Blockout
Blockout took the idea of Tetris to the
third dimension, but did not change much else, except that there are
some smaller pieces. It should not in any way be confused with
Welltris, which looks similar in a
screenshot, but has quite different gameplay. Blockout started out
as a commercial game and has, for whatever reasons, been cloned less
than most other spin-offs.
I always try to give a country of origin for games. With Blockout,
this is more difficult than with most. The name Blockout is
a trademark of Kadon Enterprises, a Maryland-based game company.
California Dreams, the label under which it was published, is a
subsidiary of LDW (Last Day of Work) Software, a California company.
The arcade machine was made by Technos Japan. The PC, C64, and Amiga
versions, which form the original release, were created entirely by
Polish programmers.
Platforms
Blockout was parallely released on several platforms and later
ported to more:
- 1989
-
- 1990
-
- 1991
-
It is impossible to name an original
platform, but it may be
noted that the DOS box showed Amiga screenshots. There were three
different title screens, the Genesis version used that of the Amiga.
The DOS version could run in EGA, both high
and low resolution, CGA (low resolution), Tandy,
and Hercules.
Clones and Variants
There have been far less implementations of Blockout than, say, of
Columns or Dr. Mario,
but there have been a few. I include those that took the basic idea
(Tetris in three dimensions), but changed the viewpoint.
| Original |
 |
| 3-D Pitfall |
|
 |
| Tritris |
|
 |
| 3DCubes |
|
 |
| 3D-LomTris |
|
| In Sideview |
 |
| Cubus |
|
 |
| 3D Tetris |
|
 |
| Frac |
|
 |
| Frac4D |
|
