Blodia

Turn the card over: above Hudson's name, a second copyright line — 1983, Manuel Constantinidis.

A card in the palm of your hand, and on its face a metallic ball rolling across a sky-blue gradient, the word BLODIA lit up in color. Underneath it, a hundred boards, fifteen of them open from the start, no grinding required. Rotate a piece, the path changes. Run out of ideas mid-puzzle, and a password lets you leave and pick it back up tomorrow.

Turn the card over, and there are two copyright lines. ©1989 Hudson Soft, and above it, smaller: ©1983 Manuel Constantinidis. The card says 1989, but it didn't reach shelves in Japan until February 1990 — the year printed on the plastic and the year it went on sale turned out to be two different things.

I spelled the title in my head, the way you do with a word that sits slightly wrong. B-l-o-d-i-a. Rearrange it, and you get Diablo — the exact title Broderbund put on Manuel Constantinidis's original 1983 computer game when they published it in the west. Seven years later, Hudson brought the same puzzle to Japan and called it by its other name, Blodia. Later still, it crossed back west again, renamed once more, as Timeball, on a machine built — by design — not to accept this Japanese card. Diablo, then Blodia, then Timeball. One puzzle, three names, two ocean crossings.

I still don't know much about Constantinidis himself — no interview, no photo, nothing beyond a copyright line and a title he chose in 1983. But that's different from knowing nothing. The title he chose didn't disappear when the game changed hands and hemispheres. It got folded into the letters of the new one, waiting for someone bored enough, or curious enough, to spell it back out.

A card, a ball, six letters rearranged.