Video Game Classic, Tetris Turns 30 Years Old

One day you're sitting around playing a new game called Tetris and then BAM! -- it's 30 years later in the blink of an eye. So it goes in life that Father Time relentlessly marches on, even when you're too busy to notice. This is our way of saying we can hardly believe it's been a full three decades since Tetris first appeared, but lo and behold, here we are celebrating the title's 30th anniversary.

Russian game designer and computer engineer Alexy Leonidovich Pajitnov, now 58 years old, created Tetris while working for the Dorodnitsyn Computer Centre of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He made the game on an Electronika 60 with help from Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov, the latter of which ported the game over to the IBM PC a year later.

Simplicity is the key and is probably the primary reason why the title became so popular. The game mechanics are within reach of all types of gamers, young and old, male and female. Yet it's a highly addicting title, especially when you introduce competition -- I didn't play Tetris an awful lot when I was a kid, but got hooked going up against anonymous opponents on the Wii a few years back.

Amiga Tetris

Tetris has spawned several follow-ups, knockoffs, and even some amusing 'outside-the-box' renditions, such as when gamers played a game of Tetris on the side of Philadelphia's Circa Centre, a 29-story building.