The video game “Tetris” has been addictive and entertaining since it was first created 25 years ago, its Russian inventor says.

Russian computer programmer Alexey Pajitnov said when he first created the popular video game, he was immediately entranced like its users by its simple but engaging premise, The Daily Telegraph (Britain) said Saturday.

“The program wasn’t complicated, Pajitnov remembered. “There was no scoring, no levels. But I started playing and I couldn’t stop.”

The video game, which forces users to place various falling shapes together in order to form lines, was first released as an IBM computer game. But when “Tetris” came out on Nintendo’s Game Boy system in 1989, it became an instant international sensation.

The Game Boy version of “Tetris” has resulted in more than 35 million copies being sold to date, The Tetris Co. said.

Pajitnov, who only began receiving royalties from such sales in 1996, said he initially created the game in 1984 as a distraction from his work at Russia’s Computing Center of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

“I started to put together all kinds of mathematical puzzles and diversions that I had loved all my life,” he said.

Tuesday at the E3 video game expo, the company showed an add-on that wraps around the finger to takes a player’s pulse.

Though no specific games or uses (or price or availability) were revealed, the Wii Vitality Sensor is “another entirely different way of thinking about games,” says Nintendo global president Satoru Iwata.

Iwata sees one potential use for the Sensor as a relaxation tool: “Maybe everyone under pressure in our stressful society can use this to relax with video games.”

But acknowledging that the main role of gaming is to get the heart pumping, Nintendo also unveiled the Wii Fit Plus with new exercises and games, due this fall, and two new titles starring company mascot Mario: Super Mario Bros. Wii, due later this year, and Super Mario Galaxy 2 next year.