'Tetris' celebrates 25 years of gaming fun

MOSCOW, June 6 (UPI) -- The video game "Tetris" has been addictive and entertaining since it was first created 25 years ago, its Russian inventor says.

Russian computer programmer Alexey Pajitnov said when he first created the popular video game, he was immediately entranced like its users by its simple but engaging premise, The Daily Telegraph (Britain) said Saturday.

"The program wasn't complicated, Pajitnov remembered. "There was no scoring, no levels. But I started playing and I couldn't stop."

The video game, which forces users to place various falling shapes together in order to form lines, was first released as an IBM computer game. But when "Tetris" came out on Nintendo's Game Boy system in 1989, it became an instant international sensation.

The Game Boy version of "Tetris" has resulted in more than 35 million copies being sold to date, The Tetris Co. said.

Pajitnov, who only began receiving royalties from such sales in 1996, said he initially created the game in 1984 as a distraction from his work at Russia's Computing Center of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

"I started to put together all kinds of mathematical puzzles and diversions that I had loved all my life," he said.