I was kind of confused when the article mentioned Tetris getting its first big break outside of the Soviet Union in 1990 at CES. That can't possibly be accurate. I mean, it came out in 1989 for both NES and Game Boy.
Tetris first came out as an indy-esque game in the Soviet Academy of Science, then spread from office to office, and was then picked up by a Hungarian company and then spread to the West.
Nintendo wanted then an exclusivity deal for consoles and sent Henk Rogers to discuss the matter with the soviet (other people wanted to same thing at the same time).
This is described the documentary "Tetris - From Russia with Love" linked somewhere else in this comment thread.
The rest is history: Tetris became bundled with the Gameboy and that was hugely successful. That huge boom in popularity is certainly why many people erroneously refer to "The Original Tetris" as either the Gameboy or NES version instead of the Electronica60 one (here's some footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0gAgQQHFcQ )
