>this rolling technique allows clicking buttons much more quickly than you normally can but they're still a long way from the 30Hz strobe the hardware itself will accept

This is actually false! Top players can actually roll faster than 30hz if they want; however, the game won't recognize this as all distinct inputs, so it really is the hardware that's limiting us. Check out this video to see how precise some players can be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K81CjNo4B_Q

(incidentally, i made a romhack of nes tetris that supports polling multiple times per frame, effectively removing this limit. i talk about it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9vKMNu5JWo)