Tetris (Greatest Game of All Time) was invented in Russia

Did you play Tetris on your Dendy playstation, or GameBoy, or whatever?

Then you should know Tetris was invented in Russia.

It was designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov and released on June 6, 1984 (just couple of months before I was born myself, oh my).

Alexey derived the name from the Greek numerical prefix tetra- (all of the game's pieces contain four segments) and tennis, Pajitnov's favorite sport.



It is the first entertainment software to be exported from the USSR to the US and published by Spectrum HoloByte for Commodore 64 and IBM PC.

The game (or one of its many variants) is available for nearly every video game console and computer operating system, as well as on devices such as graphing calculators, mobile phones, portable media players, PDAs, Network music players and even as an Easter egg on non-media products like oscilloscopes. It has even inspired Tetris serving dishes and been played on the sides of various buildings.

Electronic Gaming Monthly's 100th issue had Tetris in first place as "Greatest Game of All Time".

In January 2010, it was announced that the Tetris franchise had sold more than 170 million copies, approximately 70 million physical copies and over 100 million copies for cell phones, making it the best selling paid-downloaded game of all time.

I've heard that the first version of the game used not boxes or squares but Russian letters Ш (pronounced as SH) because they are perfectly square-ish. But I cannot find any proof of this theory right now. Let's call it a myth.

Have you played it?