Tetris turns 30 today!

Hands down, the most recognizable game ever. Me and my brother used to have a little gadget, one that promised 999 games. Nothing more than tiny variations of the same game: Tetris. I fell in love with Tetris before I had my GameBoy. My brother was the lucky one, he had Tetris as his first game on GameBoy. At the time I wanted it too, but I was unable to find it on any store... Those were different times.

Time passed, and still my first game on Playstation 1 was Tetris Plus.

Today, Tetris turns 30. It was created by Alexey Pajitnov and released in June of 1984. And it managed to sell more than 2 million copies before it even got in the hands of Nintendo.

A good strategy for spreading out the game was that it was paired with the GameBoy at launch. Quoting Thechspot's article "As Pajitnov told Time in a recent interview, he convinced Nintendo of America CEO, Minoru Arakawa, to include Tetris as the bundle title when the Game Boy launched in 1989. To get the executive hip to the idea, Pajitnov told him that if he wanted little boys to buy the machine then include Mario, but if he wanted everyone to buy it, include Tetris. The rest, as they say, is history."

History it is. It sold more than 170 million copies worldwide, 70 million physical copies and 100 million cell phone copies. With those numbers, it's clear that this game won't go away any time sooner.

(via)