BedPoing was a homage to a great little freeware game I used to play on my Amiga called "Poing!". Its a standard breakout clone with the slight variations of your bat is on the left side of the screen and you need to advance through past the right side of the screen. If you're on level 3 and you miss the ball; you go back to level 2 and get a chance to recover; then back to level 1 if you miss it again. This game is pretty much complete except for the UI graphics. I just could never be bothered finishing it. The level sets can be generated or all pre set and are just flat text files so anyone can create their own levels easily.

Download:

Executeable - 725KB - For Windows

What's all this?

This page describes how The Tetris Company is trying to remove all freeware & shareware tetris-style games from distribution. They are claiming that they have copyright on "the look and feel" and "trade dress" of Tetris. This is not legal and is an invalid claim.

The story.

Many freeware and shareware tetris game developers and distributors have received threatening e-mails from "The Tetris Company" about their game being a copyright infringement.. I received one such e-mail in December 1997 in regards to my freeware tetris clone "Bedtris". I subsequently changed the name to "Bedter" and put in disclaimers that it was not an official "Tetris" game. On the 18th of February 1999 I received another e-mail that states that I am still infringing their "look and feel" copyright.

However, I left the game available on this webpage and as of yet (Feb 2011) I have received no further threats.

Other author's tales:

• An anonymous author wrote in how he emailed and received Replies from Henk Rogers!

• Richey Fellner, author of "Bricks 2000" was also given similar treatment.

• Pierre Phaneuf tried to do everything correctly for his tetris game and The Tetris Company never responded.

Hasbro had sued a number of retro games companies over alledged copyright violations. One of those companies it sued, Webfoot Technologies has settled out of court. One of the owners of Webfoot posted a comment on slashdot and they gave me permission to repost that comment here.

US Copyright Law An idea or concept can not be copyrighted. The Tetris Company's code, graphics, music (etc) is copyrighted, but the actual concept can not be. They can copyright the written rules to the game, but they can't actually copyright the generic rules themselves. This means if I copied out a section of their HOW TO PLAY manual I would be infringing copyright. At www.bitlaw.com they say the following:

"Ideas, procedures, principles, discoveries, and devices are all specifically excluded from copyright protection. As stated in the Copyright Act: In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work."

Ideas can be patented, however The Tetris Company is not claiming a patent on Tetris. They are claiming a "look and feel" copyright.

We …

Version 2.52

Bedter was renamed from Bedtris after legal threats from The Tetris Company!

The ultimate in tetris style games. With all the features that I wanted in a tetris game because I couldn't find one I liked, so I wrote my own. Now at version 2.52. Bedter is freeware so download and distribute to all of your friends.
Features include:

• Customisable Gameplay
• Customisable Scoring
• One or two players
• Agressive or Points mode
• Multiple Difficulties
• Customisable Controls
• Full Screen mode
• Sound and Music
• Piece Preview
• High Scores
• Freeware

Downloads

• Bedter 2.52 - Windows 336KB
• Bedter 2.9 - linux - 350KB

For linux, most likely you will also need the Qt runtime libraries libqt.so.2.gz (2.6MB) and libqtintf.so.gz (440KB). If you already have version 2.2.4 of these libraries (as libqt.so.2.2.4 and libqtintf.so.2.2.4) you can use these by creating symbolic links libqt.so.2 and libqtintf.so to point to the existing libraries, respectively.

Run "tar xzvf BedTer.tar.gz". If you need to install the Qt runtimes
do so to a common library path (ie /us/lib) and then run
/sbin/ldconfig as root.

People's Responses

Here's what people have to say about Bedter:

"The game's pretty cool. It's one of the better Tetris clones out there and it doesn't even take up that much memory either." -- Matt P. , SoftSeek WebPage

"I'd like to commend you on bedtris...it is by far the best tetris clone that I've ever seen, and i've spent quite some time playing it." -- David Ham

"I'm really enjoying Bedtris. I had been using another shareware (BLOCKED) previously to satisfy my Tetris addiction. Yours is much better." -- Mike Morgan

"I just downloaded Bedtris from shareware.com and I love it! Excellent job! I too have been looking for a good copy of Tetris for my home PC and yours is the best!" -- Paul LaBouve

"Downloaded Bedtris from the Net last night. Been playing ever since." -- Barry Kendal

"You have done an incredible job with this game. It is definitely one of the best tetris clones for windows I've ever seen." -- David Ko

"FINALY!!! My wife has had me searching the net far and wide for a tetris game and now it's finaly downloaded for her. Although she has not tried it as yet I have and it's great!! Now all those …