[HN Gopher] NEC's Tetris Processor
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       NEC's Tetris Processor
        
       Author : zdw
       Score  : 118 points
       Date   : 2022-10-20 21:08 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.leadedsolder.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.leadedsolder.com)
        
       | Stamp01 wrote:
       | I'm surprised by how polished this version of Tetris appears to
       | be, given it's for a word processor with a monitor that doesn't
       | do the art of the game the justice it deserves.
        
         | csdvrx wrote:
         | It seems like an important historical artifact too!
         | 
         | It would be interesting to make it playable through qemu on
         | archive.org
        
         | lioeters wrote:
         | I noticed in some of the screenshots that Tokyo System House
         | (TSH), which produced the game for NEC, sublicensed Tetris from
         | Bullet Proof Software (BPS), which licensed it from Elorg
         | (Elektronorgtekhnika).
         | 
         | In 1988, BPS produced Tetris for many computer platforms in
         | Japan, including FM-7, MSX2, PC-8800, PC-9800, X1, X68000, and
         | Family Computer (NES). Some of these are NEC products. By 1991,
         | when the word processor version was released, Tetris had been
         | ported to even more machines including TRS-80, Amiga, ZX
         | Spectrum, and Macintosh.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tetris_variants
         | 
         | So I imagine the high polish of the game is due to existing
         | industry experience and references.
        
       | bluesign wrote:
       | Seems like TETRIS.COM is the loader, probably reading from disk
       | and executing the game.
        
         | bitwize wrote:
         | Microsoft Flight Simulator for the Tandy 2000 -- as far as I
         | know, the only graphical game ever released for that system --
         | contained a single file FS.COM, size 60 bytes. Presumably the
         | Flight Simulator program itself and all its data lived outside
         | the file system and FS.COM simply bootstrapped the real program
         | living elsewhere.
         | 
         | There is a byte-for-byte copy of the Flight Simulator for Tandy
         | 1000, 1200HD, and 2000 disk floating around out there and it
         | actually boots -- but says "Disk Error" when you try to
         | actually start the simulator after the initial menu. So I guess
         | someone will need to take a Kryoflux image in order to truly
         | preserve the software... or write a trainer for it.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | randkyp wrote:
       | The image transcription in the alt-text is a nice touch.
        
       | mysterydip wrote:
       | Really neat bit of history, and the archival process was fun to
       | read. Thanks for sharing!
        
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       (page generated 2022-10-22 23:00 UTC)