Before fingers throbbed from marathon Candy Crush sagas, before Flappy Bird zoomed across iPad screens from Palo Alto to Manila, there was Tetris — and Stephen Gary Wozniak was its king.
Thirty years ago today, a Russian programmer named Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov created the massively popular and horrifically addictive game that became the first U.S.S.R. video game export to the United States. In a recent Gizmodo article celebrating Tetris’ popularity, Woz jumped into the comments to wax nostalgic about his love for Game Boy Tetris and shot of a little brag on his wizard-like skills at the game.
Just how damn good was he? I’ll let the champ speak for himself: