Silver Ounce 2021 Tetris, Coin from Niue - detailed information

Niue, a sovereign state in free association with New Zealand, uses two official legal tender currencies. The New Zealand Dollar is the circulation currency for daily transactions, while the government also authorises legal tender coins in the Niue Dollar currency for collector's purposes.

A number of mints issue a large variety of commemorative, bullion and collector coins under the authority of Niue. These coins are dedicated to historical or general popular culture themes not related to Niue itself. Many of them are in standard bullion sizes - typically, one ounce of silver (abbreviated as 1 oz Ag, where "Ag" comes from the Latin word for silver, Argentum). Many of these feature characters and themes from popular culture.

This coin produced by APMEX is dedicated to the cult game Tetris.

The reverse shows the famous St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, which is known from earlier versions of the Tetris game.

Tetris originates from the idea of the programmer Alexey Pajitnov, who developed an electronic game in 1984 in which players could arrange puzzle pieces in real time as they fell from above onto the playing field. Pajitnov named this game "Tetris" - a combination of "tetra" (the Greek word for "four") and "tennis" (his favourite sport). St. Basil's Cathedral is an Orthodox church located on Red Square in Moscow. It was built in the 1500s and is one of Russia's most popular cultural symbols. An image of St. Basil's Cathedral can be seen on the opening screen of early versions of the Tetris game, paying homage to the country where it was created. In the Game Boy and Nintendo versions of the game, a rocket was launched when a player accumulated enough points. The size of the rocket increased with the player's score. The players with the best score launched St. Basil's Cathedral into space.