Some kid just beat Tetris on NES

[TDIRunner | 2,739]

I agree that it doesn't seem strange to me.  This is very common in the speed running community.  Once someone breaks a barrier, many others follow suit soon afterwards.  

The realization that something that was once thought impossible, is actually possible can be a huge motivator.  

[RH | 4,903]

6 hours ago, DarkTone said:

So 3 people in less than a month. Theres something odd about this...

Sub and watch SummoningSalts channel on YouTube.  He documents the history of speedruns.  You'd be surprised at how often there's a psychological barrier like "Beat game X in under 10 minutes" and then one person does a 9:40 (which would be a HUGE jump) and then within a month or two 2-3 other top speed runners break the 10 minute barrier.

Stuff like this happens a lot.  

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,013]

2 hours ago, RH said:

Sub and watch SummoningSalts channel on YouTube.  He documents the history of speedruns.  You'd be surprised at how often there's a psychological barrier like "Beat game X in under 10 minutes" and then one person does a 9:40 (which would be a HUGE jump) and then within a month or two 2-3 other top speed runners break the 10 minute barrier.

Stuff like this happens a lot.  

See the history of the 5 minute mile. Competition drives innovation.

[Code Monkey | 2,010]

I feel cheated by lazy journalism. When this story first happened, I ignored it because I thought it was just some title bait SPAM because I knew the level 29 kill screen had been reached a decade ago and couldn't be beaten. After digging into it I realised at level 29, it was just too hard for people to tap enough times to get the pieces to the sides of the screen, although it was possible. Since it was too hard, people reported this as factually the end of the game and like a dummy I believed them.

Now when someone beats that, journalists pretend like nothing happened and we're supposed to trust them this is now the end of the game? Spoiler alert, it isn't. There are multiple levels where you can trigger a game freezing glitch in the scoring addition where the processor is unable to handle it and locks up. If you manage to score multiple line clears on those levels instead of single line clears, you can continue to advance levels, all the way to 255.

This means next week there will be another news report titled, "This is really, really, definitely the final (final) v.2 (for real final)" level this time when someone advances a few levels more. It's not true, this kid didn't finish the game, he didn't get to any final level, he just got.....pretty far. Others will get further and eventually someone will get to 255 though I doubt at that point it resets to zero, does that happen? I figured it would overflow and just start loading random data from outside the memory range like when you get more than 99 lives in Super Mario Bros. and it starts loading crowns and other sprites into your life counter.

[RH | 4,903]

4 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

Others will get further and eventually someone will get to 255 though I doubt at that point it resets to zero, does that happen? I figured it would overflow and just start loading random data from outside the memory range like when you get more than 99 lives in Super Mario Bros. and it starts loading crowns and other sprites into your life counter.

According to the second video, which was the one I watched that was posted by a gamer and researched the Tetris community, yes, someone has gotten past stage 255 and proven it wraps.  They did this with a TAS (Tool Assisted Speedrun) app so they could input perfect keypad entries, and that's how they discovered it soft-reset the game and the gameplay continued.

Were they lying?  Probably not.  Most high score/speed run wizards post videos to back up what they do.

And it's been my casual observation that any old that was coded to be "endless" is considered beaten when you get the game to glitch and freeze.  Pac-Man is a great example.  You "beat" that one when you get to the level 255 glitch screen because you've played as far as you can go.  Tetris is the same, except the glitch screen isn't as concrete.  You can strategize way to avoid it and "dodge" it all they way up to 255.  Regardless, being that this game has limitations that cause it to force-stop when someone has breached an unexpected point in a game is an End Game.  There maybe be multiple forms of an end game, but this is one. It takes quite a feat to get to a crash zone in Tetris, so it is still quite an accomplishment.  That kid even missed his first crash chance and had to keep playing until he got to the second chance.  It's not concrete, but no one had crashed Tetris before by playing it "too far".  For a pseudo-endless game, any pseudo-endless game, that's quite an accomplishment.

[TDIRunner | 2,739]

39 minutes ago, RegularGuyGamer said:

See the history of the 5 minute mile. Competition drives innovation.

I think you mean the 4 minute mile.  5 minute mile is pretty easy.  

[Code Monkey | 2,010]

1 hour ago, RH said:

According to the second video, which was the one I watched that was posted by a gamer and researched the Tetris community, yes, someone has gotten past stage 255 and proven it wraps.  They did this with a TAS (Tool Assisted Speedrun) app so they could input perfect keypad entries, and that's how they discovered it soft-reset the game and the gameplay continued.

Were they lying?  Probably not.  Most high score/speed run wizards post videos to back up what they do.

And it's been my casual observation that any old that was coded to be "endless" is considered beaten when you get the game to glitch and freeze.  Pac-Man is a great example.  You "beat" that one when you get to the level 255 glitch screen because you've played as far as you can go.  Tetris is the same, except the glitch screen isn't as concrete.  You can strategize way to avoid it and "dodge" it all they way up to 255.  Regardless, being that this game has limitations that cause it to force-stop when someone has breached an unexpected point in a game is an End Game.  There maybe be multiple forms of an end game, but this is one. It takes quite a feat to get to a crash zone in Tetris, so it is still quite an accomplishment.  That kid even missed his first crash chance and had to keep playing until he got to the second chance.  It's not concrete, but no one had crashed Tetris before by playing it "too far".  For a pseudo-endless game, any pseudo-endless game, that's quite an accomplishment.

Oh, it soft resets? That's even stranger than it going back to zero. Weird.

So by your logic, I can beat Dr. Mario in 1 minute. On any level you can line up enough viruses such that the game tries to clear them all and it can bog and crash. So 1 minute into the first level you can line things up well enough to crash the game. Does that mean I finished it?

[DarkTone | 984]

@RH @the_wizard_666 I think its more the fact that the Nes is one of the most famous systems, and tetris is one of the most famous games of all time. And the record is just set recently. 

Nothing to take away from him at all. Happy someone did it, but again, crazy it took this long. 

[AirVillain | 489]

On 1/7/2024 at 11:37 AM, Gloves said:

It's their tiny, nimble little fingies.

On 1/7/2024 at 11:33 AM, mbd39 said:

Yeah it's now mostly kids who dominate NES Tetris.

Before teen Joseph Saelee popularized hyper tapping the best players were generally older, like 30+. Jonas Neubauer and Koryan for example.

"Hyper tapping". Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

Pretty wild. When I saw this news first break, that was one of the most incredible things to me.... was watching how these people hold the controller. I've never seen anyone do it like this one with the Tetris.

I have always enjoyed the random switches of button mashing when playing NES games. Sometimes in Mike Tyson's Punch-out, sometimes in other games.... but the innate response to needing to tap the buttons faster and flipping the controller around to try to find a different way to do it has spanned the generations and now this kid is hyper-tapping his way to glory.

It's amazing.

[mbd39 | 2,020]

12 minutes ago, AirVillain said:

"Hyper tapping". Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

Pretty wild. When I saw this news first break, that was one of the most incredible things to me.... was watching how these people hold the controller. I've never seen anyone do it like this one with the Tetris.

I have always enjoyed the random switches of button mashing when playing NES games. Sometimes in Mike Tyson's Punch-out, sometimes in other games.... but the innate response to needing to tap the buttons faster and flipping the controller around to try to find a different way to do it has spanned the generations and now this kid is hyper-tapping his way to glory.

It's amazing.

Hyper tapping which involves mashing the directional buttons at some crazy speed in order to get pieces over faster is now passe. Rolling is now the preferred method and doesn't involve any mashing so thankfully much easier on the hands than tapping.

 

[AirVillain | 489]

1 minute ago, mbd39 said:

Hyper tapping which involves mashing the directional buttons at some crazy speed in order to get pieces over faster is now passe. Rolling is now the preferred method and doesn't involve any mashing so thankfully much easier on the hands than tapping.

Well... I guess I'm even more out of touch.

[RH | 4,903]

A couple years ago I made a post on here asking if people ever held controllers in odd ways for certain games.  I do what I call the “lobster claw” for fighting games where I turn my hand a bit and put my thumb on the backside and I use both my pointer and middle fingers to mash buttons.  It’s just easier for me to do it that way when I need to push more than 2 buttons at once.

Edited January 13 by RH

[Estil | 1,265]

You know that NES game Super Sprint?  I always wondered how far you can go in that game...I'm pretty sure it doesn't have any sort of proper ending but there must be a "kill screen" of some sort.

[Tulpa | 3,494]

3 hours ago, Estil said:

You know that NES game Super Sprint?  I always wondered how far you can go in that game...I'm pretty sure it doesn't have any sort of proper ending but there must be a "kill screen" of some sort.

Doesn't seem to have one, or at least no one has found one.

http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Wiki/index.php?title=List_of_NES_games_without_a_clear_ending

[Estil | 1,265]

19 hours ago, Tulpa said:

Doesn't seem to have one, or at least no one has found one.

http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Wiki/index.php?title=List_of_NES_games_without_a_clear_ending

Are there any Game Genie or other cheat codes to find out how high the level goes?

[Estil | 1,265]

On 1/13/2024 at 4:04 PM, RH said:

A couple years ago I made a post on here asking if people ever held controllers in odd ways for certain games.  I do what I call the “lobster claw” for fighting games where I turn my hand a bit and put my thumb on the backside and I use both my pointer and middle fingers to mash buttons.  It’s just easier for me to do it that way when I need to push more than 2 buttons at once.

Well I've often questioned why people loved that Hori Game Boy Player controller so much where the A and B buttons are so awkwardly positioned (try having your thumb tip on the B button and knuckle on A on a GC controller and you'll see what I mean).  It's MUCH better to use a PS1 (NOT PS2!!) controller and a controller convertor so you much more comfortably have SQUARE as B and X as A.  You know, how most SNES games have Y as "fire or run" and B as "jump"?

Edited January 15 by Estil

[Tulpa | 3,494]

4 minutes ago, Estil said:

Are there any Game Genie or other cheat codes to find out how high the level goes?

Not that I know of.

[Ferris Bueller | 495]

There is a game genie code to let the score roll over so they can keep going and tracking what their points are.

This weekend at my show in Waco, TX (ATG Expo) a few of the best players will be there and it sounds like there will be a world record chase on Saturday night. Going to be a fun show.

 

Edited January 16 by Ferris Bueller

[Link | 2,712]

On 1/11/2024 at 2:34 PM, Code Monkey said:

So by your logic, I can beat Dr. Mario in 1 minute. On any level you can line up enough viruses such that the game tries to clear them all and it can bog and crash. So 1 minute into the first level you can line things up well enough to crash the game. Does that mean I finished it?

I think that qualifies to say you beat [the shit out of] it