Dafuq is this shit? https://twitter.com/tgm_series/status/579544432518672385 Presumably not an actual new game or it'd be TGM4, but maybe some sort of Terror Instinct Plus version?
https://twitter.com/tgm_series/status/579544432518672385?s=04 This tweet asks for details about arcade game centers in North America that could location test TGM3Ω (working title), with more details given at E3. Among the next tweets is also the next account asking about the Japanese arcade game centers that would accept this task. With all the activity of the TGM club and the copyright issues surfacing again, this seems to make some sort of sense. Discuss Personally it would be good to get past the trial of location testing, even though I can hardly believe any of what's happening right now.
If I were looking for game centres in North America to pick up my game, I'd definitely tweet at them in Dutch...
I feel a bit disappointed if it's going to be an arcade version again, just because that means it'll be yet another game that gets very little attention or recognition from the wider gaming community. But I guess "arcade" is the only platform that Ubisoft don't seem to be holding exclusive rights to poop out shitty Tetris Ultimate versions on. And presumably TTC have already green-lit this for Mihara to even be discussing it at this level. Curious to how much leeway there will be to move away from guideline and how much it'll actually be a real TGM game rather than a nerfed guideline version. Even on the ARS side I'd be kind of hoping they don't drag things further away from the mechanics of TAP and more into gimmicky TGM3-ness. Wouldn't be surprised if there were a couple of people around the community who knew a fair bit about this (especially some of the Japanese players) but I guess will be under NDA.
Guys, the best news about all that is NOT a likely maybe (or not who knows) new version of TGM, but that our beloved one will have nothing to do with the project.
I can't tell if you're referring to Ubisoft or what. Sorry, I'm a bit ignorant of exactly what's happening. Seriously, though, is this a fucking joke? I swear to god, this had better not be a joke.
This is interesting. Looking forward to hearing more details for sure. Seems like they are looking to do a US location test in LA coinciding with E3. Round 1 seems like the most obvious arcade to partner with -- if it goes well they'd likely install machines across their whole American chain.
As we all know, Arika only has a license for ARCADE tetris. Up until now it was only for Japan as well. Presumably, if this makes it to US arcades, it can then get ported if there is enough demand. It's been my opinion that arcade tetris is a different beast from console tetris, and that the Guideline doesn't really provide for arcade tetris. If sega can get a compilation pack released, then i think it's possible that a TGM pack could be made. Not only tha,t this pack coudl be Guideline compliant. TO do so it would include 1) TGM 2) TAP 3)TGM3 and one or both of 4a)TGM Ace (this is the guideline compliant main game) 4b) TGM 4 (other possibility for Guideline Compliant main game)
We still don't actually know this - all we know is that they *had* one. It's an assumption that they have a license for arcade Tetris, it could well be that whatever license covered the original TGM series has expired (the only Tetris license I've seen in writing, for JAMDAT, was 15 years long) and there's still nothing concrete at all to say Arika definitely have a renewed license for anything. It could, but I think that's a pretty big leap if Ubisoft's PC license is exclusive (which I'd assume it is), and TTC would most likely lose a fair chunk of money if they had to back out of that. Or there might be some eventual port I guess once that license expires. Either way, I don't think the arcade community is anywhere near large enough to generate "enough demand" for it ever to be a no-brainer for TTC to portTGM to PC, and surrender whatever money they could potentially get by just pooping out another Tetris Battle or holding it for potential license for something like Tetris Ultimate. As far as I can see it, if they were going to do it it'd be for strategic reasons that would be something of a U-turn on the current guideline and would be a fairly big shift in how they've been positioning the Tetris brand as of late. I don't think it's obviously worth it for them in terms of pure financial success of any individual port (unless there's really nobody out there who cares at all for a PC Tetris license), because I think the market for it would always be small in the greater scheme of things, so it'd have to be a bigger picture sentimental effort.
I don't exactly see it happening, but I don't think there'd be anything really preventing Ubisoft from being the ones to publish a home port of TGM. Well, except from mr. Arika himself, of course.
Guys, Mihara did a one hour twicast broadcast yesterday night. He said A LOT, it was late, I won't be able to remember everything, let's try to do a digest of what I heard: -As I said above, the twitter tgm_series account, and the new project regarding TGM3 Omega won't be handle by him, but by a guy called Kondo-san, who can speak English, very motivated to make this project grow and who has no bias against the foreign TGM community and the foreigners in general. Huge point. -Regarding TGM3... In fact, it seems there was an abroad version, for the foreign market. It was never released, BUT it was tested and actually existed. -The TGM3 Omega Mihara is talking about, will be that abroad version of TGM3. It seems Arika wants us foreign players to test it, to make clear some uncleared points about... Shirase. -He claimed again it WAS possible to beat Shirase 1300. The tests proved it. Yep. The tests on the foreign version. SO, Arika will give a chance to the foreigners to unlock the Shirase mode with TGM3 Omega. By the way, he said he just totally doesn't understand why no one had been able to unlock the official Japanese version (supposed to be exactly the same), according to him and the videos he saw on the internet, the mode should have been unlocked. "Maybe a bug ?". He didn't give more hints, but the conditions to unlock the 1300 are supposed to be humanly doable. -He apologized for being rude these last months with a lot of foreigners (he hates foreigners btw) and promised to try to be nicer from now. Maybe. -In brief : Mihara's account will still be the same stance, he may be aggressive but well, preserving and protecting his games is his job so don't except him to be kind too much. Tgm_series account will, on the opposite hand, do its best to promote TGM abroad and make things happen regarding TGM3 and maybe TGM4. I'll write more later if I remember something.
Would be nice if he actually did at some point... EDIT: nvm, didn't see the tweets from today. My understanding is that the game code and assets have been fairly well inspected and that the result basically confirmed the absence of anything beyond 1300 in Shirase? Aside from the fact that it's been pretty well terrorised by some players for a while and nobody has ever managed it even once. If anyone knows it would be him, but I still kind of feel he's talking shit on this one if this is what he actually said. I think there's a difference between protecting your game and blatant bigotry and xenophobia. Especially given how retarded it is to blame Westerners for the demise of a game series that was never released in the West, and was never even intended to be.
You should read the tweets between Mihara and me these last 2 weeks to see how I agree with you on all these points.
Previous TGM games have had bugs. TAP has an incorrect combo table, and TGM3 has known bugs with the randomizer. So not really a suprize that there is one blocking that final torikan. I am almost certain that beating the final torikan grants you the rank of Shirase M, and that completing the game after then grants you the rank of Shirase GM, just as death before it did. S14 not existing is not proof that there are no grades past S13. As for Arika only having an arcade license, Mihara told me that Arika only has an arcade license, and that it was for Japan. This is, naturally, cheaper then a console, mobile, or PC license. I corresponded politely with him a few years ago, explaining that i was a simple fan of the series who wants to play it and doesn't live in Japan. As near as I can tell (i'm not an expert in machine translated japanese), he pretty much said it's pointless to release for PC because of the clones and that's what TTC told him. (This definitely would explain his rabid hatred of TGM clones, if they truly did get in the way of releases. and i'm pretty sure MAME DID get in the way of TGM2 for PS2) Had i thought of the idea of online accounts, leaderboards, and replays, perhaps I could have made a better argument at the time. At the time, i believed I understood where he was coming from. This also explained why he decried the TGM prohibition at TC not enough, and called people out on not removing their clone videos on youtube, even as they supported the clone ban at TC. Arika can and does go through other companies to publish. Capcom, Psykio, Taito, Sega (though that failed) etc. Nothing stopping them from negotiating with and subliscencing from Ubisoft. If anything i think Ubisoft has a lot of egg on their face for Tetris Ultimate being so buggy, and might welcome a chance to release something less buggy. And, oddly enough TGM multiplayer is quite compatible with guideline style. (it's got items lol!) it also has an old school win by line race feature, which goes clear back to game boy tetris. I will certainly commit to buying TGM if it's sold here, for at least one platform. And i think that online leaderboards and replay sharing are the hook which can make official TGM console/PC releases better then clones.
I'd say there's a pretty sizeable difference between bugs that have minimal impact on the player's experience of the game and are difficult to even spot unless you're keeping close track of the mathematics, and a bug that makes it fundamentally impossible to finish the game. And given that TGM2 got a patch after release, I'd be amazed that Arika never confirmed that it was definitely a bug (like, how would Mihara still not know/understand even today?) and released a fix at some point, if it was genuinely just some broken bit of code. Whether this is genuinely the case or not, it still feels like an incredibly weak argument. Taking the assumption that a PC license would at least be a similar order of magnitude to the published 2005 mobile license of $7m plus 20% royalties (on the basis that mobile apps were still pretty small-fry in 2005), any official PC title would have to break at least some way into mainstream sales to justify the license fee. Clones don't really touch this sort of area, because they're all horrendously under-developed from a UX perspective and there's no way that Heboris or Texmaster would ever get mainstream appeal without a major overhaul. Plus it's not like TGM would be the first title to ever encounter piracy issues on PC whilst still trying to be profitable. On the other hand I can see why TGM in its current form would be something TTC would prefer not to release. Partly because it conflicts with the guideline in a pretty substantial number of ways, but also because they seem pretty set that the main money is in releasing Tetris games where you average casual player can play for 10 minutes without ever being pushed too hard, rather than TGM's fairly brutal arcade style of killing you in a couple of minutes and leaving you in no doubt about just how shit at Tetris you are. And to be honest I think they're probably right, because Tetris Battle makes more money (or at least used to from numbers Wojtek gave ages ago) every quarter than I think a PC port of a TGM game might ever see. If they're happy to break from the guideline and start releasing a series of games that are actually hard instead of the current SRS easy spin games, then I think TGM would be the obvious starting point. But aside from years of empty rhetoric from Henk about Tetris being about skill and how it'll be the first digital sport (because Quake, StarCraft, DotA, LoL, CS:Go and Hearthstone totally don't exist, apparently) this would be a pretty major paradigm shift for how TTC have operated in the last 10-15 years. If nothing else it'd be a rare instance of them actually putting the quality of the game ahead of pure mass-appeal and profitability. Either way it seems TTC definitely cause *some* issue with PC titles, maybe because they're setting the license fee too high for what might actually be profitable, or because they're actively avoiding the potential of cannibalising Tetris Friends/Tetris Battle, or because they feel the PC market is dominated by shitty flash versions and don't think a proper game would see enough real demand, or something else. There's got to be some reason why Tetris games are churned out pretty regularly on every platform and yet there hasn't been a proper PC Tetris title in the Western market since Tetris Worlds in 2001.
Thanks for the post! So hold on, you're saying the TGM3 Omega is just a localized TGM3 that is "supposed to be exactly the same"? If so, I'm bummed.....I mean, I'm glad anything with TGM is happening, but I'd be bummed out if no new gameplay elements exist in the Omega version.
Except apparently it's possible to get past section 13 in Shirase. that's new. Sadly, i'm going to have to buy the arcade game myself, as there is no arcade where I live at all. NO way is TGM3 Omega going ot end up in a bar or laundromat here.
