Microsoft has always had plausible sounding but contextually nonsensical writing/UI.

E.g. In Outlook, it says (or used to?) "All done for the day!" when your inbox is empty. It's like they see how other UI/writing is done and copy it, but they don't think about it. Yes, other mailboxes say things like, "all done". Yes, "done for the day" is a common phrase. But no, it doesn't make sense in this context.

Same with the sticker. It's very common for a sticker-style design element on packaging to say "Now with...!". So they just did that without thinking.

They do the same thing with UI controls/patterns, but I can't think of an example off the top of my head right now. You'll see something in Windows and think, "ok, I see why you did that, because other software does that, but it doesn't make sense here."

Could be a psychological trick to make consumers think that they're buying an "improved" version.

    Now with more Tetris!

    Sweet Jesus!

Maybe it's as simple as for the people making the boxes, it didn't contain Tetris from the start. And when they got the license, in their head, it now did have Tetris.

Or maybe there was some pre-release catalog listings/marketing that listed the games without Tetris?

The latter sounds very plausible, it covers all bases.

In addition to the blog where this post is taken from https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/, you could check https://folklore.org/ for early Apple anecdotes. And also https://www.jwz.org/blog/ for early Netscape/Mozilla stories

I can recommend "The Digital Antiquarian" for games (https://www.filfre.net/) and "Abort Retry Fail" for hardware companies (https://www.abortretry.fail/)

Given the context and your reference to Quake, I assume by "the older days" you mean the 90s, and specifically PCs and early Windows?

If you weren't previously aware of "The Old New Thing" blog, Raymond Chen has been sharing stories about Windows 95 development for decades at this point. So many in fact, he published a book under the same name (the book is essentially a best-of collection from the blog in paper form).

The os2museum[1] blog is also a gold mine. Tim Paterson at one point tried to start blogging, sharing a few anecdotes about the early days of DOS[2]

Speaking of books, you might enjoy "Showstopper!" about the development of NT, even tough it is a bit shallow on the technical side. For the technical aspects, you might want to get it together with "Inside Windows NT" (first edition) by Helen Custer.

You might also enjoy: "Another Boring Topic" [3] YouTube channel, covering (among other things) early Windows development in excruciating detail and "Old Computers Sucked" [4], actually trying to run the software on era appropriate hardware. "Cathode Ray Dude" is all over the place but often also covers hardware and software of roughly that era[5].

A sibling comment already mentioned JWZs blog, if you have fond memories about Netscape, you might enjoy "Project Code Rush" [6].

Btw. Netscape Navigator 3.0 has just turned 30.

[1] https://www.os2museum.com/wp/

[2] https://dosmandrivel.blogspot.com/

[3] https://www.youtube.com/@AnotherBoringTopic/videos

[4] https://www.youtube.com/@old-computers-sucked/videos

[5] https://www.youtube.com/@CathodeRayDude/videos

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y

Raymond Chen certainly publishes such tidbits on his Microsoft blog

My country was neutral so no we never called it the great war.

For the Netherlands it was just a footnote.

Open/Closed priciple

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