Being a Competitive Player

Simple question of what sort of gameplay you prefer.

Multiplayer - SRS (Tetris Online Japan, Blokkendoos or alternatively Tetris DS/Wii for non-PC games)
Single Player - ARS (Tetris The Grand Master 1, 2 and 3, Texmaster)

Most SRS games have poor single player modes, consisting mostly of gimmicky scoring. Time attack is all that there really is for single-player SRS. On the other hand there's no notable multiplayer ARS, and the only online modes you can have for ARS are on games like Blokkendoos and choosing to use the ARS rotation system.


Really it wouldn't hurt to just download a handful and play whatever takes your fancy.

 

It's a trap don't play ARS games! Once you start playing ARS style Tetris there is no way back.

No seriously, like already mentioned if you want to be competitive in multiplayer games you should focus on SRS. Almost all (commercialy) available tetris games use SRS. And while you're at it you should definitely start learning how to T-spin.

That doesn't mean you can't enjoy ARS games too if you want to challenge yourself. But from my experience I can tell you that it's very difficult to play both styles and to expect to be a decent player at both. Unless you're talented you will have to be very patient like everyone else. No amount of free time will make you a great player overnight is what I found out a while ago.

Go play some of the games mentioned in the other posts and see what you like. Afterwards you can ask more specific questions to become a better player.

But I urge you to give TGM (ARS) a serious try. You won't regret it!

 

Yeah, take it from me. I learned by effectively starting with playing a bunch of SRS and TGM3 ARS (which is significantly more forgiving than TAP and TGM1 ARS) and now I just suck at both. I kind of regret not focusing more on TGM1 earlier.

 

if you suck at both then what does that make me???

 

Some food for thought for people who say ARS doesn't have competitive versus... The Dreamcast version of Sega Tetris had online versus with rankings and it had a very dedicated and hardcore scene. Of course, the server has long been taken offline, but it was great while it lasted.

It would be so awesome if a new fan server was made for it, the way they've done with some other DC games.

 

"Suck" is a bit of an exaggeration there.
If you regret not focusing more on TGM1 earlier then you should do so now. It just takes a bit of dedication and discipline to play TAP Master and Death rather than Ti Master and Shirase. At least if you know where your problems lie you can attack them and improve in the areas you need to.

 

Wow, I've never heard of anyone making a conscious decision to be a competitive Tetris player -- usually it just hooks people by addiction. I think you should just play a bunch of different versions and see what you find most fun, because if it's fun it won't be a chore to train. Going from Gameboy Tetris to TGM might be too much of a leap, so I'd say start with the easier SRS games for at least a short while and switch to TGM later if you want to be hard core.

Maybe I'm old-school but my favourite thing is playing marathon and challenging myself to improve my high score. A lot of people seem to prefer doing head-to-head battle because they want to win against a human being, but it makes me feel bad to make other people lose and I hate losing when other people rub it in, so that's not as much fun for me. I think it sort of depends on your personality what you'll prefer.

 

Suit yourself, but to me there's no greater feeling than the one where you're playing as fast as you can trying to out-add your opponent while nervously downstacking as the garbage piles up. The intensity of playing an equally skilled or better player--trying like hell not to top out, trying hard as you can to out pace him piece for piece, garbage for garbage... it's elating. I love the thrill of the kill!

 

Hhhhhmm... Actually, I'm slowly leaning towards just excelling in single player marathon mode, but maybe move one to be a VS player later on. It is quite fun to go for high scroes.

 

In which case I can stop trying to give a balanced argument and say you should go for the TGM series. Easily the most entertaining and challenging single player versions of Tetris out there.

 

How do you play it? I'm currently playing it via Zinc... It just sucks that I can't save the highscore.

 

I use Texmaster for general play. The fact that all my runs are automatically saved as replays and are easily converted into AVI files is very nice, as is the little records display to the right of the playing field.
Obviously though when going for records I have to use the real thing, but you can train on Normal Texmaster for a while and then play the proper TGM1 game now and again to set genuine records.

 

It's indeed better to practice in Texmaster first for a while until you can get S grades easily.

Normally the game saves the leaderboard in ZinC and MAME automatically. To get listed in the Grandmaster Ranking you need to achieve at least the grade S1 within 7 minutes. The Todays Ranking is reset every time you restart the game. You can make MAME act like an arcade machine that is powered on 24/7 if you use a hiscore.dat file though. But TGM doesn't run perfectly on MAME...

If you need more details just pm me and I will try to help you out!

 

the top three scores are always saved for me, with the bottom three scores being reset when the program is launched.

 

So it's automatic even if I ESC from Zinc?

 

dunno on that one.

 

I don't recall ZiNc ever saving my records, but I know it can and I never really questioned what was up with my setup that stopped it from doing so.
I just had them all written down on a sheet of paper and screenshots.

 

Anything that is in the all-time ranking should be automatically saved. The daily records are dropped when you quit. S3 is the lowest grade you can get onto the all-time records by default, so it might be some time before you get a record saved if you're just starting. (EDIT: Whoops, I saw Ai's post and it threw doubt into my mind. Upon checking, S1 is the bottom of the all-time board by default and S3 is at the top. Sorry about that. :s)

I've only ever had ZiNc drop my all-time records once. It was quite bizarre. If I recall correctly, I think it even reverted to an older set of rankings, which left me more confused than it would have if it had just reset to the defaults.