Vadim Gerasimov was a 16-year-old intern at the Computing Centre of the Soviet Academy of Sciences when Alexey Pajitnov asked him to port Tetris to the IBM PC.
The early Electronika 60 version used crude character graphics; Gerasimov’s version, written in Pascal, used colored blocks.
It took him less than three weeks to write the new version, and another month, with the help of Dmitry Pavlovsky, to add a scoring system and some simple sound effects.
The finished product was the first PC version of Tetris to see widespread distribution outside the academy, and was released with a credit listing that included both Pajitnov and Gerasimov.
It quickly spread throughout the Soviet Union, and eventually made its way to Hungary and the West.
The PC Version That Made It Big
Gerasimov later revealed that his team had been experimenting with other puzzle ideas during the same time period, and had several near-functional prototypes.
After the PC version was finished, he had little time to spend on Tetris, instead focusing on his studies at the Institute of Computer Sciences and later a career as a computer engineer.
He has since worked for Google as an engineer, and has noted in interviews that, while he felt Pajitnov’s work was the better-designed of the two versions, his own efforts were required to make the game accessible to a larger audience.
Gerasimov has stated that he has no stake in the ongoing commercialization of Tetris by The Tetris Company, and later regretted his involvement with the venture.
Nevertheless, his contribution to the game, however brief, has since lived on as a vital part in the creation of one of the most distributed PC games of all time.
