Tetris Hero Henk Rogers Is Building a Better, Greener World—One Island at a Time

Apr 22, 2023

Determined. If there’s one word that comes to mind to describe Henk Rogers, that’s it. It was true when he was a mover and shaker in the video game industry and it’s true now as he works to make Hawaii—and the world—fully reliant on renewable energy.

If the name sounds familiar, think Tetris. After creating 1984’s The Black Onyx game in Japan, where he lived at the time, Dutch-born Rogers came across Tetris, designed in the Soviet Union by software engineer Alexey Pajitnov. Rogers thought the addictive block-stacking game would be a perfect accompaniment to Nintendo’s soon-to-be-a-hit Game Boy personal gaming device. He worked tirelessly to secure the rights and did, with Pajitnov’s help, in such dramatic fashion that their adventure in the Soviet Union was turned into a fun action-thriller starring Taron Egerton (Tetris, streaming now on Apple TV+). “It’s crazy. It’s cool,” Rogers, 69, says about seeing part of his life story go Hollywood. “I’ve cried several times and seen the movie a bunch of times now, so it emotionally impacted me,” he says.

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