Why Microsoft Entertainment Pack had a sticker announcing that it had Tetris? (devblogs.microsoft.com)
58 points by tybulewicz 6 hours ago
PetitPrince an hour ago
The actual game is playable in uour browser on archive.org https://archive.org/details/TETRIS_201612
It's not an old version of Tetris, so many of the niceties of modern Tetris are absents. Up to rotate irks me (because it's well accepted that being able to rotate a piece both clockwise and counterclockwise is beneficial).
smelendez 5 hours ago
The sticker part makes sense, but why did it say "now," which usually would imply it once didn't include Tetris? I guess "includes Tetris!" just sounded awkward on its own?
Or maybe they made stickers for the contingency where they would ship some without Tetris, get the license, and ship some more with?
ValentineC 5 hours ago
Could be a psychological trick to make consumers think that they're buying an "improved" version.
amiga386 2 hours ago
Now with more Tetris!
Sweet Jesus!
fer 36 minutes ago
Timeless classic, I knew what it was before clicking!
torh 3 hours ago
Maybe it's as simple as for the people making the boxes, it didn't contain Tetris from the start. And when they got the license, in their head, it now did have Tetris.
saghm 38 minutes ago
Most boxes don't contain anything from the start; you need to put the product in them before you sell them!
kalleboo 3 hours ago
Or maybe there was some pre-release catalog listings/marketing that listed the games without Tetris?
ainiriand 5 hours ago
The latter sounds very plausible, it covers all bases.
pseudony 4 hours ago
Anyone have a larger collection of stories/anecdotes from the older days of computing?
Stories like this, and the Quake cd posted recently, are hugely interesting to me.
torh 3 hours ago
I can recommend "The Digital Antiquarian" for games (https://www.filfre.net/) and "Abort Retry Fail" for hardware companies (https://www.abortretry.fail/)
mastazi 4 hours ago
In addition to the blog where this post is taken from https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/, you could check https://folklore.org/ for early Apple anecdotes. And also https://www.jwz.org/blog/ for early Netscape/Mozilla stories
voidUpdate 3 hours ago
Apparently jwz doesn't like HN, if you click that link you just get an image of a testicle in an eggcup
Oxodao 3 hours ago
lode 3 hours ago
I also like https://computer.rip/ - not personal anecdotes from people who were there, but definitely well researched and interesting technology history.
st_goliath 4 hours ago
Given the context and your reference to Quake, I assume by "the older days" you mean the 90s, and specifically PCs and early Windows?
If you weren't previously aware of "The Old New Thing" blog, Raymond Chen has been sharing stories about Windows 95 development for decades at this point. So many in fact, he published a book under the same name (the book is essentially a best-of collection from the blog in paper form).
The os2museum[1] blog is also a gold mine. Tim Paterson at one point tried to start blogging, sharing a few anecdotes about the early days of DOS[2]
Speaking of books, you might enjoy "Showstopper!" about the development of NT, even tough it is a bit shallow on the technical side. For the technical aspects, you might want to get it together with "Inside Windows NT" (first edition) by Helen Custer.
You might also enjoy: "Another Boring Topic" [3] YouTube channel, covering (among other things) early Windows development in excruciating detail and "Old Computers Sucked" [4], actually trying to run the software on era appropriate hardware. "Cathode Ray Dude" is all over the place but often also covers hardware and software of roughly that era[5].
A sibling comment already mentioned JWZs blog, if you have fond memories about Netscape, you might enjoy "Project Code Rush" [6].
Btw. Netscape Navigator 3.0 has just turned 30.
[1] https://www.os2museum.com/wp/
[2] https://dosmandrivel.blogspot.com/
[3] https://www.youtube.com/@AnotherBoringTopic/videos
[4] https://www.youtube.com/@old-computers-sucked/videos
unixhero 4 hours ago
Raymond Chen certainly publishes such tidbits on his Microsoft blog
stkdump 3 hours ago
> Just like how World War I was initially called “The Great War”. If you had called it “World War I” from the outset, people would look at you funny, like “Do you know something I don’t?”
This is why I didn't, at the time.
Jokes aside, some people knew and so it was also called (though not very commonly) World War starting 1914 and First World War from 1918. Because of course it wouldn't be the last. World War 3 was first talked about in 1941. And the famous idea that World War 4 would be fought with sticks and stones was first mentioned in 1946.
So the correct answer to "Do you know something I don’t?" is "I know human nature"
Ekaros 4 hours ago
How much faster are manufacturing timelines now compared to back then? How long was a lead time for such printing job back then compared to now? Has it gotten easier or not? Seems like there is real question here how long it will take to print batch before manufacturing.
koba3 4 hours ago
In a way, this is a real-world example of the Strategy Pattern: keep the stable structure fixed, while making the uncertain part replaceable later.
thaumasiotes 4 hours ago
What happened to the headline? The post is headlined "Why did the Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows have a special sticker announcing that it also had Tetris?", which is a correctly formed English sentence.
The HN headline currently says "Why Microsoft Entertainment Pack had a sticker announcing that it had Tetris?", which... isn't.
OuterVale 4 hours ago
Hacker News has an 80 character limit for titles. The full title is 111 characters, so the submitter editorialised it to cut down the length to 77 characters.
thaumasiotes 3 hours ago
Usually, when you're editing something, you try to make sure your output is legal in the target language.