,
16 tweets,
5 min read
Read on Twitter
Man, not even Sega knows what Tetris they included on the Genesis Mini. The scoring table in the manual is for Mega Drive Tetris instead of the arcade version!
I can understand anachronistic use of branded language such as Tetrimino (with i), Matrix, Block Out, etc., and I'm not surprised to see the 1984 revisionist history claim in the intro paragraph, but you'd hope they would at least print the correct details about the game itself.
sega.jp/mdmini/manual/… -- Here's the Japanese manual. The level of detail on text/diagrams from the original manual scan versus what they've rewritten/replaced here is pretty evident. The old scoring table was just mistakenly left alone.
They don't appear to lie about 1984 in the intro blurb, although it does still look new. Elsewhere, passages are replaced to include テトリミノ instead of テトロミノ or whatever else may have been present previously.
Another thing, the JP manual section on drop scoring still says 高速落下のボタン (fast fall button) instead of ハードドロップ (Hard Drop). I think it means dropping general, MD Tetris had soft drop and pseudo-hard drop. US manual changes it to Hard Drop outright for some reason.
Here's the original manual intro blurb from PS2 Sega Ages archives vs. the new MD Mini manual. New intro changes "30-year-old researcher" to plainly "researcher" without mention of age, ブロック (block) becomes テトリミノ (Tetrimino), instances of Tetris now have ® appended. 
Also included the copyright blurbs in those screenshots for interest. Gone are mentions of AcademySoft, Elorg, Andromeda, Mirrorsoft, Sphere (?), Tengen, and Atari. Vadim Gerasimov, who helped program some of the first versions of Tetris (vadim.oversigma.com/Tetris.htm) is also removed.
I don't have the reading ability to go through and diff everything, but on a scan most of it looks like more substitutions for block -> Tetrimino, rewriting or reflowing sections to fit the functionality in the arcade game, removing a couple irrelevant pages, etc..
Also interesting, the rotation diagram has the bidirectional arrows for A/B buttons removed. Instead, all arrows point counterclockwise to reflect the default, arcade-accurate control configuration.
The section about drop scoring is also interesting; the original manual doesn't have the 高速落下のボタン terminology, referring only to the "C Button."
MD Tetris's C button defaults to a "pseudo-hard drop" function. In the new arcade port, C would default to a rotation button. So, perhaps the Japanese MD Mini manual replaced this instance of "C Button" with a new term, and the English translation replaced that with "Hard Drop."
I'm also a fan of the brand-new Totally Necessary six dot hyperellipsis following the drop scoring description. It's just not there at all in the original text. Also, the multi-line scoring text replaces 一気にキメろ with 一気に決めろ, was it too exaggerated before? :p
Anyway, that's what strikes me as interesting for now. The Japanese manual text seems to remain pretty faithful or re-use what it can from the original text. Alexey's age may have just been removed from the JP text to prevent confusion (it's incongruous with the copyright year).
So, removing "30-year-old" from the JP text doesn't feel like it's hiding something, necessarily. On the other hand, the English manual text feels like it's really pushing the notion of the current Tetris "brand identity," and the 1984 "birthday" is a big part of that.
I feel like the text is a bit more plain. Instead of something like "Tetris is a puzzle game developed by a researcher working at the Soviet 'Academy Computer Center,'" the backstory gets simplified down. It also doesn't define terms like Tetrimino or Matrix, they're just there.
Come on!!! It's not the same game!!!
