Why Microsoft Entertainment Pack had a sticker announcing it also had Tetris
Why Microsoft Entertainment Pack had a sticker announcing that it had Tetris?
Raymond Chen explains that the first Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows shipped with a bright red sticker reading "Now includes TETRIS for Windows!" because the Tetris license wasn't finalized when the boxes were printed. To avoid wasting boxes if the deal fell through, they omitted any mention of Tetris from the box art and applied stickers once the deal closed. Later runs incorporated the sticker into the design and added the number 1, as sequels had already been released.
Rather than including Tetris on the box art and risking having to destroy a production run of boxes if the license couldn’t be acquired in time, the decision was made to produce boxes that omitted any screen shots or even a mention of Tetris.
- smelendez
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?
- pseudony
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.
- PetitPrince
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).
- stkdump
> 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
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.