It's the 25th birthday of Tetris, the simple and addictive videogame that grew from humble Soviet roots to become a world-beating phenomenon.
The game was originally designed by researcher Alexey Pajnitov of the
Soviet Academy of Sciences, who programmed it on an Elektronika 60, his first desktop computer
Dutch videogame publisher Henk Rogers caught sight of it at the 1988
Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. "My first impression was that this game was too simple, that there was nothing to it. Then I came back and played it again. And again," he said. "Soon I realized there was something going on - no game had grabbed me at a show just like that."
125 million copies on more than 30 platforms have been sold around the world since then
and in 2007
Tetris earned second place in IGN's list of
100 Greatest Videogames of All Time, which described it as "the most-played, most-imitated, most influential puzzler of all time."
clipped from: www.escapistmagazine.com 