Tetris

Tetris has significantly influenced the genre of puzzle video games and popular culture. It is an early example of a casual game and can be found in a variety of media such as architecture and art. It has been the subject of academic research, including studies on its potential for psychological intervention. A competitive culture has formed around Tetris, particularly around the NES version. Players, usually teenagers, have been taking part in the annual Classic Tetris World Championship since 2010. The game is often counted among the best video games and was one of the first games to be inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame in 2015. A film about the development of the game was released in 2023.

In the 1980s, Pajitnov worked for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Sciences, where he programmed Tetris on the Electronika 60 and adapted it to the IBM PC with the help of Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov. Disc copies were distributed free of charge in Moscow before spreading to Eastern Europe. Robert Stein of Andromeda Software licensed Tetris to Mirrorsoft in the UK and Spectrum HoloByte in the USA. Both companies launched the game in 1988 with great success and sold licences to other companies, including Henk Rogers‘ Bullet-Proof Software. Rogers negotiated with Elektronorgtechnica, the state organisation responsible for licensing Soviet software, to license Tetris to Nintendo for the Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System (NES); both versions were released in 1989.