Hello! I came here after watching AGDQ, and I want to know how I can get better at Tetris. For starters, which game should I be playing? I have Game Boy Tetris and PSP Tetris, and that's it. Are there any other games that are really solid that are easy to get a hold of? (For the record, I don't play on emulator [unless I can do so 100% legally], so emulating TGM on MAME or something would be off the table.)
There are free clones, such as texmaster or nullpomino if you want to try out some tgm modes. Nullpo is more of a general tetris simulator where you can tweak everything imagineable, so it's a decent training tool, while texmaster is purely TGM based with set rules you cannot change ranging from TGM1 to TGM3. Well then there's the flash based tetrisfriends(.com) for fast paced multiplayer action. I think these are the more common options around here aside from legal and/or emulated tgm. We also have some NES players around, since you mentioned gb tetris maybe you'll find it interesting.
Hi! Your legal emulation option would be to look for texmaster on pc, it's a 100% legal alternative even though there's a bit of a history behind it. Of course you have a lot of other options, like Nullpomino and Heboris, the original versions of which are also a good start. Whenever you're ready to spend some money, you can always look up the price of the TGM games, but that's an entirely different story I'm guessing people have a few other ideas?
I downloaded Texmaster. I am currently playing it on my keyboard and I like so much that I couldn't stop smiling at one point! What are all of the different game modes and which one should I start out playing?
Legal to download and play, but arguably illegal to create/distribute/whatever. Maybe it's just a semantic point, but I feel "100% legal" is perhaps overselling it a wee bit.
Wait, is it legal or not? Did Arika give a Cease & Desist to the creator of Texmaster at one point or something?
That's a REALLY old discussion, and if you do some digging, you can probably find a couple of mile long threads on the subject in here. Technically they might be able to win a case in court, as it's happened before, but essentially game mechanics can not be copyrighted (while assets can), and as long as there is no court descision, I wouldn't consider it illegal - also, as long as it's not being sold for money, I doubt there will ever be a court case. The bottom line is, don't feel bad about playing it, and no matter what, it's definitely not piracy, which is what matters to me.
Texmaster definitely isn't illegal to download and play, as it doesn't use any game assets (sounds, graphics, etc) from TGM. It just provides a Tetris game that models the modes from TGM games with fairly high accuracy. Any breach of copyright is down to the creator and distributor, not the player, so even if they were going to prosecute anyone and everyone, there'd be no issue for players. In the same line that it's against the law to sell knock-off Oakley sunglasses or designer handbags but it's not against the law for someone to buy the knock-offs. It's not approved by Arika and they'd almost definitely have filed a C&D if it was actually being distributed by a company and wasn't quite so underground, but if you're going to hold to that sort of ideal then you're limiting yourself to Official Tetris® titles. In which case you're either stuck to shitty titles, are splashing out reasonable money for a TGM PCB and an arcade setup, or you're not playing a game made in the last 10 years or so (with the exception of Tetris DS). tl;dr Texmaster (or Nullpomino) is fine if all you care about is not breaking the law. If you care so much as to insist on only official licensed titles, then for "games which are really solid that are easy to get a hold of", you're probably a bit screwed.
Ah, okay. I get it now. I'll just continue to play Texmaster, then. Thank you very much for all of the information! On a side note, I wish Arika would re-release TGM games for digital download, since I'm sure they'd find a customer base for them. I'll post a video of myself playing Novice in Texmaster later today if I get the chance. I was able to get to Level 299 before I succumbed to the Tetrimino storm.
So do most people on here, and Arika probably would wish they could as well. The issue is that they don't have the license for anything other than arcades in Japan, and getting a license for something like an online PC release would require a lot of money and also for your game to fit with The Tetris Company's guideline and vision of how Tetris games should be (low difficulty and as accessible as possible for casual gamers - i.e. pretty much the opposite of TGM). There's a reason that across various different developers pretty much every single Tetris game in the last 10-15 years has been pretty mediocre (with exceptions being TGM, Tetris DS and Tetris Online Japan - at least in my opinion), and it's largely the TTC guideline and the massive restrictions that they place on anyone who buys a license that prevent them actually making a fun game.
With new hints of a TGM4 suddenly resurfacing, I guess there's always a chance for conversions or a wider distribution popping up again, though I wouldn't hold my breath. But if you like owning awesome games, and manage to get hooked on Texmaster, I definitely wouldn't advise against shelling out for a genuine TGM2 arcade PCB. It's a sound "investment" that's hardly going to drop in value any time soon (I guess unless they suddenly release a console or PC port), and a game that's insanely difficult to ever get tired of. I doubt I'm ever going to part with mine, and I rarely see anyone else selling theirs.
For what it's worth, Cave games retain their value after a port is released. Ketsui is still $600 for a PCB, and that got ported to two different consoles, lol -- first 360, and years later PS3.
True. Meanwhile Esp.Ra.De is one of the cheaper ones despite no port ever being made. I guess it's not unlikely that home ports only help improve awareness of the game in question and cause collectors to target the original boards. Cave was always a bit of a special case though. Even a year after release, they tend to be more expensive on the used games market than they were as new.
Arcade games in the west is a niche market driven more by sentimental collectors than any sort of rational economic sense anyway. If someone is happy to splash out a few hundred dollars on a video game to have an *authentic* something then they'll do that whether there are console/PC ports or not. Plus it's not like the majority aren't on MAME already anyway for people who only care about costs.
I was talking about prices from a Japanese PCB shop, though. Also remember that some of these games are still in operation at arcades.
Alright, so after playing Texmaster for a while, I'm starting to wonder about some things. For starters, does the TGM series in general take pity on you if you play poorly? I've noticed that I'll get really far and the pieces start to drop really fast, and then suddenly it goes back to Level 1 speed even though I'm on Level 200. What causes this to happen, exactly?
It's just the natural speedcurve for TGM1 and TAP. See: http://tetrisconcept.net/wiki/TGM_Guide#Lock_and_game_speed TGM3 does actively punish you by increasing the speed if you play better though.
