Klotz

KLOTZ is a game of falling pieces similar to TETRIS for use under Microsoft Windows. Why yet another version of TETRIS? The first reason simply was the wish to have my very own version of this game, as everyone else seems to have. At the CeBit in Hannover here in Germany most booths had some equipment showing falling colored pieces, somehow. In the middle of 1989 a flood of tetris clones started to show up on usenet. A second reason to implement it was to have something useful (hah!) to explore the capabilities of Microsoft Windows with. KLOTZ isn't especially well behaved, so please don't take it as a model of a conforming Windows application. It makes too much noise; it grabs the focus or pops up a dialog box when it shouldn't. Its many windows can get confusing. But so what—it's a game!

Klotz is one of the earliest Tetris clones for Windows, Dave Edson's Tetris for Windows and the first version (still called Tetris) of Gary Kipnis' WinTris are from the same year, all others that I know are later. It is one of the few surviving games from the Windows 2.0 era. It may have been the first Windows game from outside the US. It had some nifty features:

It is possible to play KLOTZ even if it is minimized and only its icon is visible. Minimize KLOTZ, activate it again by a single click into the icon area, get rid of the system menu by single clicking outside the system menu. Now KLOTZ is active, but minimized. If you use a keyboard layout with numeric keys (the default one, for example), you can play now—if you have good eyes.

Actually, this doesn't really work. You do get the active icon, but it's too imprecise to allow playing. Still, the idea is fun, and it's an example of something you can do under 3.x, but not under 9x. Remember that clock that you could start, then minimize and the icon would show the time?

Versions

So far, I have come across four versions of Klotz, three of which I have put up for download. The fourth one, 2.09, is like 2.11a, but without the color gradient background.

Klotz 2.11a (1990)

This version was still compiled with the Windows 2.0 SDK (the one for 3.0 wasn't out yet). It has a very fascinating color gradient background, which is as smooth as the desktop color depth will allow. The screenshot at the top of this page was taken under Windows 2.03 on DOSBox, the screenshot on the download page on my IBM PS/2 9557 under 64k colors XGA.

Klotz 3.01 NT (1992)

In August 1992, Microsoft released the software development kit for its upcoming Windows NT operating system and held a contest for shareware authors. Wolfgang Strobl won the first prize in the games category with his port of Klotz. This is the oldest 32-bit Windows game I ever came across.

Klotz5 3.54 (1996)

It's called Klotz5 because it has pentominoes. It also has a wider well. This was the last version Wolfgang Strobl ever released.

Apart from Klotz, Wolfgang Strobl created a Windows version of the Colossal Cave Adventure (WinAdv), and converted the Jargon File to Windows help format.