Being the first person to beat the original Tetris game would have been enough for 13-year-old Willis Gibson, a shy teen who spends hours every day piecing the virtual tiles together.

2024 boasts the 40th anniversary of the classic game of falling blocks, known as tetrominoes.More than 520 million copies of Tetris have been sold since its worldwide release in the 1980s.

As “ Tetris ” celebrates 40 years of falling blocks at the Lucca Comic and Games convention in Italy, Variety sat down with its creator Alexey Pajitnov and the Tetris company’s co-founder ...