Alexey Pajitnov

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Alexey Pajitnov

Alexey Pajitnov (Алексей Леонидович Пажитнов, regularly Aleksei Leonidovich Pazhitnov, born 1956) is a computer engineer from Russia now living in the United States, who developed the popular game Tetris while working for the Computing Centre of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, a Soviet government-founded R&D centre.

1 Biography
2 Works
3 Awards and recognition
4 References
5 Notes
6 External links

[edit] 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 where 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" (on NES: "From Russia With Fun!"). Because he was employed by the Soviet government, Pajitnov did not receive royalties. Pajitnov, together with Vladimir Pokhilko, moved to the United States 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 Pack: The Puzzle Collection, MSN Mind Aerobics and MSN Games groups. Pajitnov's new, enhanced version of Hexic, Hexic HD, was included with every new Xbox 360 Premium package. He left Microsoft in 2005.

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

[edit] Works

Game Name	First Released	System Name(s)	Pajitnov's Role(s)
Tetris	1985	Electronica 60, IBM-PC	Original Concept (with Vadim Gerasimov & Dmitry Pavlovsky)
Welltris	1989	Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, Macintosh & ZX Spectrum	Designer (with Andrei Sgenov)
Faces	1990	DOS, Macintosh	Original Concept (with Vladimir Pokhilko)
Hatris	1990	PC, Arcade, Game Boy & NES	Original Concept
Wordtris	1991	PC	Original Concept
El-Fish	1993	DOS	Original Concept (with Vladimir Pokhilko)
Breakthru!	1994	DOS, SNES & Windows 3.x	Designer
Knight Moves	1995	Microsoft Windows and Famicom Disk System (Japan)	Idealist
Clockwerx	1995	Microsoft Windows	Original Concept
Tetrisphere	1997	Nintendo 64	Contributor
Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection	1997	Windows & Game Boy Color	Designer
Pandora's Box	1999	Windows	Designer
Hexic HD	2005	Xbox 360 (Pre-loaded on every Xbox 360 hard drive)	Designer
Dwice	2006	Windows	Designer

[edit] Awards and recognition

On March 7, 2007, Alexey Pajitnov received the Game Developers Choice Awards First Penguin Award. The award was given for pioneering the casual games market.^[1]