Tetris, the groundbreaking bundled game for the Nintendo Game Boy and many other platforms created by Alexei Pajitnov, has officially reached its 40th anniversary, according to the Tetris Company.
While there is some debate as to the date when the first playable version of the classic puzzle game was actually available, Tetris, Inc., founded by Pajitnov and Dutch entrepreneur Henk Rogers, considers June 6, 1984 to be the game's birthday, making it 40 years old today.
Gaming historian Norman Caruso said in a 2018 video that the game became playable in 1984. The video is worth a watch.
Tetris was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York in 2015. The game was first developed by Pajitnov on the Soviet-made Electronica 60, then ported to the then-IBM Personal Computer, and eventually became a launch title for the Game Boy handheld gaming console when it was released in 1989. The Guinness World Records counts it as the most ported video game of all time, with versions for 65 different platforms.
Where can I play Tetris today?
The original ASCII-based version of the game is playable on the web via the official Tetris website. Rogers and Pajitnov reportedly smuggled the addictive game from behind the Iron Curtain in the waning days of the Soviet Union, and made a killing for Nintendo by offering it as a base game for the Game Boy when the platform first launched.
After about seven years on the market under Nintendo, the rights reverted to Pajitnov, who founded the Tetris Company with Rogers in 1996 to manage and license the game and its numerous subsequent adaptations. Tetris' origin story has been turned into an unexpected — and highly entertaining — Cold War spy thriller, premiering on Apple TV Plus in 2023.
“Tetris' enduring appeal lies in its simplicity,” Maya Rogers, daughter of Henk Rogers and CEO of The Tetris Company, said in a statement. “It's easy to play and highly intuitive.” The most recent adaptation of the series was in 2019.
