Play Tetris for free online! (Because it's more fun than work)

Hard to believe, but Tetris is celebrating its 25th birthday this month. (What? No party invitation for us '80s fans? Even after those snobs at Asteroids and Pac-Man snubbed us too?)

You just wanna play for free right now at your desk, don't you? Click here to play a free Flash-based version of Tetris. And quietly hum happy birthday when you clear that first level.

The game was invented in June 1984 when Alexey Pajitnov, a Russian-born mathematician fond of puzzles, wrote the first program for Tetris in his spare time. His electronic puzzle challenged players to arrange puzzle pieces along the bottom of a matrix. When a horizontal line is full, it disappears and gives the player more open space to continue playing.

Sounds dull when you actually explain the game's premise, doesn't it?

Still, the popularity of Tetris has grown every year since its humble birth -- first as an arcade game, then as a desktop computer diversion and today as an app on mobile devices. According to EA Mobile, more than 75 million Tetris products have sold for mobile platforms. And AT&T, still the exclusive carrier of the iPhone, reports that Tetris is the top-selling game for the first quarter of 2009.

If you're an avid player, expect some cool additions to your fave game soon. According to Henk Rogers, head of Blue Planet Software (which holds the licensing rights), "the best is yet to come."

"We’re working on versions of Tetris that will make it possible to have international games similar to the Olympics, or the World Cup," Rogers said in an online statement this week. "We have a vision of the future where people all over the world can meet and become friends without speaking the same language."

Comments

[DougT]

I loved Tetris when I was in High School. It has taken me 20 years to clear the game out of my head and now you've provided me with this terrible, terrible link and I just wasted 30 minutes playing! Damn you Spears!

[special K stuck in Kentucky wanting to go back to Germany]

I love this silly game: I have it on my DS and play it in the car.

[chase]

Never liked Tetris, what's the point? Nothing to kill.

[Spears]

Yes, I know I posted this last week, but it's featured in the newspaper today, so I needed to move it to the top so people can find the "free Tetris" link.

[Pam from Rochester]

Hey 80s gamers:

If you are in the western NY area between now and November 1, check out Videotopia.

http://www.strongmuseum.org/things_to_see/videotopia.html

[Gary in Gilroy]

I like the Tetris anniversary story better than the Tiananmen Square story. Stuck in the 80s is supposed to be my happy escape,,,

[CHAD]

never played this game. actually, i haven't played a video game since asteroids in the very early 80s(maybe 83 or so).

[DenverMatt]

in soviet union, Tetris plays you.

[Brad]

Ah, Tetris. Game Boy + Tetris? Epic.

Of course the combination led to all kinds of bizarre conversations with my friends, including phrases like "thumb speed," and "optimal Tetris stacks."

[Miguel]

I was hooked on Tetris when i was a kid.And i was a good Tetris player.I think i still have a Gameboy with Tetris somewhere in my old bedroom at my parents house.I`ll have to take a look there next time i visit them.It probably doesn´t work anymore.

[Mark in East Texas]

Love Tetris. I think I read somewhere that Pajitnov made little to no money from the game due to Soviet copyright issues.

[DerekT]

I was on a company trip to Spain (I was in the Army in Germany at the time) when I first played Tetris. I was not impressed with it when I tried it at the bar, but later on my Gameboy I was hooked on it.