like hot borscht, and the 'Tetris theme' became firmly ingrained in the minds of a generation of people worldwide in the process.