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.
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 ^_^.
Shit. When I was little I used to be such a Tetris Junkie. Haven't played in a couple of year but you don't need to be playing active to see how nuts that is!
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 beast with cybernetic arms 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:
On February 27 2008 17:20 Krohm wrote: He's no Japanese player... Haha but with that being said, I'm amazed he did it. How much has been practicing?
I just asked him about that on another forum.
Edit: found a post by him on that Tetris forum:
I like to count from when I got my Astro City arcade cabinet. That's when I started giving the game the amount of attention it deserved. It was so convenient to simply flick a switch and start playing anytime. And the machine was so heavy that even my rough, forceful, unpracticed joystick technique wouldn't budge the controls. If you count from there it's about 17 months, including several months where I took breaks from playing.
I'll relay his reply to you later, but for now, I noticed that the topic I linked to in my OP was started by him on August 9th, 2006. So I would guess that he's been playing TAP Death mode on-and-off for at least 19 months.
On February 27 2008 17:29 Gyabo wrote: geez, i thought i was good at tetris from playing it on my graphing calculator
this looks like tetris at 200 apm or something
I thought I was good at Tetris, too. Then I tried this game and shouted for joy after I finally managed to clear a single line (after losing a few times first).
According to one of the posts in that Tetris topic, you need to place at least 1.75 pieces per second to play in this mode. If the average # of actions per piece is 4 (i.e. 3 movements and 1 rotation) then you would need a minimum of about 400 Tetris apm to play this.
On February 27 2008 17:41 Masamune wrote: How much would it suck if someone pushed the player 2 start button just as he was about to beat it?
None at all, because the game actually lets both players play completely independently of each other.
If both players start at the same time, however, there's also a cool "Doubles" mode, where you both co-operate on a single giant well of blocks:
This mode is REALLY fun! But it's much harder than you'd think: the pieces drop rather fast after about a minute, and you and your partner tend to get in each other's way a lot (and your pieces can't move through each other), which also adds to the fun . Heck, even these guys messed each other up several times .
I'm hoping he brings out TGM2: TAP to more of our university gaming events, so that I can play it again .
There was this guy named Jin8 or something on youtube who was a marathon master, but I think his videos were removed recently cuz I don't see them in my youtube history.
This version that you posted is the one you play with a joystick, arcade style.
I play Tetris often myself, but it's on the keyboard, and I play at tetris.com You'd be amazed when you see players beat master mode with the keyboard, looks just like the arcade version as far as speed.
On February 27 2008 20:07 tfeign wrote: Pretty good, but the guy looks like a joke compared to the Jap players:
Sometimes you can actually be better at games by taking large breaks in between, because you forget your habits. It sounds like he used that technique a bit.
dude both are amazing but that japanese master is something else...do you have 'strats' for tetris or is it just about repeated exposure to the game and something about your brain that clicks with it?
yeah, that japanese guy is outstanding, but note that he always knows tow peaces ahead what is coming. I think our american fellow knew this, he played a different version.
There is practically a grandmaster for everything, there is a rock paper scissors grandmaster, with rock paper scissor supercomputers. No joke, google it.
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
I have Tetris DS and the DS version sounds a lot easier. You have a lot of time to react after the block drops (a few seconds). To show you what's possible on the DS version:
On February 27 2008 16:56 vhallee wrote: holy shit! this is madness!
Aw man, you beat me to it. xD
Tetris is probably one of the first games I ever played, and it will always be one of my favourites. So does the dude get an award or something? Is there an IRL hall of fame?
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.
Great play but I must say that the Japanese players have a somewhat cleaner style than your friend. He does own nevertheless and props to him being the first western grandmaster Tetris player!
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.
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 ^_^.
LOL @ "harder than it looks" Like it doesn't already look friggin impossible!
One of my friends from college who taught me some of the basics of starcraft (and is the poor victim in 'psionic storm pwns' on youtube, has been really into tetris since I've known him. I have a video of him playing a match vs another serious tetris player and, omg, it's so fast, it's probably analogous to playing starcraft at 400 apm.
Speaking of Billy, he inspired me to try original pacman so I DL'd it onto my phone and made it to 256 on "original" mode (not perfect score though) only to have it keep going onto a new level. wtf? I stopped at 264 and still don't see an end to the game. I guess that makes me the world record holder huh? blah...
On February 27 2008 22:32 jonhan wrote: There is practically a grandmaster for everything, there is a rock paper scissors grandmaster, with rock paper scissor supercomputers. No joke, google it.
lol, you mean the rps community. I just recently went to their site and its pretty entertaining how a rock paper scissors game can turn so in depth and contains strategy.
search RPS on google, or Rock paper scissors community. They got like different plays for different games.
The one in the OP and the invisible tetris are different versions of tetris though. The latter has three tetris previews and a hold box; the first doesn't have either. Both are Really impressive regardless.
Watching that Tetris video was giving me the same feelings as that Flash/Stork game. At the start it looks impressive, then when the real pain starts to come on, the player kicks it into overdrive and your mind explodes.
Holy mothershit! When you guys kept talking about the "invisible tetris", I thought you guys were referring to the last levels of this video below (which aren't invisible at all, just colourless). Now I see that it is literally invisible tetris at the end of that video. WOW.
I know nothing can beat that invisible Tetris stuff, but this video was pretty good nonetheless. This player, 309, plays even faster than the guy in the invisible tetris video. I think he's trying to beat it as fast as possible.
EPT
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