So I finally picked up a cheap copy on eBay.  It's basically NES Tetris with GB Tetris music (a pretty good combination in my opinion), and it's actually pretty easy to get up near 300 lines.  I'm not sure if the gravity is lower than NES Tetris, or if it's just the ARE that's different.

I'm not scoring any higher though, because the randomizer isn't very kind.  The randomizer seems more like Tengen Tetris than NES or GB Tetris, so I think it might actually be totally memoryless.

Also, there doesn't seem to be any way to start on the higher levels like using the A button or heart levels in NES and GB Tetris.  If you beat 9-5 in the B-type game (which seems to use the GB scoring rather than the NES scoring), then it lets you play 10-5, but beating 9-0 doesn't do the same thing unfortunately, so the B-type game is kind of limited.

One weird thing seems to be that sometimes the sound of a piece locking down doesn't play, which throws off my timing for the next piece.  I tried using all the music tracks and it happened with all of them, but so far it hasn't happened when I play with no music.

This sounds like a good place to dig up something from the past:

[!--ImageUrlBegin--][a href=\\\"http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/7404/tetrissnes.jpg\\\" target=\\\"_new\\\"][!--ImageUrlEBegin--][img width=\\\"400\\\" class=\\\"attach\\\" src=\\\"http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/7404/tetrissnes.jpg\\\" border=\\\'0\\\' alt=\\\"IPB Image\\\" /][!--ImageUrlEnd--][/a][!--ImageUrlEEnd--]

How old is that?

I did just manage to get a game with an abundance of I pieces and get 450K to beat my NES score at least.

I tried a little experimenting, and it seems like it's when you place your first piece in the top 5 or 6 rows that it doesn't play the lockdown sound effect when the music is on.  Not sure why that is.  Maybe there was supposed to be some warning sound when you get near the top, but they left it out of the game and it caused the bug.  Well, at least I'll know to expect it from now on.

ARE - 25 frames
Clear - 26 frames
Post-entry gravity delay - 12 frames

DAS timings and mechanics are identical. What makes level 29 onward so much more playable is the gravity delay on every piece. It feels stiff, but you have more room to work with.

I also think the scoring multiplier maxes at 9. Maxing out by 29 is out of the question as far as I can tell.

Wow, you're right, the scoring doesn't increase after level 9.  No wonder it seems so hard to score points.

Quote from: iphysI'm not scoring any higher though, because the randomizer isn't very kind.  The randomizer seems more like Tengen Tetris than NES or GB Tetris, so I think it might actually be totally memoryless.

Any chance you can transcribe a long sequence for me?

And yes, scoring maxes out at level 9, so that's the level to start at when playing for score. You can potentially get to 876000+drops by level 29 (73 tetrises), but that would require some insane luck. Or play for lines (and I'd be tempted to start at level 0 for this, for more consistent beginnings). I think the best that people have done is 345.

I had six squares in a row on this game.

JIZLISTLIO
SZZLJJOOOS
LTJSITJOJZ
TLOSLZJZTJ
OZLZOJOSJS

JISTSJJSZJ
JZOTIOLSSJ
SSOZJTTLTT
SILIZIZSOI
LLSLZSLISZ

JTOJLTSZZO
TOJLZITSZI
SJLJJOSIZO
JZOSIZZLST
OOOSJLIIJO

IIIZTSJTII
LSTZJLZJZZ
JJTSJOSZTS
LOOISZSTZO
TSIIJTZTZT

I count 24 repeats, and the expectation in a sequence of 200 pieces should be 28 +/- 5, so it seems consistent with being memoryless.  I don't find it that uncommon in this game to get the same piece like 4 or 5 times in a row, so this sequence was probably a little kinder than normal in that regard.

I'm up to 462K now.  

I found this youtube video of someone getting 526K, but I'm not sure if it's legitimate, because it seems as though the pieces move to the walls faster than should be possible even if you keep the DAS charged.  If the video is to be believed, it should be possible to still score tetrises or continue getting singles after level 29 if you just don't overstack, so maybe a max-out wouldn't be impossible.

A max-out will be possible, whether the straight line Tetrimino is given the most or the least (from the Statistics window).

I don't know.  I just played a 493K game to 290 lines, and I seriously don't feel like I can move the pieces to the walls as fast as in that video, even when I just tried holding continuously in one direction for several pieces when I was about to die.

Related:


Also, hypertapping. Thor said he got to level 31 in NES Tetris that way.

I think it takes some serious hypertapping to explain some of the piece motions.  Like right after they get to level 29, they manage to get an I piece to the left wall only a few rows from the top of the screen, which means they managed to do 5 taps during the 12 frames of no gravity + 5 or so frames that the I piece fell, and that barely seems humanly possible.  Even the double rotations seem too fast sometimes, which almost makes it seem like a tool-assisted run.  Maybe it was done on an emulator in slow motion or something -- do emulators do that?

Oh yeah, definitely. I was more talking about the possibility of playing level 29 than saying that video was legit. There are definitely aspects of it that look questionable.

Is it possible to clear 25 lines in B-type without a single straight line Tetrimino, not even a straight line Tetrimino on the Next piece?