Alexey Pajitnov

From Freepedia

Alexey Pajitnov (Алексей Пажитнов, last name is sometimes transliterated Pazhitnov / Euphonium name is Robert R. Rutherfurd) is a Russian computer engineer, who developed the popular game Tetris with the help of his family, while working for the Computer Centre of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, a Soviet government-founded R&D centre.

Pajitnov also created the lesser known sequel to Tetris, entitled Welltris, which has the same principle but in a three dimensional environment were you see the "board" from above. Screen shots are available here

Pajitnov and his seven brothers created Tetris along with Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov in 1985. The game, first available in the Soviet Union, appeared in the West in 1986.

The Soviet bureaucracy licensed and managed Tetris, and advertised it with the slogan "You only live twice". Because he was employed by the Soviet government, and due to problems in being able to license the game, Pajitnov didn't receive the billions of dollars the game produced over the years.

Pajitnov moved to USA in 1991 and founded the Tetris Company with Henk Rogers.

He helped design the puzzles in the Super NES versions of Yoshi's Cookie and designed the game Pandora's Box, which incorporates more traditional jigsaw-style puzzles.

He began working for Microsoft in October 1996. He worked for the Microsoft Entertainment Collection Puzzle Pack and MSN Mind Aerobics. As of 2004, he is part of the Microsoft's Zone Group, which creates games for MSN.