Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 PLUS

Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2 is the second arcade game in Arika's TGM series. Shortly after it was released Arika offered a free upgrade to a PLUS version, which among other things introduced the popular T.A. Death mode. The game is often abbrieviated "TAP" (The Absolute Plus).

Normal
Normal mode behaves just like Master mode in speed and timing, but stops at level 300. At levels 100 and 200 a special item block (also found in versus play) is given to the player. "Free Fall", which moves all blocks in the field down through holes (like gravity being turned on) is given at 100 and "Del Even" which clears every other row throughout the field is given at 200. The credit roll challenge is a slow 20G, but playing through it is not required for a "Clear".

Timings

 * ARE:25 frames
 * Line clear delay:40 frames
 * Lock delay:30 frames
 * DAS:16 frames


 * Speed levels:

The unit for gravity is G (rows per frame), as a fraction with a constant denominator of 256. For example, at levels 90 through 99, the speed is 64/256G, or 1/4G. This makes the "frames per row" speed value (256 / Internal speed value).


 * RAM Locations
 * 06064BF1: Current internal speed value (16-bit)
 * 06064BE0: Current Lock Delay value
 * 06064BE1: DAS counter

Master
Master mode is Arika's upgrade to the original Tetris The Grand Master gameplay and behaves very much like that game. One of the most important differences is that the speeds continue to increase throughout the 500–999 levels, similar to but not exactly like 0–499 of T.A. Death (below), as opposed to topping off at TGM's 20g mode speed. Also, a hard drop that doesn't lock was introduced, improving sub-20g play by giving birth to the Zangi-moves. The ranking system is also much less forgiving and former TGM Gm class players will find themselves struggling to make S7 or even finish for that matter. Perhaps the most infuriating addition to the Gm qualifications is an invisible challenge during the credit roll where pieces disappear immediately after being locked; topping out results in rank M. Arika is currently hosting a video showing a Gm performance: tgm2master.

Grade Recognition System
Each time lines are cleared, a hidden parameter ("Internal Grade Points") will increase. When this parameter reaches 100 or more, it will reset to zero and another hidden parameter ("Internal Grade") will increment by one. The table below shows the correspondence between "Internal Grade" and the actual Grade displayed on the screen. To encourage faster and more efficient play, the "Internal Grade Points" will continually drain away, potentially back to zero, for every frame of gameplay that the player has control of a tetromino and doesn't have a combo going. The decay rate is dependent on the player's current "Internal Grade" and is shown on the table below in units of frames per point.

The number of "Internal Grade Points" awarded is dependent on 4 other variables:
 * Number of lines cleared: a 4-line clear is generally worth more than a 3-line clear and so on.
 * "Internal Grade": a higher "Internal Grade" generally means less points.
 * The line clear's position in a combo. Note that tetrises are an exception to this. They will score the same number of "Internal Grade Points" regardless of their position in a combo. Just like the CO medal, clearing 2 or more rows will increase the combo, while singles will merely maintain the current position.
 * The player's Level after the line clear.

The following formula determines the "Internal Grade Points" awarded by a particular line clear. The "ceil" indicates that when the Combo Multiplier is applied to the Basic Amount, the game rounds the multiplication up.

Awarded Grade Points = ceil(Basic Amount x Combo Multiplier) x Level Multiplier

The Basic Amount is determined by the player's current "Internal Grade". Also shown is the decay rate mentioned above. For example, internal grades 20 through 22 could be thought of as S4-, S4, and S4+, but TAP does not display these differently.

Depending on the number of rows cleared and the current size of the combo, a different combo multiplier is applied to the grade points.

Finally, depending on the level, one of four level multipliers is applied to the awarded grade points. This equals 1 + floor(level / 250), or equivalently a value from the following lookup table:

Eg. At level 555, Grade 1, clearing 2 doubles in a combo, the first and second doubles respectively will be worth: ceil(12 x 1.0) x (1 + floor(555 / 250)) = 12 x 3 = 36, ceil(12 x 1.4) x (1 + floor(558 / 250)) = 17 x 3 = 51

This is a complicated system that may be difficult to understand, but it ultimately boils down to encouraging the player to play fast and go for tetrises. Further interesting observations about the grading system are as follows:


 * Immediately following a grade increase, the grade points are at 0. There is therefore nothing to lose from building the stack higher, until you clear a line.
 * From level 750-999, a tetris will always increase the internal grade.
 * The level multiplier is significant. When you enter section 700 and the music changes, it is a good idea to stack the screen high in order to clear more lines after level 750. Combined with the previous observation, 2 tetrises will get you 2 "Internal Grades" instead of only 1, doubling your rate of progress.
 * Combos aside, even though 2 singles are worth much less than a double, and 4 triples are less than 3 tetrises, 3 doubles are actually worth more than 2 triples.

It should be noted that none of these details matter if the player can stack quickly and cleanly.


 * RAM Locations:
 * Internal Grade: 06079378
 * Internal Grade Points: 06079379

The M-Roll
Although it is possible to continue increasing the "Internal Grade" beyond 31, the displayed Grade will stop at S9. In order to achieve the M and Gm Grades, certain conditions must be met in order to activate a special credit roll at level 999 (often called the "M-Roll") where the tetrominoes become invisible as soon as they are locked. The conditions for the "M-Roll" include at least the following:


 * level 999 must be reached with a grade of S9, and with a total time of 525 seconds or less (08:45.00 or faster).
 * section 0-100 must be completed in 65 seconds or less (section time of 01:05.00 or faster), with at least 2 4-line clears.
 * section 100-200 must be completed in 65 seconds or less (section time of 01:05.00 or faster), with at least 2 4-line clears.
 * section 200-300 must be completed in 65 seconds or less (section time of 01:05.00 or faster), with at least 2 4-line clears.
 * section 300-400 must be completed in 65 seconds or less (section time of 01:05.00 or faster), with at least 2 4-line clears.
 * section 400-500 must be completed in 65 seconds or less (section time of 01:05.00 or faster), with at least 2 4-line clears.
 * section 500-600 must be completed no more than 2 seconds slower than section 400-500, with at least 1 4-line clear.
 * section 600-700 must be completed no more than 2 seconds slower than section 500-600, with at least 1 4-line clear.
 * section 700-800 must be completed no more than 2 seconds slower than section 600-700, with at least 1 4-line clear.
 * section 800-900 must be completed no more than 2 seconds slower than section 700-800, with at least 1 4-line clear.
 * section 900-999 must be completed no more than 2 seconds slower than section 800-900.

Topping out during the "M-Roll" results in the M Grade. Surviving the entirity of the "M-Roll" results in the Gm Grade.

sources:

TGM+
This mode features speeds similar to the original TGM, with one important gameplay addition to keep the game interesting: rising garbage during play. An internal counter is incremented every time a tetromino is played without clearing lines; once this counter reaches 13 - floor(level / 100), a row of garbage rises from the floor of the playfield, and the counter resets. The garbage follows the fixed pattern shown below, looping every 24 rows:


 * RAM Locations:
 * 06064C30: Number of tetrominoes played without line clears
 * 06064C31: Position in garbage sequence

There is no grading system, medals, or ranking system in this mode. If you reach level 999, the credit roll will start, but locked tetromino don't disappear. Surviving this roll is not required to see "Excellent!" message.

Timings
Tetromino's falling speeds are same as master mode. However, other 4 timings never get changed.
 * ARE:25 frames
 * Line clear delay:40 frames
 * Lock delay:30 frames
 * DAS:16 frames

T.A. Death
This is possibly the most famous mode ever featured in a TGM game. A video originally called Death 800 has floated around the Internet under the name Tetris Japan Finals, making the TGM series famous throughout the world. It is a video of a player breaking level 800 on death mode. This video is very popular and was singlehandedly responsible for introducing most western players to the TGM series. (People with a recent version of Flash Player can view this video on YouTube. ) Arika currently hosts a much better Gm rank Death Mode video: Death-Gm05.

Ranking
The TGM1/Master ranking system is absent from the screen although both M and Gm grades are achievable. Level 500 is the turning point: Gm is awarded at 999 regardless of time or score. The game does continue through the credits, but winning or losing at that point has no effect.
 * If you reach 500 with a time greater than 3:25:00 the timer will stop, the credits will roll and you are given an "Excellent!" but no grade. (the level 500 background is not shown)
 * If under 3:25:00 at 500 the M grade is achieved, the level 500 background is loaded, and the game will continue to 999.

Timings
Though Death Mode has a fixed gravity of 20g, there are 4 other timings that shape the flow and speed of play.

Some repurcussions of this are that there is no time penalty for clearing singles instead of tetrises from level 100 through 299. Also, with such a low lock time, the possible places you can put a piece are reduced again, becoming a subset of what was once possible in 20g.

Doubles
Doubles is a two player cooperative mode that puts both players in one well that is 14 units wide instead of 10. In TAP, it is selectable from the menu. In TGM2, it was accessed one player holding down the start button on his/her side while the other player pressed the other start button to join in. In TAP, one credit pays for both players!

Each player has a separate level counter, and both players must reach level 300 for the win. Though the level counter does not stop at every x99 as in standard modes, the final 299 does require a line change to 300. If one player reaches 300 before the other, he enters 20g for the rest of the game. It is quite difficult to survive for long with 20g in such a wide well, so winning requires a fine degree of coordination between the players so that they reach 300 synchronously.

Medals
Based on discussion in forum.
 * AC (All clear): Bronze for one bravo, silver for two, gold for three.
 * RO (Rotation): At level 300, 700, or 999, the number of rotations per tetromino was at least 6/5.
 * ST (Section time): Bronze or silver for approaching the machine's section time record; gold for beating it.
 * SK (Skill): Lots of 4-line clears. In Master: 10 awards bronze, 20 awards silver, 35 awards gold. In Death: 5 awards bronze, 10 awards silver, 17 awards gold.
 * RE (Recovery): Have 150 or more blocks in the playfield, then clear enough lines that 70 or fewer blocks remain.
 * CO (Combo): Clear lines with consecutive tetrominoes (double or higher needed). 4 awards bronze, 5 awards silver and 7 awards gold. Note: Single line clears keep the current combo active, but do not add to it.

Scoring
Unlike the first game in the series, score is completely unimportant in this main game modes. The only mode where score counts for anything is Normal mode. The algorithm is actually different from from the previous version TA, with an added reward for fast play among other changes. The equation is:

Score = ((Level + Lines)/4 + Soft + (2 x Sonic)) x Lines x Combo x Bravo + (Level_After_Clear)/2 + (Speed x 7)

Where:
 * Level is the current level you are on.
 * Lines is the number of lines you just cleared.
 * (Level + Lines)/4 is rounded up.
 * (Level_After_Clear)/2 is rounded up. Importantly, Level_After_Clear is different from (Level+Lines) for edge cases like reaching 300 in Normal mode, 500 when being torikan-stopped in Death mode, and reaching 999 otherwise.
 * Soft is the cummulative number frames during which Down was held during the piece's active time. Note that this means manually locking pieces already on the ground will increase the Soft value by 1.
 * Sonic is the size of the single greatest sonic drop during the piece's active time. Note that this is non-cummulative.
 * If the previous piece cleared no lines, Combo is reset to 1. Otherwise and its Combo value is:
 * Combo = (previous Combo value) + (2 x Lines) - 2
 * Example: A double-triple-single combo will have combo values 3, 7, and 7 respectively.
 * Bravo is equal to 4 if this piece has cleared the screen, and otherwise is 1.
 * Speed can be no less than 0, and is otherwise equal to:
 * Speed = Lock Delay - Active Time
 * Where, Lock Delay is the number of frames of lock delay given out for that particular level, and Active Time is the number of frames the piece was active (which is a minimum of 1).

It should be noted that Normal mode multiplies line clear scores by 6. Also, the player is given a time bonus of 1253 x Seconds where Seconds is the amount of time in seconds, rounded up, that the clear time is below 5 minutes.

Codes

 * Item Mode: When selecting either Master or TGM+ mode, hold B and C, then press Start while "READY" is still on-screen. The "NEXT" text should pulsate to indicate that the code was entered correctly. This code causes item blocks to appear like in regular 2-player versus mode play, only all attacks are sent to yourself.

The following codes should be entered at the title screen.

Key: L = Left, D = Down, U = Up, R = Right
 * 20G Mode: DDDDDDDDCBA
 * Big Mode: LLLLDCBA
 * TLS Mode: ABCCBAACB