Why Microsoft Entertainment Pack had a sticker announcing that it had Tetris?

Why Microsoft Entertainment Pack had a sticker announcing that it had Tetris?(devblogs.microsoft.com)

78 points by tybulewicz 34 days ago | 54 comments

smelendez 34 days 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?

happytoexplain 34 days ago | |

Microsoft has always had plausible sounding but contextually nonsensical writing/UI.

E.g. In Outlook, it says (or used to?) "All done for the day!" when your inbox is empty. It's like they see how other UI/writing is done and copy it, but they don't think about it. Yes, other mailboxes say things like, "all done". Yes, "done for the day" is a common phrase. But no, it doesn't make sense in this context.

Same with the sticker. It's very common for a sticker-style design element on packaging to say "Now with...!". So they just did that without thinking.

They do the same thing with UI controls/patterns, but I can't think of an example off the top of my head right now. You'll see something in Windows and think, "ok, I see why you did that, because other software does that, but it doesn't make sense here."

Hugsbox 34 days ago | | |

Microsoft is run by a collective of aliens who are pretty good at imitating humans, but fall just a bit short.

ValentineC 34 days ago | |

Could be a psychological trick to make consumers think that they're buying an "improved" version.

amiga386 34 days ago | |

    Now with more Tetris!

    Sweet Jesus!

https://youtu.be/HhI_f2WtUOs?t=227

fer 34 days ago | | |

Timeless classic, I knew what it was before clicking!

torh 34 days 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 34 days ago | | |

Most boxes don't contain anything from the start; you need to put the product in them before you sell them!

veunes 34 days ago | |

I read the "now" as pure marketing. It creates a little sense of "this just got better" even if there was never actually a Tetris-less version on shelves

seba_dos1 33 days ago | |

Because a sticker "includes Tetris" on a box that doesn't mention Tetris otherwise seems like a mistake, while "now includes Tetris" sounds like there's been a change that made the information on the box out-of-date/incomplete?

ainiriand 34 days ago | |

The latter sounds very plausible, it covers all bases.

kalleboo 34 days ago | |

Or maybe there was some pre-release catalog listings/marketing that listed the games without Tetris?

PetitPrince 34 days 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).

pseudony 34 days 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.

thaumasiotes 34 days 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 34 days 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 34 days ago | | |

Usually, when you're editing something, you try to make sure your output is legal in the target language.

stkdump 34 days 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"

zem 34 days ago | |

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1851.html

expedition32 34 days ago | |

My country was neutral so no we never called it the great war.

For the Netherlands it was just a footnote.

Ekaros 34 days 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.

VCFundedGenYer 34 days ago |

Weird question, and not really a mystery. It's been documented to death.

Tetris sold like hot cakes in the late 80s and early 90s. There was a gold rush for the license.

Just look at the Game Boy. Tetris made it successful.

veunes 34 days ago | |

The mystery isn't why Tetris was valuable though. It's why it was only mentioned on a sticker instead of being part of the original packaging

koba3 34 days 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.

abigdog 34 days ago | |

Open/Closed priciple

nunez 34 days ago |

Does anyone have a photo of this box? I can't find it online; I'm only able to find Entertainment Pack 1.

veunes 34 days ago |

Funny how much risk management is hidden in something as mundane as a sticker