Hello, Well i guess i'm the newest member here and thought i'd give you an introduction to myself and i have one or two questions if that's ok. My Tetris history is Gameboy based, i poured a lot of time into the original tetris after getting hooked on it at a gameboy demo station in woolworths when i was a young boy (i'm 31 now). But i suppose my love for tetris really took off with Tetris DX. I found it to be the most complete, 'loose' version of Tetris that i had found up until recently and spent so much time with that and my Gameboy color. I reached 1112 lines on it and a few years ago was taking my Tetris playing a lot more serious and recording attempts for Twin galaxies etc. (I only ever managed a documented 977 lines i think). I soon got bored of grinding the early levels of the GB marathon attempts and would always play 40 Lines High 5 over and over for an immediate fix ( I think my record is somewhere in the 1:47/ 1:48 region). Anyway, in those days i could never really find much of a Tetris community on the new 'internet', and had the mistaked belief that i was actually alright on the game - That was until I discovered TGM2P on Mame recently! I originally thought it was just another Tetris clone but remembered that it looked similar to a lot of Hardcore Tetris videos that i had seen on you tube, and so I investigated furtther and found you guys! I've trawled most of the forum posts over the last week now and most of the links you have previously reccomended and they have been so helpfull, I'm really loving TGM2 and I honestly don't think i could go back to Tetris DX again - and thats really saying something from someone who has poured so much time into it over the years. TGM just feels so much deeper, more immediate, and i feel i'm only just scratching the surface, and it shows! after a week i'm only at grade 1 but having so much fun trying for the S1 grade! It's put my illusions about being anygood right to bed! Anyway i have a few questions if thats ok? Why does TGM2 have three buttons? one for cw, one for ccw and i believe there's a third button which is also ccw? in what instances is it advantagous to use this third button? Is it only posible to rotate a piece one turn either way before it enters the play field or can you make it do 2 turns? Which is better, a lower grade with a faster time say grade 2 - 5:04.54 or a higher grade with slower time i.e. Grade 1 - 6:04.54, which does the game consider better for it's high score tables? I've noticed some of my grades in the master mode (TGM2) flash gold for sometime before changing - does this just mean i'm closer to changing grade or what? why does it sometimes change without even changing to gold? In the proper TGM arcade cabinet, is it a bat or ball top stick and concave or convex buttons? i'd like to replicate the setup with my customiseable stick at home. At 20g T.A death mode what do you normally do with an 'I' piece if you've messed up and know there isn't room to get it down one of the sides, do you just lie it flat as best as you can and do your best to work around it? Finally, what do you guys think to the longevity of TGM2 ? at the moment i get the feeling i really could just do with this one game for such a long time but i hope this isn't the 'honeymoon' period with the game - do you guys still get drawn to it months or even years later and do you tend to stick to one of the TGM games or move around all three versions for variety? Sorry for all the questions, thanks again and look forward to posting here over the coming months, although i'm afraid at the moment i feel quite innadequate next to you TGM beasts!!!
A quick press of A (rotate left) and C (alt. rotate left) is good to rotate a piece by 180 degrees quickly. IRS is limited to 90 degrees, but you can hold A and then press C after entry. At least the Records section of the forum orders by grade, then "mastering time" (the time when the grade changed) within a grade.
Welcome to the forums, tmc_retro! I'm also a decently new person here, but I'll answer your questions to the best of my ability. Following tepples' reponses: 4. When you break level 500, the game switches to 20G mode and everything (score, time, level, and grade) starts to flash gold. 5. I'm pretty sure it uses a ball top and convex buttons. 6. It depends on the situation. Sometimes if you have a very flat field it's good to stand it up and build the pyramid around it. 7. A lot of people here still play TGM2 because it's available and because there's only 1 Gm and 2 Ms on the board. A lot of people still have a lot of room for improvement.
Most questions were well answered but I'd just like to add that: A vertical I piece in column 5 (the left center column) can be a very good move in high gravity. It obviously can't make holes, and also it provides a good structure from which you can still get all the pieces left or right. Also, while I believe all 3 TGM games are timeless, things really started getting interesting with TGM2. Though it may be hard to believe, TGM3 was also another huge step forward compared to TGM2, but I can't see myself stop playing the second game any time soon. Currently I play all 3.
People often overlook good horizontal I placements. WHen placing it horizontally will clear a line, and you can't get it over to a tetris hole, it is almost always the correct thing to do. And sometimes, simply lieing it flat can allow for greater maneuverability to place the piece after it in the preview. If you've managed to build a "castle" (shown below) by mistake, it can often be better to lie the I flat over it, and then clear it with the next few pieces Code: Castle |X X X X X | !XXXXXXXXX | But when in doubt, if the stack is low enough, just IRS it and move it to column 5 if possible. If you leave it in column 6, you won't be able to get a T or an S to the right if you need to. (every other piece can still be moved to either side depending on IRS)
Thanks for the replies, with regards to the above why would this method be used instead of pressing button A twice? is it that much quicker and do many people use the third button in practice or just get by fine with two?
If you've got the real motivation to improve and to keep playing until you get Gm grades across the board, then you could easily stick to the TGM series for a long time. It completely depends on the player, but if there's the will to keep playing until you've beaten the game then you'll be playing it until you beat them, which is a long time in itself. Then there's still the option of time-attack afterwards. I find the leaderboards and the competitive (yet friendly) environment here really helps me keep playing and improving. I joined here in May 2006, so I'm not that far away from three years here now, and I'd say I've been playing TGM seriously for about two years and I'm still not finding that I'm getting bored or giving up with the series. TGM2+ and TGM3 are difficult enough to still be providing me with plenty of challenges, and I enjoy trying to move myself up the rankings. God knows how much money I've saved through Tetris which would otherwise have been spent on video games, because I've not really got any interest any more for gaming because I find Tetris satisfies my main gaming fix. It's not the only game I play, but I find I don't need that much on the side. It does help to take breaks from time to time, but I find that there are enough modes to allow you to move around and play something else when you start getting stuck, bored and frustrated. Then you can go back to it a few weeks later when you're refreshed and try again. For the joystick question, they use ball-top sticks (Sanwa or Seimitsu) and convex buttons. Pretty much all the players here who use a joystick have modded ones with Sanwa sticks and buttons (usually purchased from here) or they have a HRAP3 or VSHG (and soon to be FSTE) which are already kitted out with arcade parts. The AC method for rotating faster isn't used by everyone. It'd be advisable, because it is a little bit of extra speed which is useful at high speeds, so I'd probably suggest you try getting used to it. It isn't necessary though, and there are some players who don't use it (myself ). One of the best players in Japan didn't used to use the C button, but I've heard he has recently started learning to use it.
Consider this: it took 3 years for Jin8 (from that video) to get Gm (the highest grade possible, sort of an endgame achievement) in TGM3. And he was already a Gm on TGM2, which take a considerable time to obtain.
A Japanese style ball top joystick with a diamond restrictor gate (4-way), and 30mm convex buttons. Most players here use a Sanwa JLF-TP-8Y joystick with Sanwa OBSF-30 buttons, both of which are very sensitive to triggering, which enables high speed play.
welcome, youngin' i'm a tgm newb i never touched it until the week between xmax and newyears this year.. battles at the bottom of the records boards are great.. but the nes did teach me to lay that i flat.. pretty much anytime you get screwed just cap it and skim it i just got back into it after a 15 year break.. nes to wii..to TGM i had to get school and all that wordly post school travel stuff out of the way.. now i'm old and gaming again
I really think that TGM2 is the longest game ever seen for a video game, after 4,5 years, I feel very very far to finish it, jago just "finished" it after more than 5 years, and we were already not that bad at Tetris when we started TGM.. Also PP, neither jin nor anybody else finished TGM2 after 3 years.. Or in this case, imagine what could happen if I meet kitaru for few days..
I started playing tgm2 about a year and a month ago and I've played it almost every single day since no other game has captivated me that consistently for that long, and I basically consider it the perfect single-player game your mileage may vary but I'm pretty sure I can get some agreement on that up in here
I'm new here just stumbled across the forums...I come from a GameBoy background and would like to try some of these other talked about versions on here, but I don't really see any How-to get certain versions. Are any of these just free online versions? I'm assuming some are but which version(s) are the most used here and what do you guys recommend starting with. I'd like to do more Versus than anything... Thanks in advance, Zack Check out this months Denver Tetris League games (Tetris/Dr.Mario Version for SNES) http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... 844CF9E984
For singleplayer gameplay, you could look into LockJaw which has a lot of customization. If you've heard of the TGM series, Heboris and Texmaster would be excellent fan clones. Heboris is the more customizable of the two. An online java alternative would be Ryan's Tesselate. Some popular online multiplayer games include Tetris Online (Japan) and Blockbox (Blokkendoos). I'd recommend giving Blockbox a try first since it includes both a great singleplayer and multiplayer experience. All of these are free so try them out yourself and see what you like.
Hey Digital, I tried the tetrisonline.jp version and managed to have it all installed and the app up but I can't play versus or anything within the app. Obviously with Japanese not being my first language it's a bit hard, lucky for Google Translate. Same problem goes for Blokkendoos being in Dutch it's hard for me to get it all. I like Blokkendoos though and managed to play a few group games but the controls are backwards for me. Are any of these in English or is there a way to play any of them in English? Thanks again, Zack
You could post in the specific threads for help or come onto the IRC channel for more direct conversations and immediate help. Many of the people that play it on here also go there.
