in 1994 the match-3 game was invented by a man who probably never made any money off it
i think part of what i find so interesting about this is the parallels to alexey pajitnov, the creator of tetris – a russian designer who initially made no royalties off his ubiquitous video game. except, by 1996, pajitnov had moved to the united states and created the tetris company so that he could collect royalties. furthermore, we know exactly what inspired him to make tetris, and he went on to make other games like hexic. he missed out on those first ten years of sales, but he’s made bank ever since on making the literal most popular single video game of all time.
but eugene alemzhin doesn’t even warrant his own wikipedia article. as far as i can tell from researching english-language resources, this is the only game he ever made (that anyone knows about) and there’s no clear sense of where he came up with the match-3 concept. bejeweled came along in 2001 and essentially gave better graphics to the game mechanics of shariki, and went on to become one of the most popular games of all time. bejeweled, puzzle quest, candy crush, every single knockoff thereof – basically every match-3 can ultimately be traced back to this game. how many casual games literally would not exist without the match-3 concept?
alexey pajitnov has documentaries and accolades for tetris (as he should), but who the fuck is eugene alemzhin