Alexey Pajitnov: Encyclopedia - Alexey Pajitnov

Alexey Pajitnov

Alexey Pajitnov (Алексей Пажитнов, born 1956, Russia), whose last name is sometimes transliterated Pazhitnov, is a Russian computer engineer, who developed the popular game Tetris while working for the Computer Centre of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, a Soviet government-founded R&D centre.

Alexey Pajitnov - Biography

Pajitnov created Tetris with the help of Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov in 1985. The game, first available in the Soviet Union, appeared in the West in 1986. 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 The Soviet bureaucracy licensed and managed Tetris, and advertised it with the slogan "From Russia with Love". Because he was employed by the Soviet government, Pajitnov did not receive royalties. 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.

On August 18, 2005 WildSnake Software announced[1] Pajitnov will be collaborating with them and releasing a new line up of puzzle games.

Most recently, Pajitnov's new, enhanced version of Hexic, "Hexic HD," was included with every new Xbox 360 Hard Drive.

Alexey Pajitnov - Works

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Alexey Pajitnov", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki