Alexey Pajitnov is by no means a household name. But chances are that if you've ever played a video game, you've played his.

Exactly 25 years ago, Mr. Pajitnov was a researcher at the Moscow Academy of Science. A superstar mathematician with a love of logic puzzles and arithmetic games, he was recruited directly out of university and put to work on a new Soviet artificial-intelligence project.

He was given access to his first desktop computer, the 64-kilobyte Russian Elektronika 60. Before long, his fascination with the machine and his passion for puzzles began to mesh. Instead of programs, he started designing games.

“I put together five or six different games,” Mr. Pajitnov says in an interview. However, one in particular began to dominate his attention. He found himself staying at work for 14-hour days, working on it long into the cold Moscow nights. Even without defined levels or any way of keeping score, it quickly became a favourite of his co-workers.

And in two weeks, on June 6, 1984, the first version of Tetris was complete.

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It's really a cool game. We must give him that. We must give him that.

Google is honoring Tetris by making their logo into a series of Tetris blocks. I figured it had to be an anniversary, but I didn't know which.

I think the 65th Anniversary of D-day might be worth more note, but what do I know?

The original Nintendo version of the game was a two-player game by Tengen. I think after Nintendo bought that out, the originals were supposed to be destroyed. It was a much better version of the game (and the only videogame I ever played) and I still have my Tengen cartridge right in the shelf. Original box and instructions in there with it. Still love that game. Music would drive you nuts, however.

Steve

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_(Tengen_unlicensed)

By 1989, half a dozen different companies claimed rights to create and distribute the Tetris software for home computers, game consoles, and handheld systems. Elorg, meanwhile, held that none of the companies were legally entitled to produce an arcade version, and signed those rights over to Atari Games, while it signed non-Japanese console and handheld rights over to Nintendo. Tetris was on show at the January 1988 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where it was picked up by Dutch games publisher Henk Rogers, then based in Japan, which eventually led to an agreement brokered with Nintendo that saw Tetris bundled with every Game Boy.[12]

Tengen (the console software division of Atari Games), regardless, applied for copyright for their Tetris game for the Nintendo Entertainment System, loosely based on the arcade version, and proceeded to market and distribute it under the name TETЯIS: The Soviet Mind Game (with faux Cyrillic typography incorporating the Cyrillic letter Ya), disregarding Nintendo's license from Elorg. Nintendo contacted Atari Games claiming they had stolen rights to Tetris, whereupon Atari Games sued, believing they had the rights. After only four weeks on the shelf, the courts ruled that Nintendo had the rights to Tetris on home game systems, and Tengen's TETЯIS game was recalled, with an unknown number of copies sold. [24]