Playing Fast

Tetris party is my first venture back into tetris in many years. I was a NES diehard, but haven't played much at all in the last 15+ years.
I'm trying to increase my speed for the 150 line marathon.

I see some of the users on this board on the leaderboards, and wow, you guys play fast.
I am getting faster I'm down to 8'15" for my time, which i consider pretty good as I haven't really played tetris in many many years.

How do you play so fast?? Those 4 and 5 minuets times are amazing.

Somethings slowing me down are simply from being unfamiliar with the game, soon I should stop seeing the held piece as the next piece.
Soon I should be able to stack tetrises past level 12, 29 in a row is my record for now, past 13 I just stop trying.

The lock delay is my biggest issue. I'm constantly trying to move the next piece before the current piece is locked, misplacing the piece on the bottom.
I've been trying to use the hard drop to lock this piece, but that usually drops the next piece on me.

Do i just need to adjust to the lock delay?

I can clear the first 100 under 5 minuets, so I should be under 8 soon.

 

The lock delay isn't your problem. You should play fast enough to not even notice it. There are two ways to speed run marathon: 1. all tetrises and one double or 2. all tetrises and two triples. Personally I make my first line clear a double (opposed to saving it for last) since I find it easier to time the ending with a tetris.

Never use autorepeat when you can make it in three taps. You should be able to tap thrice faster than it takes to autorepeat that many columns. Don't waste any time. Keep pressing buttons whenever you're not waiting on a delay. If you need time to think, then try to practice harder so you don't need as much time to think. At the same time, concentrate on not misdropping. Learn how the floor kicks work, so you can expect how the blocks will react at the later levels and you won't get thrown off. Read this. Play every day. Don't miss even one day. You'll get there in three months.

 

Thanks, the thing with the lock delay that messes me up is i am moving the piece before it is locked. i end up having to move it back wasting time, or it locks in the wrong place on me. this happens when i am trying to move the next piece too early.
this is when the game is moving fast, and i stop hard dropping the pieces.

do you simply wait for the lock, or drop the piece that is on the bottom to lock it?

 

manually locking every piece is best for speed and control. it takes some practice, mostly with adjusting your timing. if you keep working at it like caffeine recommends, before long the lock delay won't really be an issue.

 

Thanks! thats what i was looking for.

caffeine, you've got some great scores.
i never use any autotap, i never have. i can type 35 wpm i should be able to drop 35 lpm
I think i'll be able to improve quite a bit fairly quickly. tetris is like riding a bike.
hopefully i'm not so old my thumbs can't keep up.

are floor kicks the way you can move over pieces with the slide?
i need to learn stacking strategies for the fast levels, thats what I'm working on.

man this game is fun. not many games can hold an interest 23 years. I played nyet in jr high, got hooked on that.
then i found nes tetris and wow that had me hooked for years. college and all that took me away from any gaming but i have played many clones over the years. i have a mame collection but never found TGM, i have the tetris they had here in the states, but the keyboard configuration didn't feel right to me. tetris party is the first tetris i have found with a feel i like in many years.

it's funny, my wife walked in on me she says "How can you do that, why is that fun?"
she had never seen tetris before.. she had to sit and watch..

i love getting back into it

m

 

It's cool that you are getting back into it. If you don't mind, how old are you? I'm 31 and don't see myself quitting anytime soon.

 

I'm 36.

I didn't really play games for about 10 years. Now I have time again, wii is my first console since the SNES. I played games on my computer, but not a lot. I never found a tetris variant that felt right.

 

that's not entirely true. I do hold down on the pad when i'm trying to hit the wall.

 

Woohoo, somebody who was born in the same decade as me. I was thinking at work today, anybody know how old the oldest person to get a Grand Master ranking in any of the TGM games?

 

Maybe Mihara? He's in the latter half of the 30s at the moment if I remember correctly. I certainly don't know of anyone older but who knows. Japan is a big place full of arcades...

Maybe next in line is jago?

 

Hmmmm. Do you mean he's in his latter half now and can do it? If you do, I meant oldest person getting it for the first time.

 

Just pratice and you'll get it down, I had the same problem as you.
just keep working on it and you'll get it down :]

 

Yeah, I now see I am only as fast as level 15.

I finish 150 lines in the same time if I start on 1 or 15, right around the 8 minute mark.

I'll be happy when I get it into the 6's

 

no you won't. you'll want to be in the 5's.

 

i'm in the 5's, and i'm not happy

i want to be in the 4's

 

i'm 32

 

welp I'm into the 7's now at least.
i'm having trouble though, and don't think i will get any faster.
tetris makes my shoulder hurt BAD, tendinitis maybe :,(
I play for 2 hours and it knocks my shoulder out for 3+ days. with a gamepad or a keyboard on my computer.
do you think it will stop me?

NEVER!!

i take a week or so off, and have at it for a few days, then need to recover.

ohh the agony of aging

 

Oh no, the dreaded "Tetrisitis." I have problems with RSI in my hands mainly. I'm surprised Tetris bothers your shoulder -- maybe check your posture to see if there's some way to improve the ergonomics, and make sure you take lots of breaks (like every 15 minutes). I injured myself to the point that I couldn't open doors from working in front of a computer all day, and it took me a long time to become conscious of exactly what I was doing that was hurting myself and to notice the first signs of numbness and take a break (rather than waiting for the debilitating pain to set in).

The best I managed on speed was about 7 min 40 sec, but I don't think I'm going to bother risking injuring myself to go faster, because I definitely feel the wear and tear on my hands even at that speed. Usually it takes me about 13 minutes to do the Marathon when I just walk through it at my own leisurely pace.

It really is amazing how fast some people are though. I was wi-fi battling against a guy that wasn't even T-spinning, and it took me about 3 minutes to beat him every time because he was getting tetrises so fast that the only advantage I seemed to have was when the speed increased to help me get my T-spin soft drops in faster.

 

I found the classic controller comfortable, but I had a lot of problems with pieces swerving on soft drops, so I switched to the Wiimote and had a lot less trouble. The DS gives me problems because the shoulder buttons seem to be too far away and I always get pain in the back of my hands from holding pieces, so I use my left hand till that hurts, then I use my right hand till that hurts, and then I hope my left hand has recovered.