I like to play the DS homebrew TGM often since it is portable and an easy way to squeeze a few games in on breaks. I've been playing a lot of Death mode lately, and can consistently clear level 200, but struggle to get to 300. When I do reach 300, I only last a few seconds. Even if I go into training mode and start at level 300 with a clear field, I get nuked, and haven't made it to 400 yet. I'm not sure what Death in TGMDS correlates to, but it feels like the jump from 200 to 300 is massive. A piece will lock before I can finish rotating or moving it, and suddenly five more lock down before I can even begin to recover. How do you play at that speed? Do you just watch the previews and keep track of everything in your head? Also, TGMDS a good representation of the real thing? I plan to buy a TGM4 cabinet once they become available, and want to be at least somewhat prepared.
Death 300 is a very noticeable qualitative difference, mainly in ARE going from 12 frames to 6. Are you manually locking the pieces in levels 1-299? I found locking as aggressively as I could for as long as I could helped me get better at playing around that speed, and also made the transition from 299 to 300 a little nicer. Also, if you get Texmaster you can play death starting at 300 over and over until you at least get a feel for the speed.
Aw man...what a nub. I had it set to TGM3 rules. Switching to ARE is much slower, but I don't have a preview or hold now...interesting. For some reason, I keep missing my rotations now too. Is this the ideal way to get better, or should I be practicing Master mode with TGM3?
Well death/shirase mode will help you get used to faster speeds quicker than master yet for TGM3 master you'd also have to get used to things such as section times and the fading/invisible credit roll. I'd mention tetrises yet I think the more comfortable you get with the faster speeds the more you'll try going for them during it, too.
Ah, YO! Another NDS_TGM person. Missing rotations is because TGM3's rotation system is a little bit different. It allows the I piece to kick upwards by rotation. With TAP, there can be no blocks in the way of the rotation. And actual T.A. Death (as opposed to Death in NDS_TGM with TAP rules) is slightly harder because TGM2P does not allow wall kicks for the I piece, which NDS_TGM's TAP mode does. It might be helpful to take a look at this guide: http://kitaru.1101b.com/TGMGUIDE/ which goes in depth about how the pieces rotate. This page in particular: kitaru.1101b.com/TGMGUIDE/7.htm (See Rotating the I) TGM3 DOES allow rotation of the I in some of those cases, but only once. This might be the difference you're experiencing. Edit: Oh yeah. And for the main question... I more or less just grinded games in 20G until I cleared it. I did it while manually locking the whole way. (Meaning you press down to lock the current piece, instead of waiting for the time to run out. If you're not doing this at 200, you may not even be completely in control of 200 speed yet. You may not be ready for 300.) Then I started playing Shirase, which Death is a little slower than. (Death is meant to be played without hold and such, though.) Reading about how the pieces were actually moving in this article: http://tetrisconcept.net/wiki/ARS (and the TGM guide linked earlier) helped me learn some theory. Then watching some top players play on video helped me see practical uses of the rotation system I wasn't seeing. (IRSing the L/J so that their bottom two blocks spawn down is a common example, but there are more complicated things too.) That said, I have trouble with Death 300 myself, when played the way the actual game intends. (No hold, no floorkicks, no extra previews.) But I can clear Death entirely when played in NDS_TGM with TGM3 rules.
Haha, I wasn't sure if NDS_TGM was taboo or not, but it's nice to see another fan. I wish I knew who Meraman was...I'd send the guy $100 for doing such a great job. It's been my primary way of actually playing TGM since I never found a board, and can't run the disc image since I'm a filthy Mac user. Is there a way to perform two rotations on spawn in this version? Sometimes I put myself in a bad situation with T blocks. Thanks to everyone for the advice and resources so far. I will review everything and practice. I'm still not clear on how you guys actually process the pieces that fast though.
Nope. Nor is there a way in any official TGM game. TGM games were nice enough to give you IRS, but they don't really want to reward stacking that leaves holes in the middle. It's really a matter of practice. It took me either 3 months or a year and three months just to beat 20G. (I started playing when the Beijing Olympics started, and beat 20G for the first time on American Thanksgiving day. But I'm not sure what year the Thanksgiving was. I can just look up the Beijing Olympics.) It took me years after that to survive Shirase 300. And I'm pretty sure you could run TGM and TAP on Mac. TGM3, maybe not.
TGM3 runs fine on wine. I'm on Linux and I could play it without trouble. Instead of just having a virtual C: drive in wine you should also have a D one because it's where the game saves everything.
