Tetris effect
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
[Or at least it's how it worked for me; I never tried console Tetris, but I play different PC versions since '91 regularly. I can usually play level 9 tint (it's linux tetris clone) till I get bored.]
{also, "show next" is for sissies}
You're so old school, by the way. Haha. Nobody around my age (21) ever regularly played on anything other than a TI graphing calculator. There was a great viral effect to this, in that when you downloaded the game from someone else's calculator, you inherited the high scores on their game as well. It's funny to think about some current high school freshman playing tetris on his calculator and thinking, 'Who the hell is this Towle guy? What an asshole.'
And on top of that, the ubiquitousness of the versions of tetris on those calculators allowed for true player-to-player comparison. Sure, there was way more than one version available, but you might be surprised how few would ever use play non-standard. Let's see just how ubiquitous they were/are! (Hopefully someone responds with scores that make logical sense by comparison. Otherwise I'm going to look more ridiculous than absurd.)
Can anyone beat ~42k on the TI-86 version? Or ~498k on the TI-89 version? Or have inherited high scores in that range? (Note: a good, experienced player on those versions would have high scores around in the low 30-thousands and 300-thousands, respectively. I was obsessed, wouldn't beat my own scores for months before having an "in the zone" game, pushing them significantly higher each time.)
{Damn right. "Hold piece" is nonsense, too.}
Second: Leaving a gap on the right or left rather than somewhere in the middle is the easiest way to accomplish this. If you can't see that, I'm sorry for you.
Third: This guy chose the right.
I play tetris a lot, but when doing so, I don't think about it. Tetris is a game that you can play without actually thinking about it. I play ltris, and if I play another variant that has different colors for different shapes, or some other minor difference, I'm completely screwed. In fact, I play tetris in order to be able to think about something else, it employs my hands and I can clearly think about something I want. The game itself is just a complete routine.
(And by the way, I can play tetris completely in my head, without a computer. Just close eyes and imagine playing it. And it actually feels like playing tetris. Shapes randomly appearing at the top, that I try to place as I would in the real game, then they make rows, disappear, and after some time, it gets so fast that it overwhelms me and I lose :-))
During exam time I'd often experience hallucinations of equations, but even crazier were the dreams: sometimes I couldn't wake up unless I performed a mathematical operation on some regular object, ie. "what's the Laplace Transform of this blue chesterfield?"
Yes, and also computing. Among other things, I've had a dream where I was trying to open files and had to win a race against someone who was replacing them with evil symlinks; several dreams about copy-on-write B+Trees; and a dream where I was a mutex and was trying to keep threads straight except that I got confused when I was locked recursively.
It's cool to see that this is a pretty common thing.
During awake time, when I'm actively studying/using a new technique, things can get mixed up. I might be absorbing information, but not necesarily using it very efficiently. I just plow on, trying things out, playing around. (Perhaps because most of what I do is self-directed studying, so getting unstuck is left up to myself.)
After days like this, when I sleep, it's fitful. I'll dream of people tormenting me until I can do something in O(n) time, garbage collectors chasing me, whatever. But oddly, often times when I wake up, I have a calm and a better unstanding of whatever it was I was studying. And sometimes, I'll wake up with a start, with a clear solution to a particular problem in mind.
I also have the same exact experience with coding. For example, I'll have to write a for loop in order to perform actions, such as eating cereal.
Happens to me all the time.
edit: I've also, of course, tried to Ctrl-Z when writing on paper... many times...
Very annoying when you realise you actually have to go through a lot of skimming instead :(
I guess that's where my mind decided the smart missile controls would be.
I remember it very clearly, as I've always been slightly unnerved that not only was it a reflex thought, but that I'd actually moved to act on it.
All in all, maybe marathon or prolonged gaming sessions aren't the healthiest thing in the world, mentally and physically. Say all you want about hand-eye coordination and I'm no Gaming or Net Nanny or anything but ...
I probably got to Target 20 seconds faster that day, but I cut out playing Nascar for extended periods after that.
I get an effect similar to this after playing airsoft, except it looks like BBs flying towards me.
What I find interesting is that it's not all-that common while playing to see BBs flying towards me. It happens several times a game, but only for seconds at a time. So if this is the same effect (not just a different one with similar symptoms), it's not caused simply by an overload or repetition of a particular stimulus.
(It's not just me: my friend said he gets the same effect. But I haven't asked around, so I couldn't say if it's widespread.)
Cool to find out it's a real phenomenon.
I don't think that commercial would get OK'd today. A video game that makes you hallucinate shooting innocent bystanders? It's so pre-columbine.
I got it when I cooked professionally, and would dream about cooking on the line at work.
These days I dream about coding a lot, and occasionally of dealing w startup logistics, which is always funny.
Its a good sign of when I need a day with just a bit less of whatever has been occupying my mind all night
it's the last segment.