Tetris

The first version was written at the Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences on an Elektronika 60, which had no graphics mode. The pieces were made of text characters, and the playing field sat inside a frame of brackets. There are only two rules: a piece falls and can be rotated, and a filled line disappears. There is nothing to win, the speed rises, and a game always ends in defeat, so the point of the activity shifts from finishing to holding on.

Seven pieces of four squares each give a limited set of situations, which the player gradually breaks down into techniques. A mistake doesn't kill you right away: it stays in the well as a bump and gets in the way several moves later, so the price of past decisions arrives with a delay. The rights to the work belonged to the state, the author had no say over them, and negotiations over licenses for Western platforms took years. Alexey Pajitnov began earning income from his own work long after it had spread around the world.