First western player gets Tetris grandmaster rank - Page 3

On February 27 2008 16:45 Bill307 wrote:
This "T.A. Death" mode is significantly different from "normal" Tetris. I believe Tetris DS also has a similar game mode

On February 27 2008 16:56 vhallee wrote:
holy shit! this is madness!

On February 27 2008 17:09 HeadBangaa wrote:
Cultris is a really good Tetris clone you can play over Hamachi. It's great multiplayer, and not al the crazy tupid special blocks and shit of the Tetris spinoffs.

TL should organize a Cultris tourney. I beat all of my univ. friends pretty easily, at about 60+ drops/second. I'd love a challenge.

On February 27 2008 16:45 Bill307 wrote:
A guy I know at my university, Eric, recently became the first non-Japanese player to achieve the grandmaster rank (level 999) in Tetris the Grandmaster 2: The Absolute Plus. Here is a video of him achieving his record score:



This "T.A. Death" mode is significantly different from "normal" Tetris. I believe Tetris DS also has a similar game mode. Basically, as you can see, each piece drops immediately to the top of your stack, and you have less than a second (specifically, 1/2 to 1/4 of a second) to move it into place. This forces you to decide where you're going to put the next piece while moving the current piece into position. In addition, you need a different strategy: you must keep the centre of your stack higher than the edges, so that you can move pieces from the centre down to the edges.

A leaderboard for this game and a discussion of it can be found here:
http://www.tetrisconcept.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=169&start=0

Notice that only 9 players outside of Japan have achieved the master rank (i.e. reach level 500 in under 3:25).


A few weeks ago I got an opportunity to play this game on his "arcade suitcase" -- literally a suitcase with an arcade board inside, plus 2 home-made joysticks. T.A. Death mode is a lot harder than it looks. You have to know all of the piece rotations off by heart (as in, which button rotates the piece in which direction), and you literally cannot decide where to put a piece after it has dropped. This is because at the start of the game, you have only 1/2 a second to move each piece into place. At level 400 and beyond, you have only 1/4 of a second to do this. It really takes Tetris to a completely new level.

Hopefully Eric will be able to show me and others here a live demonstration of his skills, later on ^_^.

On February 27 2008 20:07 tfeign wrote:
Pretty good, but the guy looks like a joke compared to the Jap players:



Don't miss the part from 5:10

On February 28 2008 01:01 GrandInquisitor wrote:
oh my fucking god

On February 27 2008 16:56 vhallee wrote:
holy shit! this is madness!