By Scott Olstad, timeWhile studying at the Soviet Union's Academy of Science in 1984, the 29-year-old Pajitnov designed a bare-bones version of the game in his free time for the Elektronika 60, a Soviet terminal computer. The original version, launched on June 6, 1984, was only 10 levels long because that was all the Elektronika's memory could handle. Inspired by the classic riddles and puzzles Pajitnov loved as a child, the game was so addictive he couldn't even stop playing long enough to finish programming it. "The program wasn't complicated," he told the Guardian. "There was no scoring, no levels. But I started playing and I couldn't stop." The game became known as Tetris, a combination of the Greek prefix tetra and Pajitnov's favorite sport, tennis.
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