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Why Microsoft Entertainment Pack had a sticker announcing that it had Tetris?
- smelendez 1mo agoThe 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?
- torh 1mo agoMaybe 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 29d agoMost boxes don't contain anything from the start; you need to put the product in them before you sell them!
- torh 29d agoAs the article stated; they made the boxes before they had secured the license. I.e. the boxes were made before the content was ready.
- saghm 29d agoI understand. I was making a joke, but I guess it didn't land
- Hugsbox 29d agoIt at least landed with me, I had a sensible chuckle :)
- torh 29d agoYeah, sorry... It did not. Is it a reference I don't get?
- saghm 29d agoNope, not a reference! Just being silly and pretending that the sticker is accurate because at some point before the box was packed, it did not contain Tetris (or any other games), and then once it got packed, only then did it contain Tetris. Technically speaking, the contents of almost any box can be accurately labeled "now contains X!" because few boxes are constructed with their contents in them; stuff gets added to them after, which means at some point they did not contain whatever they're holding.
- torh 29d agoThanks for the patience. After a good nights sleep I see it straight away... "Now includes well rested brain".
- ValentineC 1mo agoCould be a psychological trick to make consumers think that they're buying an "improved" version.
- ainiriand 1mo agoThe latter sounds very plausible, it covers all bases.
- kalleboo 1mo agoOr maybe there was some pre-release catalog listings/marketing that listed the games without Tetris?
- amiga386 29d agoNow with more Tetris! Sweet Jesus! https://youtu.be/HhI_f2WtUOs?t=227 https://youtu.be/HhI_f2WtUOs?t=227
- fer 29d agoTimeless classic, I knew what it was before clicking!
- happytoexplain 29d agoMicrosoft 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 29d agoMicrosoft is run by a collective of aliens who are pretty good at imitating humans, but fall just a bit short.
- veunes 29d agoI 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 29d agoBecause 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?
- Ekaros 1mo agoHow 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.
- pseudony 1mo agoAnyone 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.
- unixhero 1mo agoRaymond Chen certainly publishes such tidbits on his Microsoft blog
- mastazi 1mo agoIn addition to the blog where this post is taken from https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/, you could check https://folklore.org/ https://folklore.org/ for early Apple anecdotes. And also https://www.jwz.org/blog/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/ for early Netscape/Mozilla stories
- voidUpdate 1mo agoApparently jwz doesn't like HN, if you click that link you just get an image of a testicle in an eggcup
- Oxodao 1mo agoAnd it seems to store that info locally as even typing the url manually after being redirected from here you still get the eggcup. Using the link in private mode does work though, probably need to clear the local storage
- voidUpdate 1mo agousing a different browser works fine too (tried edge after chrome)
- Hugsbox 28d agoI thought that link was safe to click at work. I thought wrong :(
- koba3 1mo agoIn 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 29d agoOpen/Closed priciple
- thaumasiotes 1mo agoWhat 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 1mo agoHacker 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 1mo agoUsually, when you're editing something, you try to make sure your output is legal in the target language.
- piltdownman 1mo agoThe shortest 'legal' sentence I can come up with is 82 Characters "Why did Microsoft Entertainment Pack have a sticker announcing that it had Tetris?" The had... had... is doing the heavy lifting for omitting the 'did' - but it's perfectly comprehensible. More to the point, 'English' doesn't have a Universal agreed dialect, pronunciation, or spelling. You'd lose your mind trying to square the circle of Hiberno English - the language of Joyce, Beckett, Keane, Wilde, Yeats et al - based on your notions of 'proper' English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English
- stkdump 1mo 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"
- expedition32 29d agoMy country was neutral so no we never called it the great war. For the Netherlands it was just a footnote.
- deleted 29d ago[deleted]
- zem 29d agohttps://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1851.html https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1851.html
- PetitPrince 29d agoThe actual game is playable in uour browser on archive.org https://archive.org/details/TETRIS_201612 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).
- VCFundedGenYer 29d agoWeird 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 29d agoThe 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
- veunes 29d agoFunny how much risk management is hidden in something as mundane as a sticker
- nunez 29d agoDoes anyone have a photo of this box? I can't find it online; I'm only able to find Entertainment Pack 1.