{"id":112621,"date":"2026-08-18T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/?p=112621"},"modified":"2026-08-19T09:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T16:24:08","slug":"20260818-00","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20260818-00\/?p=112621","title":{"rendered":"Why did the Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows have a special sticker announcing that it also had Tetris?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows didn&#8217;t have a number after its name because it was the first one, and nobody knew that there were going to be any sequels.\u00b9<\/p>\n<p>It may not have had a big number 1 on the box, but initial runs did have a bright red sticker that said, &#8220;Now includes TETRIS for Windows!&#8221; There was no mention of Tetris anywhere else on the box. Why did it announce the inclusion of Tetris only with a sticker?<\/p>\n<p>Because at the time the first run of boxes were being printed, the negotiations to license Tetris hadn&#8217;t yet concluded. There was a chance that the negotiations would fall through, and the Entertainment Pack would have to be released without Tetris.<\/p>\n<p>Rather than including Tetris on the box art and risking having to destroy a production run of boxes if the license couldn&#8217;t be acquired in time, the decision was made to produce boxes that omitted any screen shots or even a mention of Tetris. In anticipation of the deal coming to a satisfactory conclusion, they did have a run of red stickers on standby. When the deal was completed, the &#8220;Now includes TETRIS for Windows!&#8221; stickers were applied to the already-made boxes.<\/p>\n<p>Later runs of the product box <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mobygames.com\/game\/4004\/microsoft-entertainment-pack-for-windows\/cover\/group-192642\/cover-519713\/\"> incorporated the Tetris sticker into the box art<\/a>, and even called itself &#8220;Microsoft Entertainment Pack 1&#8221; and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mobygames.com\/game\/4004\/microsoft-entertainment-pack-for-windows\/cover\/group-192642\/cover-519715\/\"> suggested that you try out &#8220;other volumes of Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows&#8221;<\/a> because packs 2 through 4 had already been released by then.<\/p>\n<p>So I guess that means that if you have a copy of Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows with the Tetris sticker, you have an ultra-rare copy, like the original <a title=\"Windows brings out the Rorschach test in everyone\" href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20030825-00\/?p=42803\"> Windows 95 box with a hologram of a shirtless baby<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><b>Bonus chatter<\/b>: <a title=\"Some trivia about the \/\/build\/ 2011 conference\" href=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20130401-00\/?p=4793\"> Other sticker shenanigans<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u00b9 Just like how World War I was initially called &#8220;The Great War&#8221;. If you had called it &#8220;World War I&#8221; from the outset, people would look at you funny, like &#8220;Do you know something I don&#8217;t?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A contingency plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-112621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-history"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>A contingency plan.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112622,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112621\/revisions\/112622"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}