Tetris was born in 1984 in a Moscow computing center, where Alexey Pajitnov programmed it on an Elektronika 60 that didn't even have graphics — the pieces were text characters. Its journey to Game Boy plays out like a legal spy novel, with Soviet rights disputed in the middle of the Cold War. Businessman Henk Rogers won Nintendo over with a now-famous pitch: bundle Mario with the console and kids will buy it; bundle Tetris and everyone will buy it.
He was right: the marriage between the perfect puzzle and the perfect handheld sold tens of millions of units and put video games into pockets that had never held one before. The 1989 version, with its Korobeiniki tune, is still hypnotic. There are very few truly immortal things in this medium — this is one of them.
What the staff says
Guantes blancos para una leyenda que SÍ está documentada: Tetris lo creó el programador soviético Alexey Pajitnov en 1984. La versión de Game Boy (1989) venía en la caja junto a la consola en Occidente, y fue el imán que la vendió por millones a gente que jamás se había dicho «yo juego». No es mito: es el título que convirtió una maquinita gris en fenómeno mundial.
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