"...that Tetris, the first great computer game, was a profoundly Soviet bloc experience. Geometric shapes drop from the sky and your job is to arrange them so as to complete a row. Otherwise it will sit there and build up and completing the next row up becomes more difficult since the pieces no longer have so far to fall. Gradually the game area fills up with the chaos of incomplete rows until you can’t do anything at all. As the room to maneuver dwindles, the pace of the falling pieces increases. The purpose of the game is not to win, merely to postpone losing."

-Ron Silliman
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/