Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov[a] (born April 16, 1955)[1] is a Russian and American computer engineer and video game designer.

[4] Pajitnov was born to Russian parents, who were both writers, his father was an art critic, his mother was a journalist who wrote for both newspapers and a film magazine.

[6]: 76 Searching for inspiration, Pajitnov recalled his childhood memories of playing pentominoes, a game in which the user creates pictures using its shapes.

Remembering the difficulty he had in putting the pieces back into their box, Pajitnov felt inspired to create a game based on that concept.

[14][15] This primitive version did not have levels or a scoring system, but Pajitnov knew he had a potentially great game, since he could not stop playing it at work.

[12][16] The game attracted the interest of coworkers like fellow programmer Dmitri Pevlovsky, who helped Pajitnov connect with Vadim Gerasimov, a 16-year-old intern at the Soviet Academy.

Pajitnov wanted to make a color version of Tetris for the IBM Personal Computer, and enlisted the intern to help.

Gerasimov created the PC version in less than three weeks, and with contributions from Pevlovsky, spent an additional month adding new features like scorekeeping and sound effects.

[17] Pajitnov created a sequel to Tetris, entitled Welltris, which has the same principle, but in a three-dimensional environment where the player sees the playing area from above.

Pajitnov, together with Vladimir Pokhilko, moved to the United States following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and in 1996 founded The Tetris Company with Henk Rogers, which, in combination with the rights reverting to him in 1995[24][25] or 1996,[26][27] finally allowed him to collect royalties from his game.