Was there ever an official port of Tetris for 8-bit Ataris? I couldn't find out for sure and I almost suspect not. Never mind: there were lots of clones. 8-bit Ataris may have been the only platform beside the PC that had a distinct Tetris culture. One of this clones, or rather a variant, is Kemal Ezcan's Dredis. On his website he describes the game about as follows (translated from German):
Landscape version of Tetris, for 2 players at the same time. If you play it alone, you get to choose for each block whether it shall fall down the left or right well, quasi playing on two fields at the same time. In contrast to most computer versions this version has all the arcade features like emerging blocks, build-ups, level handicaps etc. And, of course, spiffy arcade music.
Dredis indeed closely mimics the Tetris arcade machine in many aspects. Look at the border around the title screen, or the 3D feel of the blocks. Since I have not found an 8-bit Atari emulator yet that works for me, I couldn't play it, but from the screenshots I'm impressed.
