New video shows Tetris and Rubik’s Cube creators meeting for the first time to discuss their world famous puzzles
Alexey Pajitnov and Ernő Rubik’s creations were recently combined for a collaborative cube
A newly released interview video shows footage of the creators of Tetris and the Rubik’s Cube meeting for the first time.
Alexey Pajitnov and Ernő Rubik are responsible for two of the most famous puzzles in the modern era, but the pair had never met until December 2025, when they appeared together at the OXO Video Game Museum in Spain.
Now a new video by Bandai-owned Japanese toy manufacturer Megahouse shows the moment the pair met for the first time ever, and their subsequent discussion about their creations.
“I am so excited about meeting Mr Rubik today,” Pajitnov says near the start of the video. “I’ve been obsessed for years with the Cube, and I dreamed to meet him, but finally it happened.
The video shows the pair meeting at a Spanish café and shaking hands. Pajitnov says: “Mr Ernő, its very nice to meet you. So long a time we’ve never met, that’s strange.”
They then sit at a table and discuss their respective games, with Rubik’s explaining to Pajitnov that he originally designed a 2×2 cube before changing it to the now iconic 3×3 cube.
“I love the form of the Cube by itself because it’s a very simple and very clear space relation,” Rubik explains to Pajtinov, adding: “The Cube changed my life in many ways, and I’m sure that happened with you as well [with Tetris].”
Pajitnov replies: “When I show my game to everybody, people get it like ‘that’. I’m pretty sure the Cube is even more easy to understand.”
The video then shows Pajitnov asking Rubik to take a selfie with him, “otherwise my wife will kill me”.
It then ends with Pajitnov praising the Rubik’s Cube again, saying: “If I would put something as evidence of human civilization on an interstellar space object, that would be one of the 10 objects I would definitely put on it.”
When asked if he would include Tetris too, Pajitnov says “ehhhhh”, and appears unsure.
The Tetris and Rubik brands recently came together for a collaborative puzzle called Rubik’s Tetris. The puzzle looks similar to a Rubik’s Cube, but instead of turning it until every face has blocks of the same colour, players have to turn it until all six Tetriminos are visible on the cube.
In late 2024, Digital Eclipse released Tetris Forever, an ‘interactive museum’ containing a compilation of classic Tetris games including a recreation of Pajitnov’s very first version of Tetris, developed for the Soviet-designed Electronika 60 computer.
VGC’s 5-star Tetris Forever review called it “a masterful celebration of the of the medium’s most seminal series”, concluding that the package “is handled with such attention to detail that this has to be considered the definitive telling of the Tetris story”.
