Tetris turns 25

Last update: June 3, 2009 - 5:53 PM

If you play "Tetris," you know how addictive it can be. That could explain why many people who grew up with the game are still playing it -- as Tetris marks its 25th birthday this week.

The game was completed by a Soviet programmer in 1984, and started showing up as computer software and on gaming consoles. It's now played by millions, not just on computers and gaming consoles but now on Facebook and the iPhone as well.

The computer game involves shapes made up of four connected squares, that slide down the screen as the player tries to turn them so that they fit precisely into the gap left by the previous falling shapes. The player gets credit for completing an entire line of squares with the falling shapes.

But because the shapes -- known as tetrominoes -- come in a random order, it is hard to predict the best way to organize them. In fact, in 2002, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers determined that the potential combinations are so numerous that it would be impossible even for a computer to calculate the best place to put each falling shape.

"Tetris" stands out as one of the rare cultural products to come West from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And the addictive rhythm of its task-by-task race against time was an early sign of our inbox-clearing, Twitter-updating, BlackBerry-thumbing world to come.

Alexey Pajitnov was 29 and working for the Moscow Academy of Sciences when he completed "Tetris" on June 6, 1984, for a Soviet computer system called the Elektronika. A computer programmer by day who researched artificial intelligence and automatic speech recognition, Pajitnov worked on the game in his spare time.

"All my life I liked puzzles, mathematical riddles and diversion," he said. "Tetris" was just one of the games he made back then -- the others are mostly long forgotten -- and it could stick around for another 25 years, he says. "Technology changes a lot" -- but people don't, he says.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

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