Video of the Tetris DS "I" block cheater [Archive]

Sully

05-17-2006, 05:03 PM

Here's the vid:

putfile (http://media.putfile.com/Tetris-DS-hacker-part-1)

google video (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5729182997105716768)

I started actually trying to win (after fumbling for camera and then taking some video) around match 12. I beat him on match 20 and he quit.

Watch as his blocks start normal but change to "I" blocks a split second after the match starts.

edit: Here's a second vid. It ends abruptly as the camera runs out of room:

putfile (http://media.putfile.com/Tetris-DS-hacker-part-2)

google video (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4566219233381032134)

edit2: Added google videos and "linkified" the links.

edit3: Someone else posted the video on youtube (http://youtube.com/watch?v=dyZRTqSKs00).

05-17-2006, 08:55 PM

impressive !! http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_mad.gif

caffeine

05-17-2006, 10:42 PM

nice work. this is going front page. =]

i can't believe he still hasn't figured out the fastest way to stack them-- all the way left and right horizontally, then two vertically in the middle. so simple. he's horrible at clearing garbage, too.

Sully

05-17-2006, 10:44 PM

Yes, he SUCKS at dealing with garbage. I only really got to play him about 6 times (first 14 I was finding/dealing with camera), and after I won, he quit. He is a TERRIBLE player.

caffeine

05-17-2006, 10:58 PM

have you considered reporting this to nintendo? i bet the video, along with everyone else who's complained, would help.

http://www.nintendowifi.com/customersup ... ackForm.do (http://www.nintendowifi.com/customersupport/showFeedbackForm.do)

Sully

05-17-2006, 11:15 PM

I posted on the Nintendo forums in the Tetris forum and the general WiFi forum, and both threads got deleted. I also pm'd every NOA guy about it (with links to the vids).

Xkeeper

05-18-2006, 01:27 AM

I posted on the Nintendo forums in the Tetris forum and the general WiFi forum, and both threads got deleted. I also pm'd every NOA guy about it (with links to the vids).Wait, what?

...........

Conspiracy theories abound, but the first thing I thought when I read this was that some NOA mod or admin is doing it... I mean, deleting them outright? What?

Webby

05-18-2006, 02:23 AM

tepples

05-18-2006, 04:13 AM

Nintendo simply advises to disconnect or leave after the game. They cannot control this type of hacks i think. There's never anything done about the Mario Kart track unlock mod

Because track unlocks are not cheating, as all players are racing on the same track. It'd be like unlocking TDS mission mode for Wi-Fi play. That is, unless you count taking advantage of the fact that other players may not have practiced the track in single player vs. CPU to be cheating.

Xkeeper

05-18-2006, 07:30 AM

Nintendo simply advises to disconnect or leave after the game. They cannot control this type of hacks i think. There's never anything done about the Mario Kart track unlock mod, nothing about the Animal Crossing besides a warning email."If the last four pieces this player dropped are all I pieces, instantly disconnect user and give other play the win"

Not terribly hard, and that's only one of many solutions -- this one's probably the easiest.

tepples

05-18-2006, 07:42 AM

05-18-2006, 07:43 AM

Just send him garbage as fast as you can.. he's easy to deal with...

TGM-Liem

Xkeeper

05-18-2006, 07:45 AM

caffeine

05-18-2006, 07:50 AM

yeah, i dont' remember ever getting more than two in a row of the same piece. does anyone?

Sully

05-18-2006, 07:51 AM

Does anyone know how he's doing it? I don't want specifics (like to try to replicate it), I'm just curious.

colour_thief

05-18-2006, 08:10 AM

"If the last four pieces this player dropped are all I pieces, instantly disconnect user and give other play the win"
Given a sufficiently random number generator, there's a 1 in 2401 chance that my next four pieces will be I. So what happens after I've played (on average) 2401 pieces, creating 960 lines? Or should the RNG special case that?

Generally, I have yet to encounter any particular instance of a string longer than this occuring...[/quote]

I have a video of 4 Tetrises in a row in TGM1, though I'm too lazy to upload it anywhere. This is doubly significant if you know how the TGM randomizer works. (And now, as I mention every time somethign remotely related to this pop up....)

I am able to analyze TDS to discover how the piece randomizer differs from pure random. I've done this successfully with TGM3 after transcribing piece sequences from the videos available on Arika's website. I have coded software specifically to help analyze this, and have puts many hours work into it. This means most of the work is done. If someone were able to transcribe piece sequences from TDS, I would be able to crack the randomizer's logic relatively quickly. Even someone recording an entire round of marathon (200 lines) would be useful, as someone else could transcribe these pieces at their leisure. The transcription of 3-4 complete rounds of marathon would suffice.

Please PM me for details if you are interested.

Maybe I should just start a thread about it.

colour_thief

05-18-2006, 08:12 AM

Whoa, forum glitch. I didn't play with the size tags at all. Should we report that to a dev team somewhere or something? It was caused by opening a colour tag inside a quote and closing it outside the quote.

M.Bison

05-18-2006, 09:26 AM

I would imagine he would just be using some kind of game shark or game genie?

- Jono

Shirase

05-18-2006, 09:33 AM

tepples

05-18-2006, 11:09 AM

If you dump the game to CompactFlash using a SuperCard and then hex edit the ROM image, you can screw with the RNG.

Phydeaux

05-18-2006, 11:13 AM

Nick15

05-18-2006, 12:51 PM

What a cunt. I mean, Tetris isn't a terribly difficult game. It'd be like cheating at Tic-Tac-Toe or Chutes and Ladders.

matt

05-18-2006, 02:08 PM

What a loser!

This guy will get bored soon enough. I'll bet Nintendo will deal with him as soon as he hits their publicly viewable leader board.

matt

Xkeeper

05-18-2006, 03:29 PM

What a loser!

This guy will get bored soon enough. I'll bet Nintendo will deal with him as soon as he hits their publicly viewable leader board.

mattThere is no "leaderboard" -- only a rank list.

(they differ in that a leaderboard shows all of the top players -- the rank list only shows people of a certain rank, and for some absurd reason starts on the second-to-lowest rank. duhwut?)

Webby

05-18-2006, 04:23 PM

Nintendo simply advises to disconnect or leave after the game. They cannot control this type of hacks i think. There's never anything done about the Mario Kart track unlock mod
Because track unlocks are not cheating, as all players are racing on the same track. It'd be like unlocking TDS mission mode for Wi-Fi play. That is, unless you count taking advantage of the fact that other players may not have practiced the track in single player vs. CPU to be cheating.

As far as i can recall i've been reading stuff about using a track for yourself while others have a different track so you win easy or something like that.

Sully

05-18-2006, 04:51 PM

I posted on the Nintendo forums in the Tetris forum and the general WiFi forum, and both threads got deleted. I also pm'd every NOA guy about it (with links to the vids).
That's insane.

Is it because they're under the impression that it was a how-to or something? Because the threads I've replied in have stayed so far.

I don't think they want people to see the vid, possibly because you see his name, which is offensive (to some, at least- I couldn't give a shit less about it).

edit: I've got the vids on google video now.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 7105716768 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5729182997105716768)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 3381032134 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4566219233381032134)

tepples

05-18-2006, 06:16 PM

Tetris isn't a terribly difficult game.

I've read a paper claiming that it's NP-hard. I can't view the original paper because arxiv.org, which hosts the paper, blocked my IP address on the first time that I tried to pull a page in about the last year. But there is another paper (PDF (http://www.liacs.nl/~kosters/tetris/tetr.pdf) or HTML converted by Google without images (http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache_3A8o10_pE0fBcJ_3Awww.liacs.nl_2F~ko sters_2Ftetris_2Ftetr.pdf+tetris+hard&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox))

Billmaan

05-18-2006, 09:55 PM

I would imagine he would just be using some kind of game shark or game genie?

- Jono

That's the thing. To my knowlege, there isn't any cheating device for the DS. Just a save state loader. Unless he's using that somehow.

I believe that there is a (software-based) Gameshark-like cheating device out there now. I haven't looked at it too hard though, so I might be mistaken about its capabilities. It's currently designed to be unusable on games with Wifi support, but it's not a stretch to think that someone could have found a way to remove or bypass that restriction, or that they're just using an older version. This particular exploit seems like the kind of thing that could easily be pulled off with any Gameshark-like device.

Of course, you could also dump and screw with the ROM. If you really understood how things worked, I'll bet you could come up with some nasty, nearly undetectable exploits. (My personal favorite idea would be to make it so that your garbage "lines up" more than normal. Maybe it could have a tendency to line up on the far right, as well. Maybe you could also alter the RNG so you get a few more I blocks than normal.)

Sully

05-18-2006, 10:59 PM

I'd like to figure out a way to give this douschebag all "s" blocks. But I'd need to see the look on his face when it happens to be worth it.

05-18-2006, 11:27 PM

There is a pro-action replay device out there...

Oh I played you Sully.. You're pretty good. Just don't leave too soon next time.. I was just getting warmed up.. You took alot of my hard earned points down =)

TGM-Liem

Phydeaux

05-18-2006, 11:30 PM

So you guys have beat him once or twice, then?

If so, I'm going to chance it. It's going to be one of those situations that if I don't win in the first 60 seconds it's not going to happen.

SuPa

05-19-2006, 12:09 AM

hey guys, first time poster here. anyways, i played against TGM-PK and he used the same cheat when i played him yesterday. hopefully nintendo could fix this crap cuz it's getting pretty ridiculous.

other than that, i would like to say hello to everyone here. i've actually been lurking around this site since it came out. i've played with some of you on wifi. TGM-Liem, i'm sure you remember me =]. caffeine, you got me good =[. sully, don't see you around that much anymore.

well, that's it for now, good luck guys.

Sully

05-19-2006, 12:15 AM

Ah, last night. You caught me at a bad time for two reasons:

a) My rating was an an almost all time low of 71xx. I'm usually in the 7400s. Sorry =/

b) I really didn't have time to play. Had it been any random person instead of you, I would have only played a couple of matches instead of the 20 or so that we played. If I had my way, we would have gone on for quite a while. Hope to see you again.

Nick15

05-19-2006, 12:27 AM

Sully

I'd like to figure out a way to give this douschebag all "s" blocks. But I'd need to see the look on his face when it happens to be worth it.

I lol'd!

Billmaan

Of course, you could also dump and screw with the ROM. If you really understood how things worked, I'll bet you could come up with some nasty, nearly undetectable exploits. (My personal favorite idea would be to make it so that your garbage "lines up" more than normal. Maybe it could have a tendency to line up on the far right, as well. Maybe you could also alter the RNG so you get a few more I blocks than normal.)

ROM hacking and dumping onto a blank cart (like an M3) is what I suspected at first. Now since, as far as I'm aware, Tetris DS hacking material is nonexistant, this cock gobbler is at least good at hacking the shit. Or if television is right, the dude's brother hacked TDS for the good of mankind while the guy himself is abusing it for his own end.

Either way, I'm willing to suspect that if anyone posts NDS hacking materials online, it's a good chance it's him.

As for a solution... isn't there a way to ban the guy from the network? I mean each DS and game cart is individually tagged with some address, right?

Phydeaux

05-19-2006, 12:31 AM

Yes, there are many things bound to you as the user playing the game on WiFi -- Player ID, the NintendoDS' identification code and it's bound to your friend code and then the DS has a MAC address which can be banned from the network.

It's doable, now they just need to take action.

Also, the weird thing which is being mentioned about hacking a dumped ROM: if they're just replacing all the pieces with "I" pieces, then why at the start of the game does it look like there's all the normal pieces and then they switch over?

Unless he's gotten Star item to work in 2P and made the X button functional.

Nick15

05-19-2006, 12:35 AM

Phydeaux

Unless he's gotten Star item to work in 2P and made the X button functional.

I'm willing to bet that it's as simple as that. Hacking blocks would take too much effort. Hacking the "2-player items mode" switch from off to on would be considerably easy. Hell, I'd even suggest that it was as simple as changing one bit from 0 to 1. Of course HOW the hell this guy found it is of note in of itself.

I can't imagine how much playing NDS wifi would suck once everyone else found out how to hack it....

Phydeaux

05-19-2006, 12:38 AM

Chances are, though, that the ones that would want to do it wouldn't be able to afford the equipment (ROM extractor, rewriting to a blank) and those that can afford to do it are using the equipment for completely other means and could care less about trying to cheat.

It just seems we caught some sort of weird hybrid of person.

Nick15

05-19-2006, 12:42 AM

Phydeaux

Chances are, though, that the ones that would want to do it wouldn't be able to afford the equipment (ROM extractor, rewriting to a blank) and those that can afford to do it are using the equipment for completely other means and could care less about trying to cheat.

I dunno, if you've got $100, you can pull this off.

* Download a Tetris DS ROM from the internet

* Open it up using some hacking tool (search me for what's what)

* Drop it into a blank cart (M3 Perfect (http://www.m3adapter.com/products.htm) is just the thing)

Tadah! Hacked ROM du jour.

Phydeaux

05-19-2006, 12:50 AM

Just take a gander at the Nintendo forums, though.

"Mommy, mommy I need this... thing."

"What's it for, dear?"

"It's to... uh... help me play better."

"How much is it?"

"$100"

"That was as much as your Gamewhatever. No."

I think we neglect to remember that the average Tetris DS player with access to the internet doesn't even have a job. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif

I mean, seriously, some of them may know how to play pretty well, but they all type like they're 8.

tepples

05-19-2006, 01:43 AM

Chances are, though, that the ones that would want to do it wouldn't be able to afford the equipment (ROM extractor, rewriting to a blank)

It's not that expensive. For $130 you can buy a DS; for another $120 you can buy equipment suitable for homebrew or piracy or cheating (http://wiki.pocketheaven.com/DS_Shopping_List). And if you don't care for Mario Kart, then the $250 total bill of materials even includes a Tetris DS Game Card which can be dumped and patched. As for justifying the price to one's parents, say it's for running homebrew, specifically DSOrganize and MoonShell so that the parent doesn't have to buy a Palm and an iPod.

Sully

05-19-2006, 05:40 AM

Nick15

05-19-2006, 05:46 AM

Well, the Tetris DS hacking deal-ma-thingy made it to 4 Color Rebellion (http://www.4colorrebellion.com/archives/2006/05/18/tetris-ds-wifi-hacking-in-the-wild/default.htm). It's only a matter of time before it hits Joystiq and even Engadget. http://www.tetrisconcept.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif

caffeine

05-19-2006, 08:48 AM

Yes, there are many things bound to you as the user playing the game on WiFi -- Player ID, the NintendoDS' identification code and it's bound to your friend code and then the DS has a MAC address which can be banned from the network.

this is the first thing that came to my mind. if they'd receive enough complaints, they ought to ban him. xbox live would. i was a bit disappointed when i saw the only action nintendo took was to change his name to *censored*.

Sully

05-19-2006, 09:01 AM

Where did they change his name?

caffeine

05-19-2006, 09:14 AM

i think he changed his name to tgm-pk. before, it had *censored* where it used to have fuck#

Sully

05-19-2006, 09:19 AM

Ok, so they are the same person. That's why someone else said that TGM-PK was hacking, too.

SuPa

05-19-2006, 10:46 AM

sully, don't see you around that much anymore.

You got a small helping of me tonight before I had to head back to work. Sorry I couldn't play more- hopefully we'll cross paths more in the future.

Good matches.

o jeez sully, you got me good tonight. the first like 2-3 matches, i got the worst pieces ever but after my 2 wins you just owned me. good game. let's play for fun later, first to 20. PM me.

Phydeaux

05-21-2006, 10:05 AM

The now official stance on cheating:

http://forums.nintendo.com/nintendo/boa ... e.id=16413 (http://forums.nintendo.com/nintendo/board/message?board.id=tetris&message.id=16413)

We're fuXed.

Xkeeper

05-21-2006, 10:33 AM

.....Uh.

Way to go Nintendo!

Phydeaux

05-21-2006, 11:29 AM

to the mod that's been deleting the posts and locking these ones:

http://forums.nintendo.com/nintendo/board/message?board.id=tetris&message.id=16413

I don't think it's very wise to put our kiddos out there out on a platter. Nintendo Corp has yet to do anything about the cheating and guys like "fuck{poundsign}" need to be blacklisted the old fashioned way, but that can't happen if you're actively going to be denying that there's a problem. Editing posts and writing it off as something lightweight just won't do.

I could understand locking this stuff if there were more than a few crowding up the page. I can understand locking it if Nintendo has got it under control, but contact from them proves that they DO NOT and thus the kiddos need to know that they need to disconnect as soon as they see a name from a list of users who are known to cheat.

This has happened to Craig's threads as well, which is totally not cool, as he's a major influential force in making this game what it is, and if he recognizes it as a problem, by golly, we should be listening instead of slipping into denial mode.

-Phy

Phydeaux

05-21-2006, 11:54 AM

The reply:

The forums are not connected to those in control of Nintendo's WFC. The hacking threads get locked because they are an illegal use of the game, and have the potential to ruin it in such a way that your warranty won't cover it.

We don't encourage that kind of discussion because we would prefer not to advertise how to improperly use your game.

Hacking threads will continue to get locked and deleted.

So. They don't actually read the threads before they act on them. EXCELLENT JOB WE'RE DOING OVER THERE. Geez.

Phydeaux

05-21-2006, 11:55 AM

You are completely misunderstanding me.

I'm not for hacking of any sort.

I'm saying there needs to be a way for these kids to be able to know when to jump ship before the match starts because they're up against a hacker who is going to use a torrent of I pieces against them and might destroy the average of a decent 7000-7400 point player. That's the position I'm in right now. It's not cool, it's detestable, and if Nintendo is refusing to do anything to the offenders, the kids have a right to know.

Phydeaux

05-21-2006, 11:57 AM

The reply:

I think it's not so much a matter of Nintendo ignoring the matter as it is they don't know what they can do to prevent it. I don't think there is realistically much the WFC staff can do about it.

...

...

...yeah. I don't know what to say to that.

So, at first I thought, "ooooh boy, you're going to get it! what a moron!" but it seems that Nintendo is going to turn a blind eye and allow this to continue, since they apparently didn't put up the proper safeguards in the first place to protect them from this.

I mean, fine, it's a free service, but I've lost some respect for Nintendo over this. And I'm a huge, freakin' annoying Nintendo fanboi.

05-21-2006, 06:56 PM

well i don't know about the TDS security system implementation... but it's a shame that a puzzle game is not much securised...

if i have to speculate on it :

The problem certainly come that the NWC don't follow all actions of users game behavior, but only the meeting initialisation and games report from both opponents, and clearly no active trace of the distribution... witch is as we can see a "critical information".

we don't have to blame nintendo.forum as they are not connected to NWC, but the developpement team, and the security model/guideline of the game :

- the distribution is determined locally on end user DS without verification from the NWC ?

- or is that game report can be soo easily cheated ?

"If the last four pieces this player dropped are all I pieces, instantly disconnect user and give other play the win"

so the cheat can be detected after a deconnection but not everytime ?

i don't understand very well the security "model/guideline" of TDS but those guys (http://www.tetrisonline.com/default.htm)popped out at the good/wrong time...

Phydeaux

05-21-2006, 08:34 PM

Yeah, I'm not blaming the forum staff. I'm saying that if Corporate isn't/can't going to do anything about, then the forum staff should allow talk of how to protect yourself from cheaters.

05-21-2006, 09:35 PM

absolutely not,

because allowing this topic discussion, is equal to publicly accept that their company game security is shity...

they are not related to NWC but to still to Big N, and no company need this kind of ads.

unconfortable position for moderator...

oh oh those guys (http://www.tetrisonline.com/default.htm) are recruiting ? hmmm.... nevermind....

Shirase

05-22-2006, 12:21 AM

The amusing thing about this is that it could have been prevented if Nintendo had put some thought into the wi-fi system. I've played online games in which the penalty for cheating is massive. (Mostly in Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast. Sega had it so that if you were caught cheating, you ran the risk of losing ALL your items and cash. In a game like that, that was huge)

But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Okay, perhaps they didn't think about it because who the hell would cheat at Tetris of all things. Allright..noted.

However, there are people cheating at Tetris. Shocking I know, but unfortunately it's true. The fix for this would be rather easy. Just make a site or something with a list of known cheaters. That way, people could avoid them. I dunno if there you lose points for powering off before the match (When your opponent's name is revealed), but that seems to be the best solution.

However it seems that Nintendo would rather have people ruin their ratings than to admit there's a problem.

People, it seems that we're gonna have to take this matter into our own hands somehow.

Xkeeper

05-22-2006, 12:41 AM

Yeah, if you can manage to beat him enough, heh...

Really, though, this is almost sad. It really kills any hope I had for them.

Shirase

05-22-2006, 01:30 AM

Yeah, if you can manage to beat him enough, heh...

Really, though, this is almost sad. It really kills any hope I had for them.

Yeah, that's the amusing thing about it. If you do manage to beat him, then it's quite a feat.

caffeine

05-22-2006, 01:49 AM

theoretically, the best strategy would be to start the game off with a t-spin triple or something like that. i'm not really sure what's optimal for starting, but it's definitely not tetrises. if, say, the top players one day reached that level, then fuckpound would be at a definite disadvantage. although, i'd be willing to say that most of the top ten can all ready take him on. (if top players had that hack, then it'd be a different story).

TGM-Liem

05-22-2006, 02:14 AM

I've only played this guy a few times... and he left right away..

The best method against him at first is to quickly hit him with single garbage... t-spin, or double lines.. then go for the kill with tetris's or t-spins...

He is a HORRIBLE player.. can not deal with garbage well at all...

cosmonaut

05-23-2006, 09:35 PM

hey nicholas... why do you say that beginning with tetrises is not the best way to start? just curious.

Sully

05-23-2006, 09:36 PM

You want to get him some junk ASAP. He doesn't deal with junk well at all.

Phydeaux

05-24-2006, 04:24 AM

And is limited to deal with junk due to having only I pieces.

Think about it. To pull off an L triple as a result of junk thrown at him, he has to drop an additional I piece to grab it, or may even take the time to build up to get the Tetris.

I've not seen him in a bit. Anyone else?

Josh

05-24-2006, 08:27 AM

I haven't seen him at all. I want to get a chance to play him and see if I can beat the cheating bastard. Are there any specific times that he plays?

Shirase

05-24-2006, 08:57 AM