6 June 1984: Tetris is launched

The computer game Tetris proved a big hit with gamers when it was released in the Soviet Union on this day in 1984.

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Tetris's inventor got no royalties for 12 years

The Soviet Union never had much of a computing industry. However, one of the biggest video game hits of all time was developed only a few miles from Red Square.

Alexey Pajitnov, a programmer at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre, developed a computer game for the IBM PC called Tetris. The aim of the game was to manipulate differently shaped falling blocks so that they would create a continuous row of blocks.

Soon after its release in June 1984, Tetris became a hit with Soviet gamers. Pajitnov was prevented from exploiting his game commercially, but pirate copies quickly spread West.

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By 1986, Hungarian programmers had produced versions for other computers, including the Apple II. This caught the attention of Robert Stein, who ran the British software firm Andromeda.

While an attempt to cut a deal with the Soviets failed, Stein sold Tetris to Robert Maxwell's Mirrorsoft anyway. Mirrorsoft published an IBM version later that year, to great acclaim. This would be followed up in 1988 by a version for other home computers.

A move to computer consoles, including Nintendo's Famicon and the Game Boy, ensured that it achieved widespread popularity.

Ironically, Pajitnov did not receive any money directly. It was only in 1996, when Nintendo helped him to set up The Tetris Company, that he started to collect royalties on his work.

Pajitnov has developed other games, although none of them have come close to matching Tetris' popularity. Even today many people play licensed versions of Tetris on smartphones, web browsers and iPods.

Dr Matthew Partridge

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

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