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After three decades, Tetris becomes a multigenerational game

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 8 min

Back in 1984, Henk Rogers hunted down Alexey Pajitnov behind the Iron Curtain. He made the trek to Moscow to meet a man who had created a fascinating puzzle game called Tetris. Rogers signed the rights to the game and licensed it Nintendo. By 1989, people had purchased more than 35 million copies.

Tetris is now sold on more than 50 platforms, and the mobile platform has become the biggest of all for Tetris. Paid downloads have now exceeded 425 million on phones and tablets to date.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.