Tetris 1989

Is it still worth playing?

Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center in the Soviet Union. He made the first version in about three weeks in Pascal on the Elektronika 60 and scaled pentominoes down to seven tetrominoes. You stack falling tetrominoes, completing a horizontal line clears it, the speed rises with the lines cleared and the game ends when the stack tops out. Clearing four rows at once is called a Tetris. The Game Boy version of 1989 sold 35 million copies, more than any other version, and the game holds the Guinness record as the most ported, on at least 70 platforms in about 220 versions. Its single simple rule is why it still plays well: it is easy to understand, and it gets harder as the speed rises.