Tetris was invented by Russian computer engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984–1985 while he was working at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

Quick Scoop

  • Alexey Pajitnov created the first version of Tetris on a Soviet computer called the Elektronika 60, inspired by a geometric puzzle game using shapes called pentominoes.
  • The name “Tetris” combines “tetra” (Greek for “four,” referencing the four-square blocks) and Pajitnov’s favorite sport, tennis.
  • Although the game became a global hit in the late 1980s, the Soviet state initially held the rights, and Pajitnov did not earn significant royalties until the mid‑1990s, when he co-founded The Tetris Company.

How Tetris Started

  • Pajitnov originally built Tetris as a simple puzzle experiment to see if pentomino-style tiling could work as a digital game, then simplified the shapes to four-square “tetrominoes” to make it more playable.
  • Early versions had no scoring or levels, but coworkers quickly became obsessed with the game, helping it spread from the Soviet research lab to PCs and then to Western publishers.

From USSR Lab to Worldwide Craze

  • Through a complex web of licensing deals in the late 1980s, Tetris spread to systems like the Commodore 64, IBM PC, and importantly Nintendo’s Game Boy, which turned it into a cultural phenomenon.
  • In 1996, Pajitnov gained control of the rights through The Tetris Company, and Tetris has since remained one of the best-selling and most recognizable video games of all time.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.