When was Tetris created?

Alexey Pajitnov was working at the Soviet Academy of Sciences’ computer centre in Moscow when he programmed Tetris in June 1984 on an Elektronika 60 computer. The name combines “tetra”, Greek for four, after the four squares in each piece, with tennis, his favourite sport. The game spread across the Soviet bloc on floppy disks, and a complicated legal battle followed over who owned the rights in the West. Its bundling with Nintendo’s Game Boy in 1989 turned it into a global hit. Pajitnov received no royalties until 1996, when he and Henk Rogers founded The Tetris Company.