This is a title that seems to be missing at present and we believe was due for release by Novotrade. The same team that did titles such as Impossible Mission 2 and Express Raider on the C64.
Now the last title is particularly important, as one of the developers working on that game was Hungarian Istvan Ratkai, who is the developer of this early Tetris development credited to Istvan and found by Csaba Virag.
It seems to be mostly finished, but lacking a lot of polish overall. Because of Istvan’s links to Novotrade, we are pretty convinced that this is the same game that is currently listed at https://hungame.blog/segits-te-is-kutatni/ as missing.
We don’t know what happened to the title or if it progressed any further, but hope to hear from Istvan very soon to find out more.
Cavery210 makes a good point in the comments that it may have been canned due to the licence not being valid or having some kind of cease and desist. Hopefully we’ll find out more soon.
Contributions: Csaba Virag, Cavery210
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Preview_Tetris-RATKAI (zip)
Gallery
Update history
04/09/24 – Little note about why it may have been cancelled.
Presumably, Novotrade’s version of Tetris was cancelled thanks to them getting the license from an illegitimate holder. (There was an infamous legal battle over who held the official rights for computer and home conversions of the game, with Nintendo, Bullet-Proof Software and Spectrum HoloByte coming out on top. Infamously, Tengen’s NES port and Sega’s Mega Drive/Genesis port had to be pulled from shelves after a brief print run thanks to these decisions)
That’s a good point and could well be the case – i’ll make a note of that now.
There’s IBM Tetris in Gamebase64.com. It looks quite exactly same, although colours do differ a bit.
http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=15583&d=18&h=0
Good spot! I wonder if this was just a hacked version of Istvan’s game. Seems like there is more of a story to this than meets the eye.