Bizarro World: World Record Tetris (2007) | Hacker News Reader

Bizarro World: World Record Tetris (2007)

boston.com

236 pointsrinesh75 comments

When windows 95 came out, I got hooked on solitaire. I played for hours till I could finish it under 100 seconds, then to 90s, 80s, 70, and 60s. It was really hard to finish it below 50 seconds but once I got to 49s then that was my mark. Hard to do but got some games done under 50 seconds and then suddenly I got a lucky shot with all cards in an easy setting which I finished in 37 seconds. My own world record.

I considered myself the fastest mouse mover of all universe.

You will definitely have a bit of fun with this, then:

http://mrdoob.com/lab/javascript/effects/solitaire/

Drag the mouse for great victory.

Supports multi-touch as well.

batmansbelt, it seems you are hellbanned, that means nobody can see your posts unless they are logged in and have "showdead" turned on.

Passed this around my family. Everyone who remembered the game got great joy from it. Then my autistic four year old insisted "MORE CARDS! MORE CARDS! BOOOOOOM!"

You, sir, have made my day.

Awesome!

That is simply staggering. I can barely get through one pass of the deck in 37 seconds.

Was that with three-card flip or one-card?

One card. Three is too hard and I get stuck too often.

A decade or so ago, a friend of mine and I were living out of hotel rooms in Italy whilst we were waiting to rent a flat and find jobs. We were running low on funds and were struggling to find ways to entertain ourselves (and it was January and the weather was terrible - six inches or more of snow on the ground for several weeks). With nothing much else to do, and no wifi in the hotels, we took to a supremely healthy life of smoking Camels, drinking cheap beer, and playing Marble Blast Gold in our hotel room on my G4 iBook.

We finished the game pretty quickly and then became hopelessly obsessed with shaving fractions of seconds off our best times on the easier levels; we were both supremely competitive people (and averagely well coordinated, I guess) and this went on for two or maybe three weeks until we found somewhere to live, got Internet access, and had some meaningful form of employment. We hardly played it after that.

A few years later, I looked online and found some sites with high-scores; ours were, on certain levels (the ones we'd really cared about), by so far the best in the world it was pretty funny.

The level with just a vertical drop down a pipe to land on the target below, filled with random obstacles to bounce you off a perfectly straight run. Three of us were competing on that with ultra-close scores... I wish I still had our scores.

We played that one hundreds of times, experimenting with the straight roll off the edge, roll-jumping, a quick brake before slipping over the edge, everything we could think of to shave off that last little bit.

Thanks for reminding me. :)

I remember that one! Our favourite was the level with the hoops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37CsfIix2LA Let's just say the time they get on YouTube there wouldn't really hold a candle to what we achieved after several consolidated days of effort!

I think you may enjoy this: http://solitaire-ranking.org/rankings/sol_std_95

If you had a video of your attempt, or at least a screenshot of the ending screen, you would be either the #3 (if it was 3-draw) or the #7 (1-draw) Windows 95 Solitaire player in the world.

I remember I printscreened that particular game, but it was almost twenty years ago and no, I guess that computer is in some dumpyard somewhere in the abyss of my memory.

Thanks for the link. Good to know I was really good at that.

In the dying days of paging, I worked at a retail place that sold pagers and when business was slow (which was most of the day at that point) we'd have freecell challenges of how many games you could win consecutively. As soon as you lost, someone else got a shot.

I was champion briefly when I had around 40 games in a row. Then my co-worker blew me away at 64 for about a week. Nobody ever got beyond 100, the closet before I quit was a high schooler who was on a 73 game tear.

Those pale in comparison to some of the world records I think are in the 10,000 games and up level.

I played Solitaire with settings: vegas, deal three, for a while years ago and have gotten a similar record of around half a minute( I can't remember the actual number ). It was a similar scenario, where the cards were stacked really nice after the initial position was cleared. Then right click did most of the work.

The vegas setting had a money balance that would persist trough the games. And you started at -52$ if I remember correctly; usually my goal was to get over 200$ and clear the board. I would get this in about two out of three attempts.

Since with vegas you can only deal the deck three times, there is a strategy where you use the first deal and scan the deck, so you can reach the aces and lower numbers in the remaining two deals. But I quit playing before I got to master that.

Should probably add (2007) to the title.

Four months later the previous record holder, Harry Hong, took back the title with a 4,988-line run (about 5x Lori's run), which remains the record to this day.

Seems kind of strange that suddenly this guy goes from 600 pts to almost 5000. It's also weird that his total points from marathon mode was 9,999,999.

I don't know. Assuming that he scored the original record because he was an avid player, he probably spent a lot of time naturally honing his skills afterwards, and with no one else to beat it for a while, he didn't have any reason to defend it.

Not too weird. That's just how high the score counter goes. You can keep playing after that, but the number stops going up. (source: I've gotten that score myself. (although I paused every hour or so when my arms fell asleep, so that disqualifies me from submission))

Some people play down to the level of their competition.

Tetris DX must be somehow more forgiving than the original Tetris.

Yes, Tetris DX's maximum speed is pretty permissive. Even at level 30, you still have enough time to orient your piece and place it anywhere on the playing field. This isn't the case for the maximum speed of other Tetris versions.

It looks like she held the record for just three of those months. A month before Harry Hong took it back, a guy named Neil Gewirtz took it from her with a run of 2349 lines.

http://www.twingalaxies.com/scores.php?scores=14856

that would have bothered me not getting just shy of 5,000 points

That's incredible. How could he beat his own record by a factor of like 6x? Was he not really trying before or did he learn something special?

The article mentions King of Kong, which is great. But I think the better documentary on this whole scene is Chasing Ghosts. It's a broader look and really gives you a feel for the type of people involved in this scene. Makes it even more surprising that this lady was a world record holder, if only for a little while.

Better still is "The Ecstasy of Order," a Tetris documentary. I'd hate to spoil it but the conclusion really is unbelievable. I bought the download on Amazon for like 4 bucks or something. Definitely worth checking out.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/429491

Thank you!

King of Kong was heavily edited to the point of being misleading.

Not sure how you can edit the fact Billy Mitchell is an arrogant douche canoe.

They absolutely did. Read this account of the restaurant scene: http://www.twingalaxies.com/showthread.php/118881-Issue-6-Th...

Here's a collection of public statements by Twin Galaxies on the littany of inaccuracies in the film.

Stop defending him.

There's a documentary about the best Tetris players (on NES): "Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters"[0].

It follows one man's journey to gather the best Tetris players in the world for the first "Classic Tetris World Championship", as well as the preparation of the players, who try to break a new record, or to reach the unattainable level 30.

If you like obsessive people and want to learn more about the boundaries of Tetris, I recommend this documentary.

[0]: http://watch.ecstasyoforder.com/

I don't claim to be a pro, but Tetris got a heck of a lot easier when they started letting you spin your pieces infinitely once they hit the bottom. I maxed out levels… then lines… then the score on the Nintendo DS in 2006 or 2007. There was a bug in the game, however, that wouldn't let you save scores above 99,999,999, which was kind of a bummer after a game that took up about a month's worth of commutes.

Her score on twin galaxies. http://www.twingalaxies.com/scores.php?player=44371

She's been destroyed by Harry Hong though.

http://www.twingalaxies.com/scores.php?scores=14856

Why did they have to kill her?

That's interesting - he has 9,999,999 points

That is the maximum score. You can play on, but the score is capped there.

Harry Hong is a beast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umt4ZESWSeQ

You may enjoy this game, from Jin8 (much, much faster):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=jw...

It gets particularly incredible at the 5:10 mark.

I've never been able to understand how this video is possible. I want to see where his eyes are looking - I'm assuming pretty much always at the block queue?

Yes, and the different tones of the bloops indicate the next piece.

> A very pregnant photographer is lying on the floor underneath the table, shooting Lori as she plays. The flash is right in her face.

Wow, that sounds sub-optimal.

See also Evets Kainzow:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/07/21/apple-co-founders-tet...

I scored 1 in beginner Minesweeper. (And 2,3,4,5 etc) It was clearly very lucky. I think it involved something like the initial click and 2-3 others. It was a really fortunate board.

I just checked Minesweeper records and the best they have is 3. Why is my name not up there in lights?http://www.minesweeper.info/wiki/World_Record_History#Offici...

The 3 second record was unofficial in 1992. The 1-second record has stood since 1997 (and is officially unbreakable.)

The expert record of 32 is really impressive. I can't finish intermediate in 32.

Woohoo! Tied a world record!

My favourite Tetris was the BOWEP (Best of Windows Entertainment Pack) version that came with .. Windows 3.11 was it? Or 95? One of those. I would regularly wrap the score starting at level 10. Unfortunately it doesn't run on 64-bit Windows, and I find it's not smooth enough in a VM to be the same experience. Have considered trying to get it running in DOSBox, but haven't gotten around to it yet!

I have fond memories of playing this in 2 player mode where I played both players with each hand.

Ha, good idea! New motivation to see if I can get it running!

I kept thinking, if Day thinks this girl is good, he probably hasn't seen this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwC544Z37qo

Be sure to watch the credits.

Simpsons did it. http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/6dbqbm/looks-like-homer-p...

Here's a short video with Lori Baker and Andrew Gardikis (Mario Bros record holder): http://www.destructoid.com/boston-globe-weaves-a-long-tale-o...

No one seems to have mentioned this yet, but as of the end of June, Andrew lost the world record to Blubbler http://smb-leaderboards.wikia.com/wiki/SMB_Leaderboards_Wiki Also, sometime earlier this year, andrewg decided to retire from speedrunning and get his life back on track, but it looks like since his world record was beat, he is back at making attempts to get the world record http://www.twitch.tv/andrewg1990

If you like this kinda stuff be sure to watch this:

http://watch.ecstasyoforder.com/

Tangential, but can anyone place her accent? It's really unusual. Maybe she was born in Texas and then moved to the West Coast as a kid?

The International Video Game Hall of Fame

Be sure to read to the end!

Lovely article, thanks for the repost.

Well, if you all are into old games vs PC other than just Tetris, there's always Acquire which was originally a 3M board game from the 1960's. That was when I played it as a young teenager in the Academic Games Club at our interesting high school.

It's a financial game, but better and faster than Monopoly, the highest performer (best investor/player) still wins, but at least everybody makes money, hell everybody starts with capital. Each the same amount of capital, how often do you see that :-)

Growth stocks are involved, with bonuses (which can almost be regarded as follow-on rounds adding to exits, until game-end liquidation) rather than dividends. Quite easy to learn

In the '70's, it appeared for the Apple and the Commodore PET. There was also a slightly more modern DOS version which was from Avalon-Hill, the successor to 3M for their games:

http://www.webnoir.com/bob/sid/acquire.zip

There is also another version from Bill Humphrey, the 1966 playing rules are in a DOC file within this ZIP (tailored to his PC version):

http://www.webnoir.com/bob/sid/acquire2.zip

Each player also is issued an information card you will need for proper financial planning:

http://www.webnoir.com/bob/sid/acquirecard.htm

The numbers on top in the blue header are the size of the hotel chain. The upper number (low $) in each cell is the share price for the named chains in the left-hand cell. The middle number (high $) in each cell is the bonus amount for majority holder of the named chains upon exit/liquidation. The bottom number (not-as-high $) in each cell is the bonus amount for second-majority holder of the named chains upon exit/liquidation.

Here's an alternate:

http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/44033/acquire-3m-version-c...

and another:

https://megacquire.com/zencart/images/Six-Info-Cards-+-Lg-Ca...

and another:

https://megacquire.com/zencart/images/Enlarged-Info-Card-B.j...

While I was looking for my original 3M hard copy edition to bring to my local makerspace for the young board gamers I did find a better user vs PC version from G.C.Crawshay, also DOS but have confirmed it will play in WinXP or Win7 if you have a 32-bit PC:

http://www.george.crawshay.com/cgi/products.pl?game=Acquire

Naturally it will play from a bootable DOS floppy as well. Some are surprised when you can fire up any old surplus PC having a floppy drive and it works ideally without having to have a working HDD in the system. No mouse either. USB floppy drives work too.

EDIT: I believe the floppy will also play on a 64-bit PC

Day comes over to shake her hand. Lori is laughing as Day declares her "the greatest Tetris player in the world," then turns to me to add, "And I must say, she's also the prettiest."

Maybe if gamers didn't think it's ok to casually objectify female gamers there would be more women playing and it wouldn't be such a big deal that this player was a woman.

Yep, time to bring out burqas in the Western world, don't you think? Sure complimenting someones beauty scares the shit out of them .

Or maybe it was a sincere compliment? If Lori was a bodybuildier, maybe Day would have said "And I must say, she's also the strongest."

I'm also not sure how calling someone pretty objectifies them.

The conversation is about someone's accomplishment, then it is turned to one person's opinion of her looks. That's the problem.

Bodybuilders build their bodies. Her accomplishment was scoring highly.

i really hope this is sarcastic, but either way, it's still a perfect example of what is wrong with feminism

This is just a random thought, but it does occur to me that a lot of effort is expended in discouraging guys from objectifying women, but little to no effort is expended in doing sort of the opposite: encouraging women to objectify guys.

I've never really thought about it before, but maybe the most natural solution is to just level the playing field rather than trying to get a big group of people to stop doing something that they more or less naturally do. We're definitely seeing this happen with celebrities and big budget movies, for instance. Nobody's stopped objectifying women, but they have started objectifying men more than ever before, at least as far as I can tell. I've heard more about Chris Pratt being hot this week than I have about any female celebrity, for instance, including his female costar Zoe Saldana.

That's because the people who think objectification of women is bad tend to also think objectification of men is bad. Those people don't want to live in a world of ubiquitous or or even just balanced objectification; they want to live in a world with none.

I don't think ridding the world of all sexual objectification is even remotely realistic. It's human nature to do it, and you're not going to change human nature. Are you going to make it illegal?

Culture modifies human natural behaviour in all sorts of surprising ways. You cannot tell out of hand which behaviours are natural (whatever that means) and which are cultural. Why are women's appearances scrutinized to much greater extent than men? Is it because our culture* discourages male objectification, or because it encourages female objectification?

Even if it is natural, that doesn't mean it's desireable. That's just an appeal to nature.

While laws are an extreme method, they're routinely used to better ourselves, and even more often to better others. It's worked for (what we currently consider) undesireable behaviours like theft, smoking in public places, environmental pollution, seatbelt wearing, illegal parking, murder, and looking funny at cops. That's a pretty varied list, so why wouldn't it work for sexual objectification? I don't think we should use such a drastic approach, but it's not ridiculous, either.

_____

* Cowardly assuming we're all in the West.

> Is it because our culture* discourages male objectification, or because it encourages female objectification?

Both. There's still a lot of latent homophobia throughout the US. What I mean by that is that there are many folks who are decidedly pro-gay-rights, but still feel uncomfortable around the sexualization of the male gender.

There's one thing I'm interested in: happiness. What's going to make the most people happy? Many laws that are morally prescriptivist, like those banning gay marriage, end up just oppressing people because it turns out gay marriage is perfectly fine and doesn't harm anyone.

I don't believe open displays of sexuality are harmful to anyone so long as we don't have double standards and we do exercise good judgment. So the idea of outright banning them by law does indeed seem completely ridiculous to me. It's just as ridiculous to me as banning gay marriage or banning porn or banning prostitution.

The reason we do have double standards is precisely because we've been led to believe over generations that the sexualization of men is wrong. Because many men haven't learned to be comfortable with their own gender, homophobia has been able to flourish for decades. It's gross when two guys kiss, right? Of course it is--you can find millions of people who will agree with you because they've carefully been hidden from that their entire life. Banning sexualization and sexual objectification will just lead to future generations who are even more incapable of coping with the realities of human sexuality in ways that aren't immensely harmful to many people.

It is not exactly smart thing to say, it may be slightly annoying too, but it is far from objectifying a female.

It's a pretty icky thing to say, to be sure. This person set a new world record and she's receiving comments about her appearance? This woman performed an incredible feat of skill and she's being reduced to her looks. Doesn't sound like much of a compliment when you frame it like that, does it? Sounds like sexism to me.

Uhh, he just complimented her on becoming "the greatest Tetris player in the world", an achievement which is 100% unequivocally not due to being female or pretty (the machine does not care), and is not reduced in any shape or form by being either.

As a man who a few hours ago was complimented on my beard (which btw is a total castaway & 6 months of growth type of beard) and how it makes me look "handsome" in a casual business situation, I see this type of statements as flawed and near-sighted. The female in question is married and I have a significant other and the comment was issued in a small break between talking about software all morning. I felt neither threatened, reduced to looks, or uncomfortable in any way. My ego got a very slight boost if we're actually keeping score. I don't see why the person in this story should feel objectified by being told she's pretty.

Nevertheless, I decided that I should go ask my girlfriend what she thought about this situation and about your comment. You know, to get the female perspective. Her answer was pretty much in the same boat... And then she starts a 15 minute rant about how modern women are destroying the values set by real feminist women who worked their asses off to achieve some notion of equality, and how Coco Chanel is the reason women now wear pants and hats.

Our collective opinion? The fact that being told you're pretty or handsome is seen as objectification and something to be avoided is because we've become so out of touch with reality and out own humanity that entitlement has become as much a problem as objectification is.

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