Henk Rogers

Henk Rogers, Chairman of the Board, The Tetris Company Considered one of the visionaries of computer games, Henk Rogers helped change the face of the industry as the entrepreneur responsible for bringing the Tetris game to the United States and world market. Under Henk’s direct leadership, the Tetris game has become one of the world’s top-selling video game brands with hundreds of millions of products sold, and now, 40 years since its “birth,” that number is still growing. Early Computer Game History: A native of Holland, Henk moved to New York City in 1964 and attended Stuyvesant High School, where he programmed a computer for the first time. In 1972, Henk moved to Hawaii, where he majored in computer science at the University of Hawaii and spent his free time playing Dungeons and Dragons. In 1976, Henk relocated to Japan, got married and started a family. Six years later, he designed, developed and published the first Role Playing Game in Japan—The Black Onyx— which, in 1984, ranked as the #1 game in Japan. Bullet-Proof Software, which published the game, was Henk’s first computer game publishing business. Tetris: In 1988, having published numerous computer games from around the world in the Japanese market, Henk discovered the Tetris game at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The game would become Bullet-Proof Software’s biggest hit, selling millions in Japan on the Nintendo Family Computer. Henk’s biggest coup, though, took place in 1989 when he flew to Moscow to negotiate with the Soviets for the Game Boy rights to Tetris. He subsequently licensed the Game Boy rights to Nintendo, where it would go on to make their handheld platform the most popular portable game system of its time, and in the process, sell well over 35 million copies. During the negotiation process, Henk befriended Tetris creator and fellow game designer Alexey Pajitnov, and eventually helped him and his family relocate to the United States. In 1996, Henk and Alexey formed the business relationship that eventually would become a key part of The Tetris Company—still the exclusive source of all licenses to Tetris, one of the most popular computer games ever. Current: Today Rogers serves as Chairman of the Board of The Tetris Company, the exclusive licensor of the Tetris brand, Chairman of Tetris, Inc., the sole agent for the Tetris franchise, founder of the Blue Planet Alliance, an NGO fighting the use of fossil fuels in Hawaii and around the world, and founder of Blue Startups, Hawaii’s first venture accelerator.