40 years of Tetris: How a game from Soviet Russia became a global hit

To pass time in the mid-1980s, a Soviet mathematician developed a simple game of falling blocks. The rise of this console hit would ultimately become something of a Cold War thriller. Four decades later, people are at last completing the game. — Photo: Andrea Warnecke/dpa

MOSCOW: Wide-eyed, Willis Gibson, 13, covers his face, leans foerward and gasps for air, saying, "Oh my God," over and over again.

He's the first person to beat Tetris, the puzzle video game invented by Alexey Pajitnov, a Soviet software engineer, back in 1985.