ACE was originally a j360 launch title, and it was a bit of a dud. Looking at Microsoft's stats for the game, it seems just over 8000 people have taken it online, which is not that many really. It got a lot of bad press at first for several reasons: -there is no Classic rotation system as it exists in Ti -there were no sticks available at launch (maybe just a Hori-parts DOA one) -the game felt very empty unless you had a gold xbox live account -versus matches are over before they begin (it's a race to 20 lines) -the xbox brand was not well established in Japan with many expecting the system to (figuratively) fail -following launch, literal failure rates of the console probably didn't help things Much of these issues have been addressed: -a downloadable patch added ARS2, bringing it functionally close to Ti's classic -there are a wide variety of excellent sticks available -(the game still feels very empty unless you have a gold xbox live account) -(versus matches are still over before they begin) -the xbox brand has found it's own niche, with many arcade ports coming to the system -Microsoft has supposedly got the high failure rates under control with it's latest hardware revision, though they don't exactly advertise the hard numbers surrounding this With measured expectations and fewer problems surrounding the game, I recently took the plunge and picked up ACE with a Japanese 360 and 2 FSTEs, determined to find whatever goodness might be hidden in this game. I actually spent more time than I expected just setting up the j360. I probably spent half my time so far just setting up various crap (this is my first 360). For some reason, it forced me to create some sort of shiny demented version of myself. Now, before jumping into the action, I thought I'd try simulate the initial release of this game for the j360 launch. So I didn't install the game's patch, and I played using the 360 controller. There was only one single player mode available which turned out to to be 150 lines starting at near-0G. It unlocked another 150 line mode starting at around 1G. Next was a 150 line mode starting in 20G. Finally, there was a 150 line *big* mode starting at near-0G. I'll have to test closely to know for sure, but I think the lock delay and ARE is longer than any other TGM game ever. The ARE in particular was really throwing me off... I would twitch my wrist to lock a piece as if I was DAS'ing to the wall after 60 frame ARE, except that the piece hadn't spawned yet, and would lock in the middle immediately after spawning. Sounds ok in general though right? Warming up to something special? Except that as far as I can tell, that's the end to the unlockables without have a gold account. 30 minutes of play and you're done, with 4 very similar modes to choose from. The actual controls went down much easier than I anticipated. This game does not accept the d-pad for movement. Instead, you swoosh the analog stick around as if it were an arcade joystick. It's not perfect, but it didn't take long for me to play comfortably like this. Given the 360's infamously terrible d-pad, I think this control scheme was probably doing us a favour. But, I have sticks! So time to put them to use. Even though directional input is not in any way configurable, every single button is fully configurable. You have the choice of (nothing), CW, CCW, and Hold. It took a lot of trial and error to get it just right, but here's the config that will give you the standard TGM arcade configuration on a FSTE: I know, the text is blurry as hell, but it actually looks blurry as hell on my SDTV too. Next step is to change the sticks to 4-way like they should be. Luckily this requires minimal work with the FSTE, though it does void your warranty so be sure to test your stick out before you do this. See? The restrictor is right there with easy access. Also do you notice that cable on the bottom left of the restrictor? I didn't take a picture, but my second stick's cable passed directly overtop of the restrictor, blocking the full range of movement. I didn't notice during my limited testing... But still, bad madcatz! I pulled the wire off to the side to prevent this. Unlike my other FSTE, this one had black marker on the guide... Not sure why it was necessary to mark it. Anyhow, after closing these guys back up and testing them out, one of them randomly disconnects (which pauses the game) and immediately reconnects during gameplay, often enough to be a problem. I'd bet it's the marked stick, and I'll have to open it up to check the connections tomorrow. Hopefully it's just something loose. So with 2 sticks (ie. 2 players), some previously ghosted local multiplayer options became available. There's a pretty sweet doubles mode, where each player gets their own (1 piece) preview and hold. I haven't completed it yet, but I'd wager it lasts 150 lines like the 4 main modes. The other multiplayer option is VS, which comes in item and no-item varieties. It works similar to previous TGM games, with the same garbage rules and no new items that I've seen. There's no attack/defense/item stance like Ti. The strangest part of VS is that the target is 20 lines, as opposed to 200-300 levels or whatever the default is for the arcade games. This is barely enough time to get your second item, making the difference between item/no item small. Also, item/no item is literally the only customization you can make to the VS match. There is no 20G versus, you have to play the default near-0G setting. So that's what you get with this game offline. If you can connect to the internet, you can get the game patched to add ARS2. It's all the patch adds as far as I can tell. It makes the game behave like Ti with the following exceptions: -the pieces are still coloured like SRS -the randomizer is still 7-bag -you have move reset lock delay (as opposed to step reset) -pressing down lowers pieces at something like 1/3G speed (as opposed to 1G) Incidentally, I unlocked all the first 4 modes before I ever discovered how to enable ARS/ARS2. I kept expecting the game to prompt me as a started a game, or for it to be unlocked or something. It turns out that it's just hidden away in the options menu. This is a good thing though, because you can park it on ARS2 and forget about the rest. The game also saves the P1/P2 button configuration, so you only have to set that up once as well and you're set for good. Next update, I'll try to fix my faulty stick and I'll upgrade to gold to see how this changes things.
Nice post, CT Is there a reason why they put so many uninteresting modes in ACE, even if upgrading to gold? I mean I would simply believe it if someone told me this game was some bad TGM clone and the ppl don't know the mechanics and thus made some own modes that really are not so interesting.
The interesting modes are Another and Another 2, and possibly Doubles and the Roads. That's what I can gather from YouTube videos anyway. ARE in the standard modes seems to be 25 or 30 frames: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVav72quq10
Deniax, I can't explain for sure, but Arika was between a rock and a hard place when they were making this game. TTC was pressuring them to make some changes, and Microsoft was pressuring them to make others. Also this game was developed very very quickly in a rush to make the launch. Arika tried their best but there was only so much they could do. So, day 2. I didn't have too much time as I met some friends at a pub after work. But I completed doubles which was indeed 150 lines. It didn't give me an achievement or unlock anything, which means I officially did everything you can do offline. This is confirmed by our excellent ACE wiki article that seems to have been contributed by a mysterious Japanese player a while back. I opened up the faulty stick again, and it was indeed the one with the strange cabling and the marked guide. I checked all connections but nothing was obviously wrong. The problem is still persisting and I voided my warrantee changing the guide. I'm not sure what I can do to fix this but hopefully I can make it right. It happens just rarely enough that I'm hoping it'll just go away. So, onto live gold, with the 1 fully working stick! The offline menu was pretty easy to figure out by trial and error, but the online stuff is very confusing. I stress, the language barrier is really intense. In fact, the whole time I played I think I was just playing "for fun" killing time with my same 4 unlocked modes while waiting for an opponent to come online and challenge me. Which never happened. I found it difficult to even navigate out of this to try and access other modes. So much so, that in the name of simplicity I decided to simply turn off the 360 and restart everything. It turned out that was a bad idea. I was in the middle of an online singleplayer game when I did that. And I'm not sure if it's part of an anti-disconnect measure or what, but I couldn't connect to live at all the rest of the night. I managed to crash my xbox several times just testing my connection and whatnot trying to figure out what was wrong. I went to bed with no luck after maybe 45 minutes of failure to connect. Maybe next time I'll actually be able to play the real meat of the game? If anybody with more live gold experience can comment on my connection problem I'd appreciate it. The test talks to my router, and the internet, but fails the third live step. Bad impression of the system so far with multiple crashings, live connection trouble, and a stick that doesn't work properly. Argh! <EDIT> I tried to connect quickly right before work, with success. So at least that's one problem off my mind.
Day 3... I've sort of figured out online modes. At least enough to play the singleplayer ones, as it's hard to tell how multiplayer works when it's a ghost town. I beat every road including EX stages, on my first try for each as well, except for the first 2 roads where I hadn't figured out how to get EX stages yet. They're pretty fun though, and I'll definitely revisit them for some sort of time attack. Unless I'm missing something though there is no leaderboard so you have to keep track of your records a la Death and TGM+ modes. I also got TM (Tetris Master, the game's highest rank), which was actually pretty challenging. I had to retry many times to pass the final few challenges, and they seem fun to time attack (and I can't pass them consistently) so I know I'll be coming back. Though once again, I don't think the game saves your best times. I don't think the exams have many videos online, so I'll explain them a bit. They are like roads, but are a max of 5 different requests so they are much shorter. You start with the '9' grade challenge available only, and passing each challenge unlocks the next one. They start out pretty simple, to get you to understand the various types of requests the game can throw at you. This ranges from meeting a line quota under various gameplay conditions, to meeting a quota of line clears of a certain size, to solving sakura puzzles, to clearing some hotlines. There's also this one thing that requires you to get one of every sized line clear. It doesn't sound like much, but the requests are varied enough that it's always fresh. Various requests presented in a certain sequence can really require you approach them differently. The tests go 9-1 then S1 to S10 then TM, and by the end the challenges are much harder than the roads and closer the levels of crazy that you see in Heboris's user-created roads (ACE-HELL I think they call it?). I believe that with the grading challenges (and probably the roads as well, though I haven't replayed them), certain aspects are randomized. Sakura stages will be presented in a random order, and each stage will place the gems randomly so that you don't always have to clear the same lines. Possibly as well there is some slight variation on the line placements for hotlines, though that's much more subtle. So in terms of playing everything once, I've only got Another and Another 2 to unlock and play. It might seem like a short game, but really, since when has TGM been about just getting a clear? I'll definitely be replaying stuff and looking at leaderboards and hopefully catching a Japanese player or two. We'll see if the game is replayable in the same way the arcade releases are.
Day 4. Yes, still enough to talk about to warrant daily updates! The roads and examination challenges are strictly online, but the time attack level 'Another' must be unlocked online but is then playable offline. And 'Another 2' is only playable offline (so is the big mode, incidentally). On a related note, I was pleasantly surprised to find I had somehow unlocked 3 offline-exclusive modes while playing online yesterday. There's a hotline mode, a time limited line clear quota mode, and a sakura mode. These aren't so much real new modes... It's the exact same stuff you'd get in the roads, except that you can try anything directly. It's kind of like a training mode for the real game. I saw my first Japanese player, who joined me during online time attack. The way the online modes work, VS is only a small optional component. All the online singleplayer modes are hotseat single player, as if 4 people were standing around an arcade machine taking turns playing. He played a game, watched me play one, and then disapeared into the ether. I also saw some indirect evidence of players. There are leaderboard for all the online time attack modes (normal, highspeed 1, highspeed 2, another), though it's strictly a leaderboard -- there's no replays. Players also have special stat cards that show your wins and losses, and rankings in all the single player modes. Records are coloured differently on this scorecard depending on how you rank. The top 100 are red, below that is orange, and so on. My goal was to have a fully red scorecard, which I did this morning, however by nightfall one my records was orange again! See, I had reached exactly 100th place, and got bumped down at some point to 101st. I've passed Another 2, and it was quite challenging as I couldn't manlock at all. I've definitely got lots of room for improvement here and mastering this mode will make my placement technique a lot tighter, which will in theory carry over to mainline TGM modes (that are more forgiving in this regard) for a nice speed boost. I've passed everything now, and looking things up I indeed have every non-VS achievement. With the language barrier, and being lucky to find anyone else at all playing the game at any a given time, I'm not sure if I'll be playing it any time soon. But I'm still quite eager to play the rest, again.
Interesting. I know hebomini has all of the ACE modes cloned as best it could, and I can clear its Another and Another 2 in 2:48 and 2:30 respectively with manlocking. If you look up dzag's videos on youtube, you can see Another 2 cleared in under two minutes, which is a pretty crazy 1.2 lines per second. The move reset definitely helps compared to Ti Master (special ti), where the fastest speed can still result in a rare double lock or two for me.
Thanks for the in-depth posts colour_thief. Sounds like fun. I also remember having a hard time finding people to play against on Tetris Evolution. I could only find people in the middle of the night because only North Americans seemed to play the game. With Games on Demand for Xbox360 released earlier this week over here, I was wondering if it's possible to play the game on a European console. If it ever gets available for download on the Japanese marketplace that is. Or maybe it's already available? Would creating a Japanese account and buying Japanese Xbox Live Points do the trick or is region locking still a problem?
I'm not an expert, but without doing any further research I think I remember hearing something about the region locking happening on the DVD drive? That would make me think you're ok. However, ACE is probably one of the less likely titles to be released like that due to licensing issues.
It's indeed very unlikely that region locked games will be made available for download. One can still hope of course. Instant buy if the game is downloadable and playable on all consoles.
Sorry to resurrect a (possibly?)dead post with a first post, even. I just got this game in the mail last night so I popped it in my j360 and to my surprise my hori stick doesn't work withing the game itself. It works on the menus to get into a game, but doesn't move the tetriminos whatsoever. Is this a known issue and I just looked over it? Any suggestions?
Sounds like you need to change the game controls in the option screen if the stick works fine in other games. Try experimenting with the options in the settings screen. colour_thief will probably be of more help.
Hi cyprien, welcome to the forums. There's no need to worry about resurrecting old threads, or making duplicate threads, or posting in the wrong place, etc; people here are really easy going about these sorts of things. As for your question, I know colour_thief will be able to help you out for sure, but until he gets back in from work, I'll try and tell you what I know: I suspect that the problem is that your HORI joystick behaves as a d-pad, but sadly ACE only recognises the left analog stick in-game. I know this is going to seem like a bit of a kick in the teeth, but it might be that your only solution would be to get another joystick.
I've messed around in the control options and it seems the only things you can map are the buttons themselves, unfortunately. If getting another stick is the only solution, I may just have to send it back. =(
I can confirm that the game only works using the left analog stick for movement. It's somewhat playable like that though. cyprien do you have a gold account? We should play sometime.
I know my Hori Real Arcade Pro 3 has a little switch to change whether the stick corresponds to the left analog stick, right analog stick, or D-pad of the PS3 controller. I'm guessing the Xbox 360 version probably has something similar.
Actually, the game allows the use of either dpad or analog stick(i had the same problem when i got my hori ex2), to set this you need to after pressing start *choose bottom option * top option *choose top, press down once, then a. now its set to dpad (the third option is most likely both, too lazy to test)
