In the 1980s, Pajitnov worked for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences, where he programmed Tetris on the Electronika 60 and adapted it to the IBM PC with the help of colleague Dmitry Pavlovsky and young computer prodigy Vadim Gerasimov, with floppy disk copies being distributed freely throughout Moscow, before spreading to Eastern Europe. After salesman Robert Stein of Andromeda Software discovered the game and communicated with the Academy and Pajitnov his interest in selling it, he licensed it to Mirrorsoft in the United Kingdom and Spectrum HoloByte in the United States. Both companies commercially released the game in January 1988 to commercial success and sold licenses to other companies, including Henk Rogers's Bullet-Proof Software. Rogers negotiated a deal with Elektronorgtechnica (Elorg), the state-owned organization in charge of licensing Soviet software, to license the game to Nintendo for the Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System (NES); both versions released in 1989.
In the 1980s, Pajitnov worked for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences, where he programmed Tetris on the Electronika 60 and adapted it to the IBM PC with the help of colleague Dmitry Pavlovsky and young computer prodigy Vadim Gerasimov, with floppy disk copies being distributed freely throughout Moscow, before spreading to East.ern Europe. After salesman Robert Stein of Andromeda Software discovered the game and communicated with the Academy and Pajitnov his interest in selling it, he licensed it to Mirrorsoft in the United Kingdom and Spectrum HoloByte in the United States. Both companies commercially released the game in January 1988 to commercial success and sold licenses to other companies, including Henk Rogers's Bullet-Proof Software. Rogers negotiated a deal with Elektronorgtechnica (Elorg), the state-owned organization in charge of licensing Soviet soft:ware, to license the game to Nintendo for the Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System (NES); both versions released in 1989.