The Revolution in Classic Tetris | Hacker News Reader

The Revolution in Classic Tetris

newyorker.com

178 pointsirtefa71 comments

> To [hypertap], he developed a unique one-handed grip: with his right thumb on the control pad, he flexed his right bicep until his arm shook, pressing down with each tremor, about fifteen times per second.

Did anyone else do this for other games? I used to pull this move all the time in those mario party style games where you had to be the first to press a button, or had to tap the most in a certain period of time.

Takahashi Meijin, a former Hudson Soft executive, was famous in the 80s for being able to mash a button 16 times per second: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ4lmAFB7d4

came here to post this!

He was a minor celebrity, (or a major celebrity for kids back then) and was a staple on network TV shows and commercials.

https://youtu.be/OtraMSOgsnU

Apparently its a tradition that Koryan brings one of these devices to the CTWC after party and everyone competes! Sadly I dont know the best scores.

Yeah, but like, not in such a controlled fashion and I could never go for long... like a sibling post, I use it for controlled flow in powders & shear-thinning fluids

I can kind of control it but my arm gets sore if I sustain it for long periods.

It definitely is useful in Mario Party (and occasionally Street Fighter) and pretty much destroys anybody in my family when it comes to the button mash minigames.

I did this for old Amiga games, some of them had unlimited projectiles, you just had to click really fast.

I’ve always used this method for decanting things in the kitchen. Like ketchup stuck in a bottle, flour out of bags, sifting flour etc.

It's the method I've used for at least 30 years for rapid shots on a non-turbo controller. I most commonly used it to unlock the secret Arcade difficulty level on Gradius 3 SNES, but I used it before that point.

I was a bit surprised to see that was a semi-secret technique!

Oh absolutely. It's that smasher skill to edge out an advantage when the only real limit is input speed. Made those later "press X repeatedly to survive!" quick time type things super easy.

Man I miss gaming.

I hated those quicktime events... yeah I saw the point of having a high quality pre-rebdered video with a gameplay element, they were just so tedious. I can't stand it when games still occasionally use the "quick, mash this button!" approach, though it is thankfully not as often these days

I was doing something familiar when playing Track&Field on Nes.

For Track and field, you put your finger in your school tie and rub over the button as fast as you can. That’s the official way to play hahaha

I guess I was spoiled, I had the mat for track and field. Although that always had it's special quirks to get to go fast too

I used it probably since California Games II and one of the last time in cookie clicker; now that I'm older I can feel the strain doing it for prolonged periods, and moved to games that have a somewhat slower input pace requirement.

I didn't really realize what the quote was talking about until you mentioned mario party. That brought back memories.

Looking at the sibling comments, it's kind of cool how a lot of people arrived at the same pattern intuitively.

As a kid I'd compete against classmates over who could start-stop a stopwatch the quickest. I don't think anyone who didn't use that technique (which was just instinct really) had any chance.

Depending on the game I always liked to change my hand position and flutter my index and middle finger on the same button. Not so sure how many hits in a second but much easier on your fingers.

A similar/same technique is common in competitive minecraft pvp, where it's known as jitter clicking. There are other similar such techniques with a variety of names.

I don't know about fifteen times a second but yeah definitely.

I tried doing it for column-climbing in the Flash game 'n' on a number of occasions, but I gave up because fast column-climbing requires accurate taps and also it hurts.

I definitely did something like this for column-climbing on occasion, and also tapping shift with fingers from two hands. But yeah n was more about accuracy.

(Hey scythe, brocerious here!)

How does the bicep flex help you press the button faster?

It makes your hand tremble like you've got the DT's. By gripping the controller the right way, the vibrations click the button at higher frequency than you can click it the normal way.

Not to mention the bicep muscles are going to be stronger and easier to do the vibration with than ANY muscle in your hands.

At least, that's the way I figured it out-- by locking my hand and lower arm muscles tight, then using the strongest muscle in my arms (the biceps) to do the actual work.

I did this as soon as I picked up Tetris for Gameboy again about 3 years ago.

Tekken games. This is how I win Tekken games.

I think about this a lot with regards to learning to program. I learned to program as a kid in early 90s, with no internet. I had a bunch of books I got from the library, and figuring things out meant looking in the index of a bunch of books to find the topic. I ended up making up my own version of a lot of fundamental programming things because I didn’t happen to read the chapter that had that bit, so I needed to solve it myself.

I used to be really nostalgic about this, and worried that “kids these days” never get that experience of having to figure something out entirely on your own.

Now I have started to think kids can do so much more and learn so much more these days. I could have learned so much with the effort I had to put in to learn the basics. I could know so much more than I do now if I had the internet as a kid!

I somewhat agree but there is a lot to be said about "reinventing the wheel", while you are learning. Not only do you get to a solution, you also consider other approaches and discover why they don't work, or work as well.

Having "a" solution at your fingertips all the time also decreases your critical thinking of whether that solution is really the best in the problem space you are working at.

I think that the best of both worlds, what I usually try doing, is that you think about a problem, try to analyze how you would solve it and only then look up the solution.

I agree. Learning to program on my own in the 80s by writing things like text adventures, I had to figure out things like parsing and sorting myself, with no idea that these were common problems with known approaches. Nowadays I lazily reach for answers on Google most of the time when I encounter a problem that is novel to me. I'm pretty sure I'm dumber now because of it.

Meh.

I would argue you have an evolved critical thinking skill, and can easily determine why the Stack Overflow answer with the green checkmark is not always the correct solution...

AND, you know what to actually search for in Google to get your answer.

Watching this video helped me appreciate those Tetris world championship videos a lot more! There's a lot more to it than meets the eye.

The Classic Tetris World Championships Explained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RaqVGzhQTM

The crazy thing is that the Classic Tetris scene has really blown up a lot (partially as a result of that video) to the point that that video is outdated.

I think the "hold a piece" dynamic of the Tetris with friends is such a good addition that it should be the official version? Agree or disagree?

What has changed since then?

"World championship" was basically a bunch US players and one dude from Canada. That changed in 2018, with players from Europe and SE Asia adjusting to the NES version to compete. In other words, it went from one player managing to get max score on the qualifying day to like 7 IIRC.

CTWC Europe was created in 2015, although it's for PAL version which differs by FPS and DAS speed.

So, is it more advantageous to play at 50Hz or 60Hz?

Or does that matter?

The PAL version was adjusted for the fps change, so while the game looks the same it plays very differently because of just a few values. It was only recently that the first person in the world EricICX maxed out the PAL version.

Here's an in-depth article that explains the consequence of these changes to tapping. https://tetris.wiki/User:Kitaru

I used to watch Jonas and Heather’s Twitch stream every night for a while back in 2019. I had no idea he had passed away, only a year older than me :-(

It is super sad. He was pure kindness.

I really enjoyed watching both of them on stream. They were so warm and fun and seemed to have a great community of friends around them. It’s heartbreaking to hear of Jonas’ passing. My heart goes out to Heather and his family and friends.

I breaks my heart. His VODs are still on twitch. Lots to see if you'd like to enjoy their banter once again.

Not Classic Tetris, but Tetris 99[1] and the Tetris: The Grand Master series[2] are also worth checking out if you are into competitive Tetris.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm6t5IKVGsM

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaMjbnvZMck

While the term "Classic Tetris" usually refers to NES Tetris, it can also mean any pre-guideline game (modern tetris).

Tetris The Grand Master has actually been part of The CTWC for a few years. My favorite is from CTWC 2017, one of the craziest finals in Tetris ever. Round one starts here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0xTEkejOtI

I recently watched the Tetris documentary, Ecstasy of Order, and although it is a few years old, was very interesting and entertaining.

http://watch.ecstasyoforder.com/

> After a few seconds, the longed-for rectangle arrived.

Another way to describe it would be a long-four rectangle :)

A furlong for a longed-for long-four won't last for long.

I think you mean a furlough. A furlong is 1/8 of a mile.

No, the wordplay works with variations of the words "for" and "long".

The "furlong" etymologically means a "furrow length" which is what you could call that spot everyone sets up for the narrow tetris block.

If you fancy playing the classic Tetris, you can give a go to https://www.goodoldtetris.com/

It's just not the same for me without the music.[0] Although my favorite soundtrack was actually the Welltris one.[1] Ah, brings back memories of when I had all the flags of the former USSR memorized.

[0]https://youtu.be/NmCCQxVBfyM

[1]https://youtu.be/RJEyqLK7HwU

You might enjoy this version, recounting the history of the USSR to the Tetris tune:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8

Wow! Finally one that feel exactly like how it did as a kid.

Thanks for this! I had to force myself to quit the game and leave this last comment before bed!

This article is so well written - I watched the videos they were talking about and it wasn't nearly as exciting. I just want Jacob Sweet to describe videos to me now.

Completely agree. I was actually griped. You could make a movie out of this column !

https://archive.is/vusox

I can't imagine the Tetris dreams these guys must have. I got obsessed with it for a couple weeks and it never stopped playing in my head.

I too stumbled upon Classic Tetris through the Youtube algorithm.

I've watched almost all of the 2019 and 2020 world championships and the game is just played so well with so much energy. It's really a simple game and the players are just SO fast at understanding the combinations and when to "burn" lines to set up more valuable Tetrises.

Incredibly surprised that Joesph lost but it was a REALLY REALLY close game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isbvQVngnXA)

> I too stumbled upon Classic Tetris through the Youtube algorithm.

To me this aspect was the most fascinating point about this article. I cannot shake the feeling that the algorithm "decided" for many individuals how to spend large amounts of their time.

In some ways we have already hit the singularity. Some random ML has changed the lives of thousands of people to play tetris. Imagine the other similar situations. It's very scary to me that people live their lives inside such tightly controlled "algorithms".

Then throw on the human element how Google gets to ban certain topics from the algorithm and it just feels dystopian. Is there any light at the end of the tunnel?

> Months later, he noticed something strange. “It was just blowing up,” he said. “I don’t know why. The views just kept climbing and climbing and climbing.” Soon there were spin-offs.

Other than "It went viral" or "because the YouTube algorithm", was there a specific reason ever noted for this? I found this part of the article was the hook that got me interested in reading more, however I didn't find the answer further down.

Tetris is such a great game. I still play it daily when I'm bored. But I can't play without hard drop and ghost piece nowadays.

I like Tetris Sprint, where you have to do 20 or 40 lines the fastest you can.

There is a lot of competition around this too. A great website to play is Jstris: https://jstris.jezevec10.com

My personal addiction is hard drop and wall kicks. I can do without the ghost piece.

This recent story had me wanting to try the NES version again: https://www.gridbugs.org/reverse-engineering-nes-tetris-to-a...

If anyone wants to play Tetris Effect Connected in co-op mode, I am looking for Tetris friends. Hit me up at josh@gourneau.com

This was such a beautiful article. I was just talking to friends about programming for predicting chess and poker games and then this came up which was felt very perfect. It just makes me appreciate the human mind that much more.

The game I wish would make a comeback is the original Tetris Attack. It's probably the best PVP puzzle game of all time, and not the easiest game to get right due to timing issues.

I love Tetris Attack / Panel de Pon / Pokémon Puzzle League! Superficially it looks like Tetris, but the mechanics are way deeper. There are many combos you can make. More importantly, you need to make chains to do meaningful damage/scoring. Whereas in Tetris you are at the whim of the random incoming pieces, in Tetris Attack it is up to you to create order from the random field, and players at different skill levels will take an identical field and process it totally differently.

Right with you on this! Spent so much time playing "T-Attack" (as we called it) I would see the shapes behind my eyes when I would go to sleep. My brother and one friend still dust it off every year to see if we've still "got it". Would love a comeback on this.

Chess has been big lately and I feel that as a game it's far more rewarding and scalable than Tetris. The mastery curve of chess is very long and doesn't ceiling like twitch games do.

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