On June 6th, 1984, Alexey Pajitnov released his newly-designed puzzle video game, “Tetris”, in the USSR. It was originally programmed for the Soviet-built Elektronika 60 computer, but quickly made its way around the USSR when it was ported to the IBM PC. “Tetris” gained popularity in the United States when it was bundled with Nintendo’s newly-released handheld console, the Nintendo Game Boy in April 1989. It was also the best-selling game on the Game Boy. As Pajitnov was an employee of the Soviet government, he was not able to retrieve any royalties on the game until he moved to the United States in 1996. He later became an employee at Microsoft.
