Hello all! I go by the name of Chaotic and I have been a massive Tetris kid since I was little and my dad owned a special Tetris handheld. I never really owned many of the Tetris games, but I always did do my best to find some knockoff to play on during school. Then a few years back I found Tetris friends/Battle and I became a bit more hardcore into Tetris and started playing more. I genuinely thought I had no life with Tetris. . .UNTIL I saw my first live AGDQ. I had been watching videos of speedruns for almost a year before finally being able to catch it live. And what better thing to find being speedran than. . .Tetris? I was lost, a Tetris game I had never heard of was being featured in a speedrun marathon? What I saw during that next two hour block shook my understanding of Tetris forever and drove me to play even more. I no-lifed Tetris friends/Battle for weeks, but after watching Kevin destroy most of Terror Instinct regular Tetris wasnt doing it for me anymore. So I gave up, and began searching on how to play the TGM series. Its taken me forever but I have been playing TI for a few days now. I tried Texmaster and Nullpomino and neither felt right to me, so I'm glad I finally found how to play it. Well enough with the Intro, lets actually get to the real part of this: What are some common Do/Don't of the TGM series, or TI in general? I know its very small in comparison to what most TGM players can do, but I just had my exam to 8 from 9, and I felt proud considering its sometimes a struggle to clear very far past 120 due to slipups. I currently use a keyboard with my keybinding set to Shift: Hold Z: Rotate X: Rotate C: Rotate SpaceBar: Sonic Drop Left/Right arrows: Left/Right Down arrow: Soft drop I also use classic rule if that changes anything. I look forward to improving and finally sating my inner hardcore Tetris player! (Also sorry for the really long intro, wanted my first post to be meaningful) Extra:
I would actually recommend starting with TGM 1 or 2 so you don't learn bad habits. People who start with Ti tend to become too reliant on the hold, 3 previews, and I/T floorkicks. I think once you can get to 500 in either of those games, and once you learn how to play 20G, if you come back to TGM3 it will feel much more satisfying.
Oh I played those on my laptop, I skipped TGM1 because of the soft drop only feeling sluggish to play with heh I guess I just got spoiled with Sonic Drop. I guess I'll go find them again and see what damage I can do
Some common Dos/Don'ts: Do: Play on Classic rule. World rule is eazy mode. Set small goals. Pick a level you want to reach and keep working for it. Set big goals. Pick a rank you want to reach and keep working for it. Record yourself playing and study videos. Watch other players, learn situations and techniques. Experiment with all the TGM games, like Caithness said. I think TGM2 might be the best game to start out with, but it's also my fav in the series so there's probs some bias there. If you're having trouble switching, play TGM3 master mode with no hold. Unbind it if you need to so you can eliminate muscle memory. Don't: Give up. TGM is a brutal game series and you'll need to practice a lot to get to KevinDDR's level. AFAIK, he had played Ti for 8 years before getting the rank of GM. You have a long road ahead of you, we all do, so giving up is not an option. Be discouraged. Anyone can pick up and play this game. It's Tetris for christ's sake. Even though the TGM series has a high skill ceiling and it demands a lot from a player, the base game and it's concepts are still the same game that you used to play back in the day. Slack off. Try to play every day for a little bit at a time. Short bursts of practice can really go a long way. As for controls, I play on both a stick and a keyboard, and I'm starting to think I prefer keyboard since it's really easy to just start playing on/off in quick bursts without having to get out my stick and all that jazz. When I play on keyboard I use: WASD + NumPad Arrows W.: Alt Up, usually unbinded in case I mistype, Unused A.: Left S.: Soft Drop/Down D.: Right Num 4: Rotate Left Num 5: Hard Drop/Sonic Drop/Up Num 6: Rotate Right Num 8: Hold (TGM3/Friends Only) Num 7: Extra Rotate, Unused My stick setup is basically the same with hard drop being my MK button between the rotates at LK and HK. Hold is at MP. Whatever control scheme you are comfortable with you should use. It doesn't matter how you execute a command as long as you're able to consistently execute it. Edit: If you're want to play TGM1/2, message me on Discord (I'm in the Tetris Chatroom) and I'll send you shmupmametgm. It's a slightly modified MAME emulator that has less input lag and other QoL fixes.
