Originally it was designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov, from the old Soviet Union. It was also the first entertainment software to be exported from the USSR to the US. Again, probably nobody is preoccupied to know why it was called „Tetris“ but this is interesting. The name was derived from the Greek numerical prefix „tetra-“ and a part of the word „tennis“, which is Pajitnov’s favorite sport. Tetris has more than 425 million paid downloads for mobile devices to date. Its creator told to the media , referring to the anniversary: “I never imagined Tetris was going to be this successful.” But he declared at the same time that he is playing himself Tetris a few times every week. Many variants of Tetris exist now. Ubisoft announced this week Tetris Ultimate for Xbox One. On Facebook, fans are playing game Tetris Battle and Electronic Arts recently added a new mode to Tetris Blitz for iOS and Android called Retro Blitz to mark the 30th anniversary. This is a rare case when a simple game transcends not only ages but different cultures too. Maybe the explanation given by Blue Planet CEO Maya Rogers is the right one. She said “We all have an inherent desire to create order out of chaos (…)“ and this seems to be engraved in the human structure itself.
