https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHMLwgE4ZG8
I've been following competitive Tetris for the past 2 years now. It slid into my YT feed and I've been hooked.
I got to watch the stream live!
Jonas is the man! He's won it multiple times and plays a beautiful game. I thought he had the kid, Joseph, for a moment with a +100k lead. But, as he topped out Joseph was able to keep his composure. I was beautiful to watch and I gave him a standing ovation (from my living room).
The cool thing is, the kid worked hard at the game for about a year before joining the competition. He studied videos on YouTube and just became obsessed with the game. He's the next wave (which the Tetris community had been discussing for the past few years), and its cool to see that this game is not dead yet. Its virtual chess.
The Tetris community is a good one. Its seems as if everyone backs everyone. There are no egos, just humble-pie Tetris. Jonas was a class act at the end congratulating the kid.
If you have a chance, please watch the video. You'll be amazed with the skill/tactics involved in this game.
edit Here's the winning match! Just watched it again. It give me goosebumps! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9rXBQLfjjE
The crazy thing...what you link isn’t even the exciting 2 player mode. I’m not sure if it’s the nes or snes version but 2 player is more of a battle mode where your 2 lines, 3 lines and Tetris’ get included on your opponents side. The winner is last man standing (not score).
I think the NES Tetris score attack ruleset is better suited for pure competition. Both players receive the same pieces with the same RNG seed and it comes down to who can balance the management of their stack and maximizing the score the best.
1. Center 4-wide combos: While largely hated, this is not a "luck based" strategy. Its memorization of the various forms that a center-4wide well creates, to maximize the quadratic damage formula of modern SRS Tetris Games with respect to combos. Perform the longest combo, you deal a LOT of damage.
2. Perfect clear players: I've played vs people who can consistently get 2-perfect clears at the beginning, and often times can hit me with a 3rd. Perfect-clears do 10-rows of damage (against a typical Tetris field of 22 or so), so 2x Perfect clears in the opening is darn near lethal. Regardless, the "Perfect Clear" is the epitome of "planning ahead".
3. DT Cannon: Amemitaya loves his TSpin Double + TSpin Triple setup, and can even perfect-clear or side-4wide afterwards.
4. TKI: A technique to get a TSpin-double within 7-drops. Its the fastest way to damage the opponent, and can stuff a Perfect-clear opening (it takes 10-drops to create a perfect clear. It only takes 7-drops to TKI).
5. BT-Cannon: The reversed DT-Cannon is a TSpin Triple followed up by a TSpin Double. It has different properties and its own set of followers. Honestly, I don't understand this at all, but that's the cool part of SRS Tetris: there's lots of different strategies!
Some Youtube References for non-Tetris folk:
1: Wumbo does 4wide when he gets serious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieLTP0mIV0o
2. Wumbo also does Perfect Clears sometimes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YjTu0mByfg
3. Amemitaya usually does DT Cannon into various followups. I can't find any Amemitaya videos, but this guy on gets the concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVN0Wlv-Uo
4. TKI followed up by King Crimson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXraaMWK6PI . You can see the speed at which TKI is executed, which makes it good vs Perfect Clear players.
5. BT-Cannon->CSpin Perfect Clear loop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umNTGq9p0qQ
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There are a LOT of different strategies in modern "fast" Tetris games. You play vs the same opponent a lot, like first-to-20 or so, to figure out which openings they like and try to switch your openings to best theirs.
Anyway, the main difference between "Modern Tetris" and "Classic Tetris" is that the RNG of modern Tetris is far more forgiving. "Classic Tetris" is a truly random piece, with a lookahead of 1.
"Modern SRS Tetris" is a bag-RNG (every 7-pieces are permuted, and then given to you in a random order), ensuring an even distribution of pieces. Furthermore, you have a lookahead of 5, so you can plan out your strategies far more reliably in Modern Tetris.
I personally prefer SRS Tetris. But I give credit to the classic-Tetris players. Due to the RNG being so much less forgiving in classic-Tetris, its an entirely different skillset and a different game. Furthermore, SRS Tetris is more forgiving with placement of pieces. SRS Tetris looks faster: but a lot of it is because its controls are easier.
Classic Tetris is kinda like watching a Street Fighter 2 player. Laypeople won't be able to tell how difficult some of those moves are. SRS Tetris is more like Dragonball FighterZ, with easier to do combos and automatic-tracking enabled. The combos are flashier and longer, but that's because they're way easier to do than SF2 combos.
edit:
https://youtu.be/JPPEKVUlY9w this is an example video.
Maybe if the game was a RTF (“first to 1M points”) it might avoid players from aiming to kill the game early.
I was with you until here. I'm curious what you mean by this?
A newer version of the game, Tetris The Grand Master 3, has a completely insane top end of skill. It also has a "Hold" feature where you can keep a piece and drop it later when you want it. Try watching this [0] YouTube video of someone who is very good at the game. If you think it starts out crazy, skip ahead to the 5:00 mark. During the end credit sequence of the game, you have to play without any of the dropped pieces being visible.
* NES Tetris: the subject of OP post.
* Standard Modern (or "SRS") Tetris. The game mechanics gives a lots of option to the player: pieces can slide after falling to the ground or when rotating against a wall, the RNG is optmized to give a uniform distribution of piece, etc. Since the speed of the game comes from the player himself, most people either play in a 1vs1 format [1] or in a solo 40 lines sprint [2]. It can get very fast [3] (an actual TAS looks like this [4].
* Arika Tetris (Tetris the Grand Master). A Japananese, arcade-only variant of Tetris. Here the game mechanics offer a lot of the same options (in spirit) as the Standard Modern Tetris, but the mechanics is tweaked for solo play. Not only it enables a high speed play, but forces you to keep up (otherwise it's game over). We got some good exposure some years ago thanks to the performance of Kevin et al. during the Awesome Game Done Quick Marathon a few years ago [5]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhnFztv79N8
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llMQxWfI-Mg
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyVh40sOav0
Some people don't like the SRS engine however. A lot of things have been added to SRS Tetris, such as bag-randomizers, hold-button, and a slew of "twists" that help you recover from errors.
For people who want to play "original Tetris", it means you have to play the original NES version. And there is a large community of players who really prefer the original style... and not the modern direction that make up the rules of SRS Tetris variants.
As I said in another post: I personally prefer SRS Tetris. But I also give a lot of credit to the players who prefer classic rules: the classic rules are way harder to play. And in some sense: more casual people have played Tetris under classic rules. (SRS Tetris is a newer variant, and a lot of casuals think of the "Hold" button as cheating in my experience).
My jaw fell to the floor when I saw them beat the game at near instant speed with invisible blocks. I just can't process how fast these guys play.
Really glad this community is getting more exposure and more young blood is joining the scene!
Bet most Smash Bros Melee/GoldenEye/Ocarina of Time players aren't older than the games they're playing!
The original BBC headline was "Teenager beats Tetris champion at game old than he is", which I didn't like.
I note they have now changed it to "Teenager beats man at Tetris to become world champion".
tl;dr headlines about retro computer game championships are hard.
For sure in that version the "hypertap" approach was superior to holding down the arrow keys. Even with the highest repeat key settings in windows you could get more moves per second by tapping.
Genuinely curious what you think is specifically wrong with it? If the BBC feels the app provides a better experience isn't that up to them?
(Certainly people know about Chess, Go, Golf and Football — but depending on your definition, this could be considered a digital sport.)
The same thing is happening in the Super Smash Bros Melee scene right now, where a new top player is winning games, and he’s the only top player who hasn’t been playing since ~2001-2002. It’s pretty exciting to see someone new beat the old guard.
That night while falling asleep, my mind was still playing tetris. I visualized the game vividly and could actually play it in my mind. Only later I learned this is actually called The Tetris Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect).
https://m.twitch.tv/nubbinsgoody
If you want to see an exciting documentary about how this all got started:
The Tetris Effect And Our Boundaryless Digital Future
https://www.wired.com/story/tetris-effect-tetsuya-mizguchi-v...
I'd venture to guess the graphics of Tetris already look outdated by today's standards whereas the realism of Chess is much more visually impressive.
Tetris, by comparison, is a single-player game (it has multiplayer analogues but they're very artificial) with extremely shallow theory. It is more akin to a puzzle than it is to a competitive game. Watching high-level tetris does nothing to improve your own tetris skill.
Is that actually true? It's hard to believe. Surely you'd learn a lot about good strategy and other aspects of the game.
Chess is...a great spectator sport
Hmm yeah well...Watching someone think for 30 minutes about a move isn't that thrilling. Not uncommonly, both players will be away from the board at the same time. Most big tournaments seem to have hardly anyone actually going to them now - the experience of watching online with expert commentators is so much better. Even if you watch live in the room, you're looking at big screens on the wall, not the actual board.
Having said that, chess is the only game/sport I follow these days, I love watching tournaments and matches with commentary online, and analysis videos, banter blitz (grandmaster plays the public online while speaking their thoughts), chess lectures etc. I used to play a lot (it's extremely addictive) but gave up recently - playing (and peoples' behaviour online) can be quite disturbing, but watching is 100% enjoyable. I try to watch in Spanish when possible to improve my Spanish at the same time!
Also, does anyone know of any good free software implementation of tetris? (no, don't suggest emacs :P)
