weekly contest VGS Weekly Contest - Tetris

[BortLicensePlate | 652]

6 hours ago, Splain said:

I hate the word "hypertapping" though.

You don't need to hyper tap to do well in this game

[Sumez | 2,933]

12 hours ago, BeaIank said:

Current scoreboard posted.

It is Saturday night and no one maxed the score yet. I am SO disappointed.

Want me to get some maxout players in here?

[mbd39 | 2,017]

6 minutes ago, Sumez said:

Want me to get some maxout players in here?

Please don't, lol.

 

[BortLicensePlate | 652]

I've improved my PB! I was really hoping to get at least 3rd, but I dont think thatll happen today. GG everyone

[8bitdontquit | 226]

20,480

[Makar | 1,946]

Score update of 99,200. Not as much free time today as I would've hoped.

[mbd39 | 2,017]

19 hours ago, Splain said:

This has been really interesting for me. My Tetris skills have been pretty stagnant for a long time. It's served me pretty well over the years to just brute-force my way to a high score. If I don't get a lucky round, abandon it and try again. Given enough attempts, I'll get a series of pieces that meshes really well with my playstyle, and I'll end up with a bangin' score. Wellll, looking at the high scorers in this thread, my approach is going to end up sliding me right out of the top ten. I have to learn new things in order to progress. If my best plan is to "wait for a lucky round," then I suck at Tetris. Sure, unlucky rounds exist, and I'll still sacrifice rounds that give me garbage pieces to start with (first ten pieces are nothing but S's, Z's, and squares) but I'd imagine that if there were a ten-game limit, allowing everyone an absolute maximum of ten attempts to get a high score, there would still be some very impressive scores, and they would definitely not be from me.

I hate the word "hypertapping" though.

 

I feel your pain. I often will have a long series of duds before I get a good score. This game shows little mercy and I'm not that good at dealing with droughts and bad sets of pieces. Plus I still misdrop way too much.

 

 

[ninjistar | 517]

Final score posted, which was of no consequence to my position this week. I appreciate the opportunity to improve my Tetris skills, which really was in need of some updating. I am now truly conscious of DAS and can see an immediate improvement. I still feel the challenge level this week was more appropriate for a tournament than for engaging in casual play. Congrats to everyone who placed this week. Glad to see that you remembered to stop by, @Sumez!

Edited August 3, 2020 by ninjistar

[mbd39 | 2,017]

9 minutes ago, ninjistar said:

Final score posted, which was of no consequence to my position this week. I appreciate the opportunity to improve my Tetris skills, which really was in need of some updating. I am now truly conscious of DAS and can see an immediate improvement. I still feel the challenge level this week was more appropriate for a tournament than for engaging in casual play. Congrats to everyone who placed this week. Glad to see that you remembered to stop by, @Sumez!

Oh no, it looks like one more Tetris would've gotten you 8th place, maybe?

 

EDIT: Never mind. You would have needed over 171k, I think.

 

Edited August 3, 2020 by mbd39

[BortLicensePlate | 652]

I had another chance to play (and test out my new avs) but alas, I couldn't beat my score. I was just a bit under my posted score. But I did get more lines so thats something haha

[CMR | 519]

NES Tetris is one of the worst versions of the game ever made.  Why anyone would still want to play it and/or make a major competition out of it is beyond me.  I never want to do this again.

 

 

[mbd39 | 2,017]

1 minute ago, CMR said:

NES Tetris is one of the worst versions of the game ever made.  Why anyone would still want to play it and/or make a major competition out of it is beyond me.  I never want to do this again.

 

 

It sure is brutal and that's why I love it.

 

[CMR | 519]

It wouldn't be so bad if not for the controls.  That's the worst part IMO.

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

Finally broke 200k with 15 minutes to spare

[mbd39 | 2,017]

Looks like the top 8 scores are all over 200k, and the top 5 are all over 400k. Nice job everyone.

No maxouts though.

 

[guillavoie | 1,208]

One of the most classic action puzzle game was in the center of attention this week as players tackled NES Tetris! Host @BeaIank showed that she had a soft side as she decided to have players start at level 15, which made it easier for the non-expert players to reach the participation requirement, thus making @Gloves fulfill his 'secret wish' to celebrate his birthday by playing Tetris! Also in the celebration department, we have anonymous sources saying that skinnygrinny (aka @docile tapeworm) was planning to host a home Tetris contest for his upcoming Housewarming Party, and we are all invited!

Now for the serious business, newcomer @Sumez made a great first impression by winning it all this week with an impressive score of 577,235! Congratulations for this win, it is always a pleasure to have new blood coming in the competition and having success! Sumez win is solid as rock, but it wasn't a walk in the park either, as home general scoreboard leader @bertsampson had a great early Monday start with a score of 570,840. Not only he proved last week that he can draw flawless Tetris picture in Videomation, now he proved that he can actually play Tetris like a beast! Coming next is VGS known Tetris-lover @mbd39 who almost cracked the 500k bar with a score of 499,079. Michael was definitely considered a strong contender to grab one of the highest spot this week, and he delivered the goods. Well done sir!

This week also saw the entrance of VGS Graphics Team staffer @BortLicensePlate into the competition, and he demonstrated that he has shiny Tetris skills by submitting a solid score of 446,569, which is a personal best of his! Way to go man, hope to see you around again! Also sitting in the higher mountains of the general scoreboard, @Bearcat-Doug decided once again to postpone his long awaited mid-season break by breaking the Tetris 400k bar with an excellent score of 407,470! Nicely done Doug! Contest veteran @arnpoly also dropped in to say 'hi' and by the occasion posting a nice score of 301,063. Then comes the 200k score club, with @Splain leading with his 250,603 score, @Tablew/chairs with 212,959 and current VGS NES Puzzle leader @0xDEAFC0DE, despite having to take the infamous 9th place, still showed determination in being a strong contender for the 2020 Puzzle icon with a score of 210,240.

Let's also note that this week we had 6 new players competing in the VGS NES Contest as @ChickenTendas, @fsped09, @CMR and @Makar joined the fun. Always a pleasure to see new members jumping in the competition, we hope to see you getting back at it anytime soon. To finish, we'd like to give special thanks to old timer contest player and Tetris enthusiast @arch_8ngel for coming in and sharing great knowledge of the game and its newest developments in world competition.

As usual, thanks to everyone making the contest a joy machine and see you all in the Kiwi Kraze competition. Also, stay tuned for the upcoming results of the Videomation contest as the deliberation process, which ironically enough took longer than the contest itself, is almost over!

[docile tapeworm | 4,194]

awesome writing guil. thank you

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

Impressive scores this week. Great job everyone!

[Makar | 1,946]

8 hours ago, CMR said:

NES Tetris is one of the worst versions of the game ever made.  Why anyone would still want to play it and/or make a major competition out of it is beyond me.  I never want to do this again.

 

 

It really is one of the worst ones made. Even tetris.com is better and I never thought I'd say that lol. The game has apparently changed quite a bit. Can't tap a repeatedly until you're ready to place it, can't hold pieces, the pieces are totally random whereas in later ones you get each different piece once all in the first 7 pieces, you can't see the next several pieces in the original Tetris, and probably a couple other things too. It's a very very different game than the one nowadays. They have massively improved this game over the years.

[Jeevan | 8,909]

1 hour ago, Makar said:

It really is one of the worst ones made. Even tetris.com is better and I never thought I'd say that lol. The game has apparently changed quite a bit. Can't tap a repeatedly until you're ready to place it, can't hold pieces, the pieces are totally random whereas in later ones you get each different piece once all in the first 7 pieces, you can't see the next several pieces in the original Tetris, and probably a couple other things too. It's a very very different game than the one nowadays. They have massively improved this game over the years.

*whisper*  Tetris sucks in any form

[Makar | 1,946]

8 minutes ago, Jeevan said:

*whisper*  Tetris sucks in any form

You take that back right now lol. My personal favorites are Tetris DS and Tetris 99. 

[Jeevan | 8,909]

Just now, Makar said:

You take that back right now lol. My personal favorites are Tetris DS and Tetris 99. 

No Sir!!!!!!!!  Ya tetris nerd  

[Sumez | 2,933]

1 hour ago, Makar said:

Even tetris.com is better and I never thought I'd say that lol. The game has apparently changed quite a bit. Can't tap a repeatedly until you're ready to place it, can't hold pieces, the pieces are totally random whereas in later ones you get each different piece once all in the first 7 pieces, you can't see the next several pieces in the original Tetris, and probably a couple other things too. It's a very very different game than the one nowadays. They have massively improved this game over the years.

I can't really approve of any of this. NES Tetris has a bunch of issues, and Tetris.com and the other Guideline versions might be more approachable for casual play, but they only really work as a competitive game when you're going for weird unintuitive T-spin stacking setups, which changes the game to something else entirely, and just isn't fun in my opinion. These versions work exclusively as a versus game, becuase it's very easily playable infinitely without much skill required. This completely eliminates the risk-vs-reward stacking where you are at a constant risk of topping out, which is my favourite part of Tetris.

The pieces in NES Tetris are not completely random, unlike most other Tetris games before and after it. It has a one-piece memory that prevents overload of repeated pieces, and it improves the game a lot. It's still highly random and is often unfair, but a skilled player knows how to stack against that, which is the absolute core of the game. The 7-bag randomizer of modern guideline Tetris games is one of the worst ideas ever, honestly. A 21-bag or even a 14-bag would have been a lot better, considering the game is all about not knowing what's coming up (something that the hold button also eliminates tragically). That said, the best Tetris randomizer is in my opinion Tetris The Grandmaster 2, which is both highly unpredictable yet never unfair. It takes the formula from NES Tetris and improves it to perfection.

9 hours ago, CMR said:

It wouldn't be so bad if not for the controls.  That's the worst part IMO.

Yeah, the controls is what really breaks NES Tetris, they are essentially buggy. As it happens though, if not for these oddities the game would have been way too easy, and not the highly competitive game it is today. It's one of the only "early" Tetris releases that's still considered a high level game today.
It does have the problem that for a pure high scoring contest, once you hit a sufficiently high skill level a lot of the achievements you can go for are essentially about grinding for that one lucky game while not screwing it up. In my opinion, there should be no achievements over the maxout score, as any other metric is too luck dependent. However, for a 1-on-1 match with both players given the same piece sequence, it's an absolute riot, and one of the most entertaining competitive video games to watch!
Part of that being due to the fact that despite the high skill ceiling, it's still slow enough for most people to easily follow, which can't be said about vs. guideline Tetris or the Grandmaster series.

[Makar | 1,946]

4 minutes ago, Sumez said:

I can't really approve of any of this. NES Tetris has a bunch of issues, and Tetris.com and the other Guideline versions might be more approachable for casual play, but they only really work as a competitive game when you're going for weird unintuitive T-spin stacking setups, which changes the game to something else entirely, and just isn't fun in my opinion. These versions work exclusively as a versus game, becuase it's very easily playable infinitely without much skill required. This completely eliminates the risk-vs-reward stacking where you are at a constant risk of topping out, which is my favourite part of Tetris.

The pieces in NES Tetris are not completely random, unlike most other Tetris games before and after it. It has a one-piece memory that prevents overload of repeated pieces, and it improves the game a lot. It's still highly random and is often unfair, but a skilled player knows how to stack against that, which is the absolute core of the game. The 7-bag randomizer of modern guideline Tetris games is one of the worst ideas ever, honestly. A 21-bag or even a 14-bag would have been a lot better, considering the game is all about not knowing what's coming up (something that the hold button also eliminates tragically). That said, the best Tetris randomizer is in my opinion Tetris The Grandmaster 2, which is both highly unpredictable yet never unfair. It takes the formula from NES Tetris and improves it to perfection.

Yeah, the controls is what really breaks NES Tetris, they are essentially buggy. As it happens though, if not for these oddities the game would have been way too easy, and not the highly competitive game it is today. It's one of the only "early" Tetris releases that's still considered a high level game today.
It does have the problem that for a pure high scoring contest, once you hit a sufficiently high skill level a lot of the achievements you can go for are essentially about grinding for that one lucky game while not screwing it up. In my opinion, there should be no achievements over the maxout score, as any other metric is too luck dependent. However, for a 1-on-1 match with both players given the same piece sequence, it's an absolute riot, and one of the most entertaining competitive video games to watch!
Part of that being due to the fact that despite the high skill ceiling, it's still slow enough for most people to easily follow, which can't be said about vs. guideline Tetris or the Grandmaster series.

I'll agree to disagree. Maybe I'll change my mind when I play the original Tetris a lot more. I should look up videos about old Tetris strategy. I'll admit this is my first time playing this version in 20+ years. I'll also add that I never do t-spins in modern tetris, and despite that, I've won just under 20% of my Tetris 99 matches after playing over 500 total games.

Both original and new Tetris involve skill, but different kinds of skills. Old Tetris is more about adapting on the fly and knowing how to use every single piece the best you can in the moment. It's also a lot more luck based that new Tetris. If you go through a long dry spell of no i pieces, you're screwed imo. That never happens in new Tetris since you can hold an i piece. Even if there is a dry spell, just swap out your held piece. New Tetris is more about seeing the next several pieces and thinking several steps ahead and knowing which pieces to hold, and when to swap. 

[Sumez | 2,933]

The original Tetris is pretty crappy, I'd just stay away from that. Sega Tetris or NES Tetris are the first ones that refined the game to something truly playable.

6 minutes ago, Makar said:

It's also a lot more luck based that new Tetris. If you go through a long dry spell of no i pieces, you're screwed imo.

That's not true. You'll have a lower scoring potential, which can be an issue in certain situations, that I've touched on, but if you're screwed from getting an I piece draught, that's your own fault as the player.

6 minutes ago, Makar said:

New Tetris is more about seeing the next several pieces and thinking several steps ahead and knowing which pieces to hold, and when to swap. 

I agree with that, it's about adapting to more information on the fly, but that should also be matched with a higher skill requirement IMO, which you only get from playing against another human player. It's really a different game entirely.