I think the biggest flaw with the NES version that inhibited the formulation of advanced strategies is the cathedral taking off at only 120k points. So as a kid we assumed that was the outer limit of what was possible... so the attitude was, "wow, there's a flying saucer just sitting on the launch pad, and the cathedral takes off, I guess we broke the game... let's just move on to the next title"
Yeah, I get the impression by the magazine's tips that Tetrises were expected to be this really rare thing, only possible on the very early levels, and that even getting a triple would be a major victory. The weird thing is that almost all of the example images show properly developed right wells set up for indefinite Tetrises and skimming. If you ever eventually find the game developers, it would be an awesome interview question to ask them what their personal high scores were while coding the game!
@@aGameScout I think Nintendo Power was targeted at young kids, and at that age, they weren't really expected to figure out how to stack well at any speed. The reward animations are the same way. More "hardcore" players would be plenty motivated by the score counter anyway, which goes up to the "impossibly" high 999,999.
@@aGameScout I don't know about Tetris devs but this one time I had to develop a platformer with a classmate in an advanced programming class. We spent so much time testing the game that we can easily beat most people we've shown the game to. And that's with a modern game engine and programming language. I can't even begin to imagine the amount of testing done in 6502 assembly. The devs must have been pros.
Doigt I reckon the 999999 limit and the fact that the level counter breaks specifically at level 30 (but 29 works fine) show pretty clearly what the devs thought the approximate limits of human achievement were.
Getting screenshots is hard enough at level 0. These would have been actual analog film screenshots, so every one would cost money. Hopefully they’d have two TVs so they could play without having a large camera rig in the way. But still, getting the dropping piece just right to illustrate what they want to show is not trivial.
@@JasperJanssen No doubt they put code in to freeze those particular situations when making the diagrams. Trying to take an analog film shot of the moving image would be virtually impossible. But amusingly, since only the Nintendo developers has the original code, only they even had the technical resources to create something as simple as that short pamphlet on Tetris.
Its a dumb nitpicking. Considering the time when these tips made, i suspected that they played the higher speeds tactics on lower levels to have time to record it properly. To get to a certain situation the might have preferred to play on the lower levels, to build up to that situation. I suspect that the guides were meant for kids to read. To a kid who just picked up the game, i can imagen that level 10 is already fast
Before I found the tetris world championship on youtube randomly, I wasn't aware going for a tetris was the strategy! I didn't even know burning 4 lines simultaneously was called a tetris! So yes, that is absolutely solid advice for 1989 :D
Hey David, the Howard talking in the book is Howard Phillips Nintendo’s first game master. It was his job to play all the games Nintendo made and to make sure the American public would find them fun. Great big story did a video about him if you want to learn more about him.
Since I grew up with Game Boy Tetris and had that issue of Nintendo Power (one of three I ever owned), I was astonished to learn that Nintendo was the only one who called them "Tetrads" and not "Tetrominoes."
Around 8:40, I think Howard meant to emphasize flat placements, because placing pieces horizontally (without rotation) generally results in a flatter playing field.
I agree, I think that statement was included to encourage newcomers to think about the pieces a bit differently in order to flatten the stack. I've noticed that beginners sometimes settle into a rut where they place every L/J piece in letter-orientation because it's easy to see that it "fits" on the stack, but that often produces very jagged stack surfaces with sheer vertical faces (bad accommodation due to stack rigidity, likelihood of producing 3+ deep channels that require I-piece, etc.). Knowing how to properly use the 3-wide or point-down stances of L/J is just marginally more complex; entry-level players under time pressure frequently miss those placement choices even if they would have resulted in a more appropriate fit for this and the next piece.
This is becoming my favorite Tetris channel with the consistent uploads...hope the CTWC will promote your videos...you've got some great content that the wider Tetris community should be aware of.
Great video! The tips were pretty hilarious at times especially at 5:29. The Nintendo Power Magazine's tips for 'Advanced Players' is just a far cry from now. You are a Tetris Master if you get a score of over 10000. *slow clap x3* Out of all of your CTM videos, I could guess you stated at least 5 Level 31 plays. Pretty amazing how we progressed pretty far from how the developers actually imagined it to be. That might also be the feeling of Alexey Pajitnov as soon as he went home from the CTWC 2018. Imagine what he felt in the finals.
NICE. This was super fun and full of hilarious little moments! Great job as always Scout, love the more frequent content, your video ideas have been great, looking forward to the next one!
@@matheuscabral9618 Why would someone writing a guide for a game that just came out try to optimize for the goals of some competition that would start 20 years later?
@@davidp.7620 just because competition started 20 years later it doesn’t mean that starts were only useful 20 years later, the goal of the game has always been getting a high score
I was a Nintendo Power kid growing up, and I can say their tips weren't always spot-on. Whenever I got stuck and NP couldn't help me, I called my cousin.
The second page wasn't talking about the hole for the tetris, it was talking about that if you need to stack hight you should do it on the sides because you will have so much mobility/space in that way
5:43 i know you arent doing these video anymore, but if you at some point will again, please, please, please add more parts like this, i love this part so much
8:30 Alternatively, you could make the galaxy brain play: rotate right once, send it to the far left. Sticking out right over that gap, leaving 3 empty blocks beneath it. Then just dead drop that T right in the center. Don’t rotate, just tap left once and let it drop.
To be fair to Nintendo Power, this was the VERY FIRST guide in a game the west had never ever seen before, so as an intro guide to the new medium of home video games, this isn’t too bad or condescending.
Note: he mentioned this at the end, GameScout is a very understanding person, but it just goes to mention that if you’ve never owned a home console and have never seen a game like this, lvl 3 could be considered mindmeltingly fast.
Yay, I know who Howard is now. Harry to me looks like a different with hair. This channel made me the DAS tetris player that I'm today. Nightly training still continues for me to defeat my best of 250k. As always, appreciate and love the content Scout. Also Quaids comment in the audience, "Wake me up when this gets interesting." Always get a chuckle from that.
It's not really fair to compare the strategies of '89 to today. I feel like you're forgetting what Tetris actually was in '89. The point Tetris was not to get points, any more than points were your objective in Super Mario. The point of Tetris was to survive for as long as you could. By '89, points were a relic of arcade games that didn't really serve a purpose for most console games. Certainly playing for points makes sense for competitive Tetris, but that's not what the game was sold on. When Tetris came out, we weren't competing with our friends scores, we were competing with their levels. That's why Howard is unconcerned with scoring tactics (and consequently why his high score isn't very impressive by competitive Tetris standards) because he's giving players strategies to keep the game running for as long as they can. If there is any concern over points, the assumption is probably that the longer you play, the more points you earn, so the points will take care of themselves.
Not quite. I remember playing on Gameboy Tetris as a 7-8 years old and going for Tetrises was a thing even then. Only surviving was at the later levels then, but people knew and wanted to score high.
No, but that's the great thing! You get to see how the field has evolved, that's the point. What were the expected limits, and how did players first start out? But it is true that the magazine was targeted towards children, so, there's that.
I wouldn't really expect the Nintendo Power tips to be "pro strats" though. Just some advice to help new players perform better. I am a casual player and yeah lol, "lower" speeds are pretty fast for my skill level. I was surprised at how advanced some of the tips in the later sections were, in fact.
Thank you for sharing this! I legit thought Dana was Lady Gaga 👀 Also. Rest in Power, Jonas 🙌 Really devastated to see the face of the community suddenly passing away 😞
an arguement for the center well is post-kill-screen play, where you mostly line out, but might build for a center well. shifting smaller pieces to the sides feels easier while rotating the long bar (as you probably dont have more than 5 or 6 lines built) in the center seems the easiest.
The mathematical name for shapes like these are indeed tetrominos (and the five-square equivalents are pentominos), but tetrad is an existing word for things that consist of four units.
Gotta remember back in the old days there was no internet the best you got was a gaming magazine that came out once a month its so much easier to tetris now as you can see other people strat's.
Howard Phillips is still around at "Gamemaster Howard" on Facebook and has done some livestreams on BitFinity (Matthew Taranto's) TH-cam channel. Probably would be a cool interview since he was involved in the Nintendo World Championships and other things. As far as the tips go I doubt they were thinking about people getting to the kill screen, or even aware of it at Nintendo Power.
Dammit this just reminded me, harshly, that I've been paying for season passes to two different theme parks with water park access and I haven't been able to go, shirt be damned.
6:43 That's downright wrong. It's not faster than freefall, it's at freefall. Only in the PAL version is it faster, since PAL 19 is 5/6th the speed of NTSC 29.
I don't think freefall means anything specific here. - Assuming "freefall" means the real world freefall, it's wrong, because real world freefall doesn't have a constant speed. - Assuming "freefall" means the maximum speed achievable in the game, level 19 in NTSC is half of freefall, and level 19 in PAL is exactly freefall. - Assuming "freefall" is the speed you get when pushing down, level 19 in NTSC is exactly freefall, level 19 in PAL is faster. - Assuming "freefall" is the speed at which a piece falls if not influenced by other factors (aka pushing down), that would make every level exactly freefall speed. All of the above do not make any sense here, but I don't see any other definition of "freefall" that could make sense, so instead of assuming the writers are _that_ stupid (which they aren't, they just didn't know a lot of the techniques yet), I'd say they were not talking about literal "freefall" but rather "falling really fast".
@@fghsgh I'm just assuming it means pushing down. It makes perfect sense since freefall ultimately achieves terminal velocity given enough time. When the article was written, the fastest that 99.9% of players ever could see was level 19. I just figured that if Howard tested both PAL and NTSC versions, maybe he got them mixed up. Both Japan and the US for many companies had a hand in Europe's localizations at the time (just as Japan often had a strong role in US localizations), so it's not impossible.
I would consider classic Tetris if it had the same rotation system as modern Tetris. Also, it's a single-player game pretty much, even when you're playing against an opponent.
Haha, yeah...Howard was a legend back in the day. Recently, a certain public figure got flack (again) for sporting a bowtie only to change once someone mocked it. My first reaction was "what's wrong with bowties, anyway?" and the two people who always come to mind: Bill Nye and Howard Phillips.
Really nice presentation comparing the stacking strategies from 1989 to the modern era. Pretty nice advice to give to new players since they would probably not be familiar with the game itself. Overall, video is well made! Btw, I disagree with not wearing a shirt. Rash guards are meta for swimming, even in water parks. :DD
To clarify: proper waterslide technique not only includes being shirtless; one should remove all clothing (and expert sliders can apply a thin layer of grease or silicone-based lubricant to their entire body). You also want to make sure that you lean to the left side of the slide as the rotation of your slippery body gravitates to the right.
I've been watching Tetris content non-stop since I found your video on CTWC 2018. I also have been playing constantly in hopes of one day getting to compete in the CTWC! What's the best way to get involved in the NES Tetris community?
Join the CTM discord, it is the biggest online NES Tetris community and there are discussion channels for just about every topic to help you get started bit.ly/monthlytetris
@@aGameScout FYI: the link is case-sensitive, it needs to be entered as bit.ly/MonthlyTetris, otherwise it will take you to celebrityphonenumbers(dot)net. Just a heads up :)
Good stuff! How long would you say stay at level 5 for ? Till you can consistently hit 100000k? I know jonas says to move to lvl 9 once you can hit 100000k on 5. Lvl 9 is whooping me lol
tbh I forget, but level 5 is where you really just want to get stacking for tetrises down, and then after that you just gradually increase the level speeds until you have to master DAS or hypertapping. So consistent 100k on level 5 starts sounds about right
I started at 7 and would move up levels when I felt the need to push down, as long as you're being challenged you're progressing, I currently do level 15 starts and my pb is 408k been playing 2 months
@@coldclearkt very nice, have not played classic tetris since 2008 so im rusty and honestly so not even remeber what my scores were. I have been juggling between 5,8,9. I can sustain 9 for a while buy mis drop and its all over lol im playing on a emulator with one of those usb nes controllers for the moment so im not sure if that makes a difference with the lag but I do notice a delay when moving some blocks at 9. I hooked up a nes clone with the cart and it felt different was easily able to get 150k at lvl 5 a few times but do not have a dedicated tv for it yet.
Awesome vid as always! Just yesterday I searched for that other T-spin by Joseph but couldn’t find it. I said to myself, this needs a name, like counter T-spin, opposite T-spin. Or even a Saelee Spin! But why is it called a Boiler-Spin? Do you counterclockwise tap, tap left, and then a clockwise tap? I’ve never seen that J-spin by Fractal!!!
JD actually did create a less-difficult version of this spin, which is called JD-spin, where you just double-flip then tuck-spin the piece, where a Boiler is 1 rotation then 3 rapid ones, which sometimes helps with timing.
In my opinion I think you kind of missed the mark on this one to go for the memes. Despite what they might have said, this article in Nintendo Power is trying to sell Tetris cartridges to people who have never played it, especially if it was printed when Tetris came out as you said. So the audience isn't going to be familiar with anything, it's just meant to give people without the game infront an idea of some of the depth in the game so they'll buy it. That makes a huge difference when writing a fluff marketing piece vs an actual strategy guide. Those used to be sold separately :D
If they were not concerned with score, then they wouldn't have gone for tetrises at all - it's the most dangerous thing you can set up if you're just lining out.
Part of the importantance of understanding the Nintendo power article is understanding how codefied the game of Tetris has become in popular culture today. For many people, NES tetris was the first time that they had even heard of the game. In the same way, we have become a lot better at playing Tetris and many other games as the ability to share knowledge and the average persons experience in these games has improved.
Oh for sure, that's why I included the clips from the documentary, to show that stuff in the nintendo power article wasn't necessarily common knowledge even in 2010
This channel is fantastic
ive watched your jonas video
Thanks, glad you enjoy it!
I see someone is falling more and more in love classic tetris :)
Always nice to see how often you leave a comment here.
Any chance you've practiced your Tetris skills since you sat down with Jonas?
wait, rob?
The water park tip is CRUCIAL for becoming a pro Tetris player. As a result of optimizing your slide speed, you get more time to practice Tetris.
Can't wait for when I go to the water park to test it
But... A Tetris master is not at the water park.
@@spidernh how would you know?
@@MualaniOsu waterpark=water water=shower tetris player=no shower
It took me a long time to figure out why I never liked taking my shirt off at the waterpark or pool.
Main take away: don’t wear your shirt at the water park. Thanks gamescout!
great words of wisdom by the Tetris man
If you wear one then you will suck at tetris
I think the biggest flaw with the NES version that inhibited the formulation of advanced strategies is the cathedral taking off at only 120k points. So as a kid we assumed that was the outer limit of what was possible... so the attitude was, "wow, there's a flying saucer just sitting on the launch pad, and the cathedral takes off, I guess we broke the game... let's just move on to the next title"
Yeah, I get the impression by the magazine's tips that Tetrises were expected to be this really rare thing, only possible on the very early levels, and that even getting a triple would be a major victory. The weird thing is that almost all of the example images show properly developed right wells set up for indefinite Tetrises and skimming. If you ever eventually find the game developers, it would be an awesome interview question to ask them what their personal high scores were while coding the game!
@@aGameScout I think Nintendo Power was targeted at young kids, and at that age, they weren't really expected to figure out how to stack well at any speed. The reward animations are the same way. More "hardcore" players would be plenty motivated by the score counter anyway, which goes up to the "impossibly" high 999,999.
@@aGameScout I don't know about Tetris devs but this one time I had to develop a platformer with a classmate in an advanced programming class. We spent so much time testing the game that we can easily beat most people we've shown the game to. And that's with a modern game engine and programming language. I can't even begin to imagine the amount of testing done in 6502 assembly. The devs must have been pros.
Doigt I reckon the 999999 limit and the fact that the level counter breaks specifically at level 30 (but 29 works fine) show pretty clearly what the devs thought the approximate limits of human achievement were.
aGameScout At Nintendo? I’m sure multiple testers had like 3 maxouts before they did the PAL localization. :^P
0:07 "At the high level speeds" _shows Level 03_
ikr xD
Getting screenshots is hard enough at level 0. These would have been actual analog film screenshots, so every one would cost money. Hopefully they’d have two TVs so they could play without having a large camera rig in the way. But still, getting the dropping piece just right to illustrate what they want to show is not trivial.
@@aGameScout Funny
@@JasperJanssen No doubt they put code in to freeze those particular situations when making the diagrams. Trying to take an analog film shot of the moving image would be virtually impossible.
But amusingly, since only the Nintendo developers has the original code, only they even had the technical resources to create something as simple as that short pamphlet on Tetris.
i'm WHEEZING at the level 9 "it's pure survival here." oh my god how the times have changed
*cries in level 9 being killscreen
@@anhbui-bc4ew F
Level 30 killscreen.... just anothe level for joseph!
Wow u got 26 lines no-ro!
Its a dumb nitpicking. Considering the time when these tips made, i suspected that they played the higher speeds tactics on lower levels to have time to record it properly. To get to a certain situation the might have preferred to play on the lower levels, to build up to that situation. I suspect that the guides were meant for kids to read. To a kid who just picked up the game, i can imagen that level 10 is already fast
I’m very impressed how content quality hasn’t dropped at all with the frequent uploads.
Wait what?? I swear I just changed my Twitter pfp just 3 hours ago. LMAO
lol, I edited like half this video this afternoon so those twitter clips were some of the last things I put in
when he says tuesday he means do the whole video on tuesday
@@dan-dan-dan-dan That or aGameScout owns a Tardis.
Thor Aackerlund likes this comment
Doigt Small mixup at Amazon. He meant to order a copy of Tetris and got the Tardis instead.
Before I found the tetris world championship on youtube randomly, I wasn't aware going for a tetris was the strategy! I didn't even know burning 4 lines simultaneously was called a tetris! So yes, that is absolutely solid advice for 1989 :D
Hey David, the Howard talking in the book is Howard Phillips Nintendo’s first game master. It was his job to play all the games Nintendo made and to make sure the American public would find them fun. Great big story did a video about him if you want to learn more about him.
I'll check it out, thanks!
Your level 5 situation cracked me up. What a hard level.
We’re just going to skim over the fact that they call Tetromoninos “Tetrads”?
thefal yes
That’s the name of scout’s biker gang. Like the Chinese Triads, but nerdier.
Since I grew up with Game Boy Tetris and had that issue of Nintendo Power (one of three I ever owned), I was astonished to learn that Nintendo was the only one who called them "Tetrads" and not "Tetrominoes."
the hell's a tetromonino
you mean tetrimino lol
1989: At level 9, it’s pure survival!
2021: Heehee, Lv.29+ Tetris go brrrrrrrrrrrrr
2022 called apparently at level 236 the game crashes :(
fractal's been making enough mods game, he could easily fix that if he wanted to
2017: still struggling at level 29 Tetris and the last year without any significant influence from Joseph Saelee or any other that followed him
Around 8:40, I think Howard meant to emphasize flat placements, because placing pieces horizontally (without rotation) generally results in a flatter playing field.
I agree, I think that statement was included to encourage newcomers to think about the pieces a bit differently in order to flatten the stack. I've noticed that beginners sometimes settle into a rut where they place every L/J piece in letter-orientation because it's easy to see that it "fits" on the stack, but that often produces very jagged stack surfaces with sheer vertical faces (bad accommodation due to stack rigidity, likelihood of producing 3+ deep channels that require I-piece, etc.). Knowing how to properly use the 3-wide or point-down stances of L/J is just marginally more complex; entry-level players under time pressure frequently miss those placement choices even if they would have resulted in a more appropriate fit for this and the next piece.
I don't even play NES Tetris and even I think this is awesome.
Geez, where did this consistency come from?
finally figured out how to make videos that don't take 3 weeks to edit
Love to see it
@@aGameScout great work
@@aGameScout care to share the tips?
That moment when you realized the guy from thumbnail wasn't Jonas but Howard lol
R.I.P Jonas 😓😭😭😭
😭
This is becoming my favorite Tetris channel with the consistent uploads...hope the CTWC will promote your videos...you've got some great content that the wider Tetris community should be aware of.
they've been quite supportive! They've promoted me on their website, facebook page, and community tab on youtube
I'm so excited by the consistent content of late.
thank you! Been really trying to keep up with a video a week
Great video! The tips were pretty hilarious at times especially at 5:29. The Nintendo Power Magazine's tips for 'Advanced Players' is just a far cry from now. You are a Tetris Master if you get a score of over 10000. *slow clap x3* Out of all of your CTM videos, I could guess you stated at least 5 Level 31 plays. Pretty amazing how we progressed pretty far from how the developers actually imagined it to be. That might also be the feeling of Alexey Pajitnov as soon as he went home from the CTWC 2018. Imagine what he felt in the finals.
This magazine was aimed at 1986’s 12 year olds, not at adults competing in e-sports.
You see Howard in the 1990 World Championship footage in Ecstasy of Order. Nintendo's resident Tetris expert. Great video as always!
Seeing Jonas hurts. RIP champ.
NICE. This was super fun and full of hilarious little moments! Great job as always Scout, love the more frequent content, your video ideas have been great, looking forward to the next one!
I know this is a guide for a much older version of the game, but a lot of it is still applicable even on "modern" tetris
This video came out 10 minutes into Wednesday in my timezone, TETRIS WEDNESDAY POGGERS
Haha, yeah I was busy last night so I couldn't finish this video until I got back from work today. Delayed it by ~7 hours or so
It was about 8 AM Wednesday in my timezone, and... it's TETRIS WEDNESDAY always here, though. LOL
You are assuming the guide is advising to maximize score rather than lines, which is a bold assumption to make
why would there be a guide for lines?
@@matheuscabral9618 Why would someone writing a guide for a game that just came out try to optimize for the goals of some competition that would start 20 years later?
@@davidp.7620 just because competition started 20 years later it doesn’t mean that starts were only useful 20 years later, the goal of the game has always been getting a high score
It's amazing to see how the game strategies evolves over the years! Great video🔥
I was a Nintendo Power kid growing up, and I can say their tips weren't always spot-on. Whenever I got stuck and NP couldn't help me, I called my cousin.
The second page wasn't talking about the hole for the tetris, it was talking about that if you need to stack hight you should do it on the sides because you will have so much mobility/space in that way
5:43 i know you arent doing these video anymore, but if you at some point will again, please, please, please add more parts like this, i love this part so much
8:30 Alternatively, you could make the galaxy brain play: rotate right once, send it to the far left. Sticking out right over that gap, leaving 3 empty blocks beneath it. Then just dead drop that T right in the center. Don’t rotate, just tap left once and let it drop.
great observation! That's an adjustment that would be near impossible to pull off on higher levels but would be a great move on Level 3.
To be fair to Nintendo Power, this was the VERY FIRST guide in a game the west had never ever seen before, so as an intro guide to the new medium of home video games, this isn’t too bad or condescending.
Note: he mentioned this at the end, GameScout is a very understanding person, but it just goes to mention that if you’ve never owned a home console and have never seen a game like this, lvl 3 could be considered mindmeltingly fast.
This was a great video. Love the niche stuff like this
this guy is the WirtualTM for tetris. i don't paly the game, but i end up watching the whole thing
Take off your shirts when on water slides people. This is revolutionary.
I also take off my pants
Yay, I know who Howard is now. Harry to me looks like a different with hair. This channel made me the DAS tetris player that I'm today. Nightly training still continues for me to defeat my best of 250k. As always, appreciate and love the content Scout. Also Quaids comment in the audience, "Wake me up when this gets interesting." Always get a chuckle from that.
Cherish these days of 250k. The progress you get is still rather quick. Still struggling to go from 950k to maxout myself. For 3months now. LUL
@@PresidentScrooge Much appreciated.
That Tetris Tuesdays intro is amazing!
thanks!
jonas is 7 time champion for a reason
Woot! Love this then vs now comparison, really interesting ( and funny af ) to see
It's not really fair to compare the strategies of '89 to today. I feel like you're forgetting what Tetris actually was in '89. The point Tetris was not to get points, any more than points were your objective in Super Mario. The point of Tetris was to survive for as long as you could. By '89, points were a relic of arcade games that didn't really serve a purpose for most console games.
Certainly playing for points makes sense for competitive Tetris, but that's not what the game was sold on. When Tetris came out, we weren't competing with our friends scores, we were competing with their levels. That's why Howard is unconcerned with scoring tactics (and consequently why his high score isn't very impressive by competitive Tetris standards) because he's giving players strategies to keep the game running for as long as they can. If there is any concern over points, the assumption is probably that the longer you play, the more points you earn, so the points will take care of themselves.
Not quite. I remember playing on Gameboy Tetris as a 7-8 years old and going for Tetrises was a thing even then. Only surviving was at the later levels then, but people knew and wanted to score high.
Funnily enough the tips work in post-29 because competitive Tetris now have evolved far enough that post-29 play is commonplace now
No, but that's the great thing! You get to see how the field has evolved, that's the point. What were the expected limits, and how did players first start out? But it is true that the magazine was targeted towards children, so, there's that.
I wouldn't really expect the Nintendo Power tips to be "pro strats" though.
Just some advice to help new players perform better. I am a casual player and yeah lol, "lower" speeds are pretty fast for my skill level.
I was surprised at how advanced some of the tips in the later sections were, in fact.
And now rolling
11:04
Prefect fit!
You can beat Howard with one Tetris on level 8, lol. He needs to up his game.
Great video!
no it's one lvl 9 tetris with pushdown points to beat howard's score
@@geomochi4904 Formula for Tetris score is (level +1) x 1200
@@breandanvallance3107 i always thought lvl 9 tetris was the score but you were right its lvl 8
Thank you for sharing this! I legit thought Dana was Lady Gaga 👀
Also. Rest in Power, Jonas 🙌 Really devastated to see the face of the community suddenly passing away 😞
he had a free pun when he said "see how stack up to against the strats of the scene today".
6:49
Is that shade I see you throwing?
my wife is now barred from the waterpark, thanks for the advice
lol
she got a titris
can we see if harold is still around and get him on for an interview?
Ps. I found his twitter account and sent him a tweet about this vid
harold
an arguement for the center well is post-kill-screen play, where you mostly line out, but might build for a center well. shifting smaller pieces to the sides feels easier while rotating the long bar (as you probably dont have more than 5 or 6 lines built) in the center seems the easiest.
Why Tetrads?
@7:00 Alexey Pajitnov in ‘Ecstasy of Order’ says they are called Tetraminoes.
The mathematical name for shapes like these are indeed tetrominos (and the five-square equivalents are pentominos), but tetrad is an existing word for things that consist of four units.
You didn't know about the OG Game Master Howard Phillips? Absolute legend
Ahh showing my age, he was before my time
Oh man Nintendo Power. Great memories.
Gotta remember back in the old days there was no internet the best you got was a gaming magazine that came out once a month its so much easier to tetris now as you can see other people strat's.
Hey did you play NoTetris? It's like Tetris but without the grid and with phisics, it's fun
Anyone notice the, "Prefect fit!"
I literally have never looked at my next shape coming up and I still get tetris’s just fine
Great content!
You sound exactly like Hank Green, love it
Howard Phillips is still around at "Gamemaster Howard" on Facebook and has done some livestreams on BitFinity (Matthew Taranto's) TH-cam channel. Probably would be a cool interview since he was involved in the Nintendo World Championships and other things. As far as the tips go I doubt they were thinking about people getting to the kill screen, or even aware of it at Nintendo Power.
Dammit this just reminded me, harshly, that I've been paying for season passes to two different theme parks with water park access and I haven't been able to go, shirt be damned.
welp
6:43 That's downright wrong. It's not faster than freefall, it's at freefall. Only in the PAL version is it faster, since PAL 19 is 5/6th the speed of NTSC 29.
I don't think freefall means anything specific here.
- Assuming "freefall" means the real world freefall, it's wrong, because real world freefall doesn't have a constant speed.
- Assuming "freefall" means the maximum speed achievable in the game, level 19 in NTSC is half of freefall, and level 19 in PAL is exactly freefall.
- Assuming "freefall" is the speed you get when pushing down, level 19 in NTSC is exactly freefall, level 19 in PAL is faster.
- Assuming "freefall" is the speed at which a piece falls if not influenced by other factors (aka pushing down), that would make every level exactly freefall speed.
All of the above do not make any sense here, but I don't see any other definition of "freefall" that could make sense, so instead of assuming the writers are _that_ stupid (which they aren't, they just didn't know a lot of the techniques yet), I'd say they were not talking about literal "freefall" but rather "falling really fast".
@@fghsgh I'm just assuming it means pushing down. It makes perfect sense since freefall ultimately achieves terminal velocity given enough time. When the article was written, the fastest that 99.9% of players ever could see was level 19. I just figured that if Howard tested both PAL and NTSC versions, maybe he got them mixed up. Both Japan and the US for many companies had a hand in Europe's localizations at the time (just as Japan often had a strong role in US localizations), so it's not impossible.
I would consider classic Tetris if it had the same rotation system as modern Tetris. Also, it's a single-player game pretty much, even when you're playing against an opponent.
“Favor the sides!”
*proceeds to show a center well*
Calling Howard Philips "Howard from the Tetris score" made me slightly miffed
Haha, yeah...Howard was a legend back in the day. Recently, a certain public figure got flack (again) for sporting a bowtie only to change once someone mocked it. My first reaction was "what's wrong with bowties, anyway?" and the two people who always come to mind:
Bill Nye and Howard Phillips.
Really nice presentation comparing the stacking strategies from 1989 to the modern era. Pretty nice advice to give to new players since they would probably not be familiar with the game itself. Overall, video is well made!
Btw, I disagree with not wearing a shirt. Rash guards are meta for swimming, even in water parks. :DD
To clarify: proper waterslide technique not only includes being shirtless; one should remove all clothing (and expert sliders can apply a thin layer of grease or silicone-based lubricant to their entire body). You also want to make sure that you lean to the left side of the slide as the rotation of your slippery body gravitates to the right.
TUESDAYS ARE AWESOME NOW
Zero dislikes
Ya love to see it
this isnt what i thought it was going to be but i love it all the same
Nice video very enjoyable
Hey! Are you still making a video about CTWC 2019?
Yes, it's deep into production! Will talk about it further once it's close to completion
This is like going back to Japanese blogs and finding out that Masahiro Sakurai told people about wavedashing in Melee.
So where is Howard today? Does he know about CWTC?
I've been watching Tetris content non-stop since I found your video on CTWC 2018. I also have been playing constantly in hopes of one day getting to compete in the CTWC! What's the best way to get involved in the NES Tetris community?
Join the CTM discord, it is the biggest online NES Tetris community and there are discussion channels for just about every topic to help you get started bit.ly/monthlytetris
@@aGameScout joined! Already seeing many familiar names... cheers!
@@aGameScout FYI: the link is case-sensitive, it needs to be entered as bit.ly/MonthlyTetris, otherwise it will take you to celebrityphonenumbers(dot)net. Just a heads up :)
I don't use the NEXT section very often but I play Tetris Effect so it's not so bad
The levels description make sense if they they are 10 more up. LOL
I dont possess the cognitive speed or motivation to play tetris myself but your vids are really entertaining to me :)
How did no-one get a single Tetris with the next bar off I never play with that and even when it's on I don't look over at it
Good stuff! How long would you say stay at level 5 for ? Till you can consistently hit 100000k? I know jonas says to move to lvl 9 once you can hit 100000k on 5. Lvl 9 is whooping me lol
tbh I forget, but level 5 is where you really just want to get stacking for tetrises down, and then after that you just gradually increase the level speeds until you have to master DAS or hypertapping. So consistent 100k on level 5 starts sounds about right
I started at 7 and would move up levels when I felt the need to push down, as long as you're being challenged you're progressing, I currently do level 15 starts and my pb is 408k been playing 2 months
@@coldclearkt very nice, have not played classic tetris since 2008 so im rusty and honestly so not even remeber what my scores were. I have been juggling between 5,8,9. I can sustain 9 for a while buy mis drop and its all over lol im playing on a emulator with one of those usb nes controllers for the moment so im not sure if that makes a difference with the lag but I do notice a delay when moving some blocks at 9. I hooked up a nes clone with the cart and it felt different was easily able to get 150k at lvl 5 a few times but do not have a dedicated tv for it yet.
Well, looks like an opportunity has opened up. I am horrible at checking my next box, quite convinced I could score a Tetris consistently even so.
see if you can do it from an 18 start! It's pretty darn tough
11:04 prefect fit
Awesome vid as always!
Just yesterday I searched for that other T-spin by Joseph but couldn’t find it. I said to myself, this needs a name, like counter T-spin, opposite T-spin. Or even a Saelee Spin!
But why is it called a Boiler-Spin? Do you counterclockwise tap, tap left, and then a clockwise tap?
I’ve never seen that J-spin by Fractal!!!
I think it's named after Jake
Yeah it's named after a butchered pronunciation of Jake's last name
@@aGameScout what's Jake's last name?
@@coldclearkt Beaulieu
JD actually did create a less-difficult version of this spin, which is called JD-spin, where you just double-flip then tuck-spin the piece, where a Boiler is 1 rotation then 3 rapid ones, which sometimes helps with timing.
Could you make a modern tetris video sometime?
We know who Howard is but what about Otasan and Lance?
And why no Nester?
Its crazy how Howard looks just like Jonas with hair
5:43 I feel SO attacked 😭
In my opinion I think you kind of missed the mark on this one to go for the memes. Despite what they might have said, this article in Nintendo Power is trying to sell Tetris cartridges to people who have never played it, especially if it was printed when Tetris came out as you said. So the audience isn't going to be familiar with anything, it's just meant to give people without the game infront an idea of some of the depth in the game so they'll buy it. That makes a huge difference when writing a fluff marketing piece vs an actual strategy guide. Those used to be sold separately :D
I think in the early days they were not concerned with score at all--those tips were about how to play longer.
If they were not concerned with score, then they wouldn't have gone for tetrises at all - it's the most dangerous thing you can set up if you're just lining out.
Maybe the goal of Tetris was just not to lose
to me, Right Wells are good for the early and mid game, but in the later game I like the middle well better, because you have less reaction time
Not surprising what we have learned in the past 31 years.
Imagine introducing Howard to rolling
what is that tetris masters meeting in a house :O that looks very excitinig
Rent and watch Ecstasy of Order. It includes those clips and explains the context.
I can't take my shirt off when going on the water slide because by body is too hairy and it would make people uncomfortable .
Yay Howard got a PREFECT fit
6:50 That hurt my soul
Part of the importantance of understanding the Nintendo power article is understanding how codefied the game of Tetris has become in popular culture today. For many people, NES tetris was the first time that they had even heard of the game. In the same way, we have become a lot better at playing Tetris and many other games as the ability to share knowledge and the average persons experience in these games has improved.
Oh for sure, that's why I included the clips from the documentary, to show that stuff in the nintendo power article wasn't necessarily common knowledge even in 2010
Also you should take your shirt off on the waterslides cause it slows you down, that's a free tip - jonas