I've never played the Tetris Grandmaster games. The only games I have played recently are Tetris Party (DS), Tetris Axis, and Tetris Ultimate for the 3ds. (I played the original Gameboy version and Tetris Plus for PS1 many years ago). The Master Mode in Party starts out with the tetriminos appearing at the bottom of the screen, and as the difficulty level rises, the amount of time given to react decreases. However, as long as you keep the tetrimino moving left or right or keep rotating it, it basically takes the same amount of time to lock in place whether you're on level 1 or 15. You just have to be careful not to hesitate or let the tetrimono stay in one place too long. But in Axis however, in addition to being given less time to react when the tetrimino appears on screen, you are given less time to move the piece around and rotate it as the level rises, making it much harder. Most of the time playing Tetris Party I could complete Master Endless off, and if I did die, it would be on level 14 or 15. So basically I could get pretty far. But then if I played Master on Axis, I would get wiped out at only level 7 or 8. Is this the same as Death Mode on TGM? (I've seen where it has a Master and a Death mode). (BTW, the Master Mode in Tetris Ultimate is a joke. Level 15 is just as easy as level 1. I can complete it with ease).
Mm, only on a really superficial level -- it starts at 20G and gets faster as you progress. In terms of how smoothly each mode is tuned and how the rest of the mechanics work, I wouldn't consider them similar. From what I've been told, Axis Master is tuned in a really goofy way where you have to quickly move/rotate the piece once to get the benefit of extended lock delay, otherwise it would suddenly become unplayable fast. This is compounded by the fact there is no delay whatsoever before the next piece appears, leaving you with no time at all to react to mistakes or slips in control. TA Death is challenging in ways that are much more fair. Entry delay time to prepare your next move does become quite short, but it never goes away completely. The lock delay also becomes very short, but never so short that you wouldn't be able to react to and move a piece in the event that you weren't already holding left/right/rotate before it appeared. Because the lockdown timer only resets when the piece falls a row (not when it is just moved/rotated as in Party, Axis, Ultimate, and any other modern Guideline rule games), the time before each piece auto-locks is consistently in that range -- this hits the sweet spot in terms of keeping the player on their toes, without being to vulnerable to stalling as in Party or too brutally unfair as to require abuse of move/rotation resets as in Axis.
The reason for the apparently mandated goofy guideline behavior with move reset at high speed 20g appears to be to allow you to DAS. the reset after rotation or movement is for a longer period then the initial lock delay, and it's usually exactly the same as the current auto shift delay when the initial lock delay is lower than it. I think Axis gets even worse then other previous games in that regard. This has been in ever since Tetris New Century at least, where i've verified the behavior, though it's a lot less annoying there. it really becomes a problem in tetris party master mode and other later games that have it, where a piece will surprise lock on you if you aren't abusing the reset. Oh and if you rotate an s or z the wrong way and it fails to rotate you are pretty much doomed. T.A. Death is a fair challenge. But it's definitely a challenge.
So what you're saying is that if I can handle Master Mode in Axis, I could probably go far in Death Mode of TGM (not implying that I could beat it, however). I used to feel ashamed that couldn't get any further than what I could (I can make it to level 10 out of 15 before losing, and occasionally I'll make it as far as 12). But I see I'm not the only one who would agree that it's diabolically difficult.
I suggest switching to trying death seriously. actually first try tgm1 in 20g mode (enter the code). once you can deal with that, you should be able to go onto death. if tgm1 20g is giving you trouble, try normal mode first until you got the hand of the rotation system.
Unfortunately I don't have a means of playing or downloading TGM. However I've seen many people on Youtube play it and just wondered how I measured up.
