Two versions of this game were released — one for DOS and one for Windows.
1997 and 2002
It was a classic Tetris that included several variations: Tetris, Pentix, and Color Tetris.
What made this Tetris special was its support for network play with up to 5 players. When a player cleared two or more lines at once, random blocks would be added to the opponents’ wells.
The DOS version was written in Borland C 3.1. Apart from the network mode, its distinctive feature was a Windows 95–style interface. The network was implemented over the IPX/SPX protocol.
The game was written in C entirely from scratch, without any engines or third-party libraries, except for the IPX/SPX library. For graphics output, it used direct memory access. On startup, the game created interface elements in a memory area outside the visible screen, then copied them into the visible part for rendering. Because of this approach, the game wouldn’t run under Windows 95, even in compatibility mode. Unfortunately, the source code for this version has not survived.
I couldn’t find a screenshot of the DOS version.
If I recall correctly, the Windows version was written in C using Visual Studio 6. For the engine, it used the CDX library. The game had a client-server architecture: any player could act as the server, and the others would connect to them. It ran over TCP/IP. Thankfully, I was able to preserve the source code for this version.
