Celebrating New Achievements in NES Tetris
This post will be about a few things. The NES Tetris world is buzzing with Dog’s latest world record, and I’ve seen some misinformation online about it already. I would like to make clear what was achieved so that it can be celebrated accordingly. I also want to recap the Jonas Neubauer cup, or at least my experience from it. And finally, I want to share my latest achievements with the game. The past couple weeks have been full of history. Let’s dive in.
Game Crash and Next Steps
When Blue Scuti got the first ever game crash, he became the single most recognizable Tetris player ever. He got sponsored by John and Hank Green’s company Complexly.
Many of my friends regard me as their “Tetris person” because I am very invested in the scene. For weeks I was asked if I had heard about Blue Scuti. As a way of starting up a conversation, that’s a good one and I appreciate it. But many people would talk to aGameScout about the news, not knowing that it was aGameScout’s video that they watched to learn it in the first place. And far fewer knew about my blog post about the same. It’s just how it is.
I made a second post during the big media frenzy, discussing the next steps after game crash. Similarly to the video by aGameScout, it assumed that the players would continue to play on the original cartridge. Instead of crashing the game, the player was tasked with carefully avoiding all of the crashes, playing deeper and deeper into the broken code, until finally reaching level 256, which the game treats identically to level 0. Rebirth.
Rebirth was meant to represent the ultimate goal of NES Tetris. But it ended up meaning two wildly different things.
Gym Rebirth vs Crash Dodge Rebirth
Shortly after PixelAndy became the 3rd player to crash NES Tetris (after Scuti and Fractal), he set up a stream called “going for level 255 in NES Tetris”. His goal wasn’t to dodge crashes. Instead he was going to play on Tetris Gym, a modified version of the game that had several optimizations and alternative options. In the default version of Tetris Gym, the game cannot crash. Instead of running the inefficient score update code and causing bug after bug, Gym just gives you an ordinary game to play. No confetti. No desync. And, crucially, no crashes.
This is certainly a valid thing to try to go for, but it started some discourse. Would people want to track scores that could only be set by playing on Gym? Say someone got to level 200, but their game would have crashed on level 155 playing on the original cartridge. What could they submit to the leaderboard?
In an attempt to remedy this, HydrantDude added an option to Tetris Gym that allowed the game to tell you whether it would have crashed, but let you play on. It would also replicate the confetti, but without as much visual clutter. This seemed interesting but was actually just a competing 3rd option. If you knew the link before clicking, congrats.
The option to actually dodge crashes sat back as a sort of novelty, and most players ended up playing on Gym.
Who did What
A few people ended up achieving “theoretical crashes” on Gym. Time has told that the community only counts a game as crashing if it is played on the original cartridge, so in order to add “game crasher” to their resume, these players went ahead and played through crash on the original ROM. Today, the list of game crashers is:
- Scuti
- Fractal
- PixelAndy
- Alex T
- Tristop
- Myles
- Meme
- Dog
As for world records, Alex T was the first to set a score that forced a Gym-specific leaderboard designation.
The leaderboards account for this by having two tabs for score world record, one open to Gym and one where crashes are accounted for (for Gym games on the second tab, the earliest possible crash point is used as the end of the game).
Alex’s game made it to level 235, which is what my old post called “the long level”. Among the things Gym did recreate faithfully, the long level lasts 810 lines instead of the usual 10, and it happens to land on a dark color.
Alex and Dog both had games that reached the long level, and that was where things stood a week ago.
DogPlayingTetris achieves (Gym) Rebirth
After a slightly disappointing finish for Dog in the Jonas Cup, he started back up with rolling games. By the way, he got 5th, behind Fractal, Scuti, Meme, and PixelAndy. All of the top 5 finishers in the das-only tournament, are people who crashed the game with rolling. Their skills are Tetris skills, and seem to be fully transferrable from one set of restrictions to the other. But more on that later.
With these skills, Dog got on another game deep into colors and past the point where an ordinary cartridge would have crashed. This time, he entered new territory. He became the first person ever to make it past the long level. His whole video is below, but the point where I have it timestamped is where he “sees the light”, and makes it “through the night”. (Both of these are lyrical references to his own song Disillusioned).
At this point, several NES Tetris discord servers started pinging everyone and trying to get all eyes on this game, which is when I joined the stream. I watched alongside a busy VC in my favorite Tetris server, as Dog ground out the last 20 levels of his historic game. At X00 lines, the game slowed back to a crawl, giving Dog plenty of time to jump up, feel his feelings, and celebrate in front of a crowd of nearly 2000 viewers.
And then some
It was strange, in a way, to have the achievement come while the game was still playable. World records and game crashes carry with them a finality, you don’t know the outcome until the game stops being yours to play. With Rebirth, Dog was in the awkward position of having to go tap a few times on his controller every couple of seconds to make sure the next piece didn’t end his game, while jumping around and reading and responding to the hundreds of dollars of donations coming his way.
But survive he did, and the game actually continued onward 91 more levels. With the lines counter at X, people wondered what was next after Z. The game stores a character table, where beyond the numbers and letters come other characters. He got through some punctuation in his journey.
Now, because of the game wrapping back around to 0, the score for a Tetris also wraps back around to 1200. Compared to the hundreds of thousands for scoring a Tetris on level 200-255, there isn’t much extra score to be found post-Rebirth. But even then, Dog managed 26.7 million into Rebirth, and an additional almost 2.8 million from his victory lap. The resulting 29.4 million point game is the new score world record. This game is also the lines and level world record, and it will be a hard mark to beat.
But, unlike at least one article has claimed, this is not crash dodge rebirth. That still sits as a monumental feat for the future. For a good source I would rather point people to, here’s Wingfryer’s page about it on Tetris Interest.
Jonas Cup
For years, the Portland Retro Gaming Expo has been home to the CTWC, the flagship tournament of Classic Tetris. The history there is partly covered in another old post of mine. For several reasons, this year the CTWC moved to southern California. In its place, the Portland Retro Gaming Expo would host a different Classic Tetris event. Organized by the same team, it would be called the Jonas Neubauer cup, and it would require players to use the delayed auto-shift (DAS) playstyle. No rolling, no hypertapping, we die on the killscreen again.
I live near Portland, so the opportunity to still join into a prestigious Tetris event so near my home was very exciting. As I did during CTWC 2023, I hosted a group of friends at the house and we all traveled together to go compete in the tournament.
Before the tournament proper, I got to take part in some side events.
Friday
When I arrived on Friday, I was told that Blue Scuti had just crashed the game again, live in front of people. This was actually an attempt at crash dodging, that had accidentally taken a forbidden single and led to a crash. Still, it was the first ever live game crash. Staff cordoned off the specific setup where he achieved it, allowing people to come witness a crashed game of NES Tetris for themselves for the rest of the day.
I then spent a few hours reconnecting with friends. It’s amazing what coming out of my shell and connecting to people has done for me the last couple of years. I no longer feel like an outsider at these events, existing in a fundamentally parasocial way around all of these interesting people I know from the internet. Now I’m just a person with my friends. I’m excited to see them, and they are excited to see me.
Maybe the introduction that surprised me the most was Kirby703, who I hadn’t ever seen in person, coming up to me as I practiced for the mindmeld competition, excitedly asking if I was biggiemac. We apparently both really look up to one another as good and interesting community members, leading to a really wholesome introduction. I had no idea she would be there. Kirby and Aurora were also participating in mindmeld, and along with Kibi Byte and NGC Man, the relay as well.
Mindmeld
It is possible to modify the game to accept only directional inputs from player 1’s controller, and only rotation inputs from player 2’s controller. Teams of two players hold one controller each, and play the game together. Any communication methods are fair game, but players have to provide the inputs on their own.
I partnered up with Sasha, aka Xenoboots, a dear friend who was also among the crowd staying at the house. I would rotate the pieces, and they would move them left or right. Our opponents were Meme and Rhubarb.
I’ve gotta say, Xeno and I worked together quite well, and their attitude was always uplifting. Hearing them call out “Based” as I spot a placement they were hoping I would see, brightened my day. Our first game was an incredibly clean win, but games 2 and 3 went the way of Meme/Rhubarb.
Watching Kirby and Aurora after us, they had a unique communication style. Kirby would hold her controller up so that Aurora could see the direction she was pressing and play accordingly. They were able to play rather confidently on level 18 with this approach. However, their opponents Birb and Reid also played confidently on level 18, and managed to take the win. Level 18 is a huge step up from level 15 for mindmeld.
Then came Fractal and Sharky. Two of the best players, they were able to play not just level 18, but 19+ with mindmeld. Their opponents in the finals, Peter and Matt, did pull off some 19 play of their own. But Fractal and Sharky (team LoudPeople) pulled off a resounding victory.
Relay
The other Friday event was Relay, in which teams of up to 4 players all share one controller, passing it around on every Tetris.
I teamed up with Night, Hana, and Nia, 3 more of my housemates, to make team Blufruti. Our opponents, team Rebirbdmshurt, consisted of Birb and Reid (the duo who took out Kirby and Aurora in mindmeld), as well as Redshurt and DMJ. All 4 are scary opponents.
We chose to play standing up. I went first, passed to Hana on my right, who passed to Night and then Nia. Nia, the most energetic of the group, would move to be in front of us all while playing her segment, and then give me the controller when she got a Tetris and run back to the right side of the stage. We had a substantial lead entering level 19 thanks to clean 18 play. But, my nerves and the inherent difficulty of level 19, meant that the game ended in my hands. We could only watch as our opponents slowly chased our score down, needing to reach killscreen to do it.
The favorite by far for the relay was team Deja Vu: Fractal, Scuti, Meme and Rhubarb. Back in CTWC in Pasadena, these 4 found themselves on stage at the same time for round 1 matches, and while the tech crew was getting set up they played an impromptu relay. Four elite level players with relay experience, who could possibly best them?
A 3-person team consisting of Jazzthief, Spiritvet, and Scottobozo, were the winners. In the final chasedown, you can hear Spiritvet exclaim “HOW DID WE WIN??” Long standing community members with a good handle on nerves, these 3 managed to pull it off. Truly a great moment.
Saturday
I signed up to be in the earliest qualifying slot on Saturday, which had me arriving at the expo at 9am sharp and waiting in the long line for entry.
Heavily accessorized and ready to play Tetris, I took the stage alongside community leader Vandweller to my right, and Birb to my left. We were on the second stage, so while my qualifier was being streamed, it was not on the main broadcast. I also could only hear the commentators from the main broadcast, any discussion of my ongoing games was drowned out in the noise of the expo.
I was able to put up a 794k score, not bad for DAS, but time would tell whether it was enough for top 48. As the next qualifying slots played out, including a fire alarm interrupting the final slot, I could only watch as other scores bumped me closer and closer to the cutoff. I was hanging out in the audience with Rose, who qualified during the second timeslot with a 959k, as we watched the final standings take place. And to our surprise, we ended up being each other’s first round opponents.
Match Play
I was happy to have Rose as my opponent, since at least I would be facing a friend. I spent a little bit of time talking to her around the silver bracket of CTWC 2024 in Pasadena, where she had arrived as a complete unknown and managed a 900k in qualifiers. Jakub, who eliminated me in silver bracket, got this picture back in Pasadena with Rose and me. Perhaps foreshadowing.
Our match was going to be on the main broadcast, and goodness were there nerves. Watching it back, we both were making uncharacteristically nervy moves, and for me that is a death sentence on level 19. Rose’s stacking gets called many things, including “exciting” or “creative” but she managed to execute the tucks and spins needed, with surprising consistency. She took the set 3-1 and went on to face Night.
Night won that set, and nearly won the next set against Fractal, but was overwhelmed by the crowd’s reaction to Fractal’s game ending misdrop, and was unable to chase down his score as a result. So my “lineage” as I like to keep track of after losing in tournaments, passes from me through Rose and Night to Fractal.
Sunday
On Sunday, having been eliminated, I was there just to watch, celebrate, and socialize. I had to cheer for Fractal, being the next member of my lineage. Not only that, but he has always been one of my favorite players. During the Jonas Cup, he was experimenting with a new way of holding the controller that he called “The Vertigrippero”.
It resembled how one might hold a recorder or clarinet. His reasoning for this was that after talking to Guerrero (a medical doctor and Tetris player, whose name is embedded in the term Vertigrippero) he had an improved understanding of ergonomics and the way to prevent long term strain and injury. Feeling like he could learn to play the game from any angle, he focused the month leading up to Jonas Cup mastering the Vertigrippero, and it worked.
Fractal beat Dog, then Andy, mirroring a similar back to back that he faced in CTWC 2023. His final opponent was none other than Blue Scuti. The game crashers kept proving that they were incredibly skilled at Tetris.
In some ways, it makes sense. Constrained decision making, focus, recovering from mistakes without losing your cool, all apply generally to Tetris. Placing the pieces where they fit is a universal experience. However, the speed and constraints differ wildly between long rolling lineouts or short DAS competition runs.
The only top 8 finisher to only play with DAS was Triskai (another biggiehouse housemate who managed to beat top seed Sharky in a shocking decider on Sunday). In the top 16, we see names from the pre-2018 era CTWC, including Svavar, Quaid, and Alex Kerr.
Results
The full results can be seen on Liquipedia, which is becoming the best place to find results from Classic Tetris events. Or you could watch the Sunday stream here:
Fractal won it, becoming the first Jonas Cup champion. Afterwards, we all went to the afterparty and celebrated friends and a weekend well spent. My favorite picture so far from the afterparty has Meme, Gwen, me, Rose, and Kirby:
As Gilbert Tang’s high quality photos from the event come out, I’m sure there will be some more favorites among them.
Also at the afterparty was a new, much younger competitor named Zrobot. He was playing games against some of the best, and taking a few earned wins. The future of the scene looks bright. The event will come back each year, always at Portland Retro Gaming Expo, so it’ll be fun to see Fractal defend his title. It’s been an interesting year for all playstyles, between the DAS events and the roll rebirth.
Unfortunately, amidst all the merriment, I caught COVID. And well, trapped at home with Tetris on my mind, I started to grind towards my own goals.
My own new PB
At the time of the Jonas Cup, I had been primarily playing with DAS for a couple months. I wanted to master a different grip as well, but in my case it was literally just “holding the controller like a normal person”. My DAS grip for years had looked like this:
So even switching to the more standard grip like the below took a bit of practice.
With practice, I was slowly able to build up my confidence and skills, and it felt like a real progression. But my rolling was all but ignored in the process. And, like Dog with his Rebirth grind, I wanted to get back into it.
19 Start
I had something like 20 maxouts (I stopped counting), but all of them were on level 18 starts. The best I had managed from a 19 start was a game back in April that really should have maxed out, but I held out for a Tetris that never came rather than taking the triple that would have been enough on its own.
However, with 19 feeling like the bane of my existence after Jonas Cup, I decided to show it who’s boss by rolling all over it.
First I took on B Type. I hold the 19-2 world record already by getting 7 perfect Tetrises with pushdown on top of garbage.
Gym lets you go higher than the infamous 19-5, and I wanted to beat 19-6. I got it, and was surprised how easily it went down.
Then on Sunday October 6, cooped up at home with The Plague and honestly probably better hydrated than 99% of the rest of my life, I dropped this game:
19 start, game over on level 24, with 915k points. If this made it even one level further at this pace, it was a maxout. If it made it all the way to level 29, it was 1.2 million or more. That would be better than even my 18 start PB, which was sitting at 1.195 million.
It was also unrecorded, so I set up my recording equipment determined to redeem myself. I would get a game just as good, on video, and it would make it to level 29.
First, Second, Third
Over the next three days, I got my first, second, and third 19 start maxouts. All three were recorded.
The first one definitely lacked the pace of my screenshot from before. At 187 lines, it was still in the mid 700s in score. But making it to level 29 covered the needed ground, and I secured my first ever 19 start maxout. Already a good achievement. But I wasn’t done, because I wanted something as good as the screenshot. So I kept at it.
The next day I had a better game, 838k at 187 lines (which I guess I’m using as a pace check now), maxing out with the bar that brought me into level 27:
With 20 lines still to go until the killscreen, maybe this game would be the one I was looking for? But no, it died unceremoniously a couple lines later as I got overwhelmed by S and Z pieces.
Today, October 8th, was the day I got the game I was looking for.
My first 1.2
I knew I had it in me, and it feels good to finally have proof of that fact. In this game, my third 19 start maxout in as many days (and ever), I reached 133 lines at 669k. I passed 187 lines with a score of 936k. This was genuinely a higher pace than the screenshot from before. What’s more, I kept it together. I reached level 29, even scoring an additional handful of lines on 29 for some more points. I’m proud of my achievement, and ready to get back on the level 29 grind to be able to approach those even higher scores. Maybe I’ll reach the point where I can honestly consider grinding for Rebirth myself. For now though, I’m proud of what I’ve done. Level 19 is no longer my kryptonite.