Damn, only top 100... looks like i might not stand a chance in this round unless I find someone else of a decent level... which doesn't seem likely based on people I regularly see. Theoretical maximum for 100 lines is 330000 (minus hard drops), so I'm not really sure if it is capped at 100, since highest score is 299k right now. *ponders*
Just out of curiosity, how did you compute the theoretical maximum? It's not clear to me how you'd do it. With regular marathon mode, one in seven pieces will be a T, so you can make about one T-spin for every three lines; in particular you can't clear only TSDs, and you probably shouldn't even think about TSSes. In this case though, the well is wider, so you get more Ts per line and can clear only TSDs and TSSes. The kicker, though, is that you could potentially get far more than one T out of every seven pieces, by having the player who doesn't get Ts play very slowly. The more Ts you get, the more TSSes you can make instead of TSDs...but it's not clear how many more. Maybe you can clear only TSSes, or maybe you can clear about half TSSes and half TSDs, or maybe it depends on the level (since as the level increases, the player not getting Ts can't play as slowly). It's (potentially) not an easy problem to analyze.
I've lost track of discussion here. This is 20 wide doubles play, with one player getting [AABBCCD] and the other getting [DEEFFGG], right? A lot depends on how the T and I pieces are available. If I remember correctly, one player gets all the T pieces, which means that you can inflate the T-spin ratio by having the non-T player stack much faster. In fact... player 2 gets [ISSTTZZ], yes? If so, then he can set up for ST stacking mostly by himself.
B*B has already scored over 330K in Europe. ST stacking should get you over 400K if you forgo the last Tetris, and LST 440K. Doing all T-spin line clears should minimally get you 71 T-spin singles/doubles for 560K, and potentially more if you obtain extra T's by having player 1 play slower or you allow the screen to fill up to obtain more pieces, so even scores over 600K should be theoretically possible. It looks like we might only need 140K for top 100, which should be easily attainable by playing with both controllers and doing lots of T-spins for the first half of the game. It's really only the last 2 levels that are difficult to play with both controllers. Furthest I've made it is 93 lines, but it's hard to do T-spins after 70 lines, because you don't really have time to ignore your other piece while you soft-drop the T's. You can abuse the hold to give yourself extra time, but by the time you get to level 10, even that doesn't help.
It isn't very hard to get a good score. I played with my roommate who is worse than me (I am just an average player) and we managed to get 285k. Have the person doing I/J/O blocks go as slow as possible. This gives you the most t-blocks to use and helps the worse player not mess up.
Yeah the way I got my score is to have one person set up ZT stacking on the right side, then use SL or ZJ notches to keep the pattern up. The person on the left side then only has to stack properly, and can stack slower - all he has to do is bring the L or J over when it's needed. We got TSDs up until ~line 86 because my brother kept messing up lol, but we should be able to do better.
If player 1 isn't a complete noob, you could get them to stack LO blocks for you in columns 8/9/10, and you could do the ZT part in columns 11/12/13, which would still leave 7 columns to either side to stack with. That way they wouldn't have to bring the pieces all the way over to the right side of the screen for you, which might be problematic at higher levels. It would probably be more liable to lead to confusion, but doing LST in the middle of the screen and mirroring the LS with JZ would be some crazy fun co-op on the T-spinning setups if you have 2 good players. At this point I've given up on trying to survive the marathon, and I'm just doing as many T-spins as I can for as long as I can last at it, because the T-spins are worth so much more than regular line clears that it's better to try to get a few extra T-spins in than get another 20 lines cleared. BTW, have you guys noticed that it looks like you can actually magically hard drop pieces through each other's pieces? I assumed it would drop on top of a falling piece and then fall with it, especially since the ghost piece gets blocked from appearing at the bottom of the well, but strangely that doesn't seem to be the case.
I never thought of doing it in the middle lol... definitely gotta try that, since I think it's the scrambling to get L/J over that's messing my brother up at higher levels. It's too bad you can't find a partner though, but mad props for still scoring so high. I could only hit around 130k when I tried to run it solo - I think you still have a really good chance to place. I never thought pieces would collide in mid-air... it'd be really awkward if you were both at the same height and had to pass the other to get to the other side.
I never thought pieces wouldn't collide in mid-air, haha. I can think of reasons it is that way, though. The lack of entry delay could make coordinating a pass tough, for example. (EDIT: That didn't stop Kiwamemichi from having solid active pieces, though. It must just be the catering to casuals factor, although I have to say that it was intensely amusing to play Kiwamemichi with a friends that only play casually. The most entertaining moments are when you are trying to push the stack back down and all three of the active pieces are crashing into each other and you're trying frantically to put everything where it needs to go, hahaha.) TGM, Tengen, and Kiwamemichi Doubles/Co-op are examples of games that treat active pieces as solid. Tetris Party's wonky Doubles piece handling is something entirely new, haha.
The best way I found to play solo is I taped two wiimotes together. I have the hold set up as the B trigger, and I use my index finger on the top trigger and my ring finger on the bottom trigger so I can always hold in an emergency, and then I just move my thumbs up and down from wiimote to wiimote to alternate placing the pieces. Originally, I didn't think I'd make 200K, but I've still been improving my score, so 300K might be possible if I can squeeze in a few more T-spins. Anyway, doesn't look like top 100 is going to be a problem, but I'm just thankful the game only goes to 100 lines because a lot of people would score much higher than me if it actually was 150 or endless ON.
I also finds it sometimes glitches and changes blocks around if one person has a block underneath another one and you clear lines. The way I play is have it so player one doesn't actually have to do anything and I do all the hard work using only S/Z/T/I. It would be too complicated to explain what blocks to put where to someone else.
@iphys: Thanks for the description of the dual Wiimote grip. I recall things being excessively difficult when I merely tried to hold the two controllers together. Tape and the special grip for the B triggers should do the trick. I'll bring the Wii to a Wifi connection that doesn't require web log in and try it out. I wish pointing was enabled for Doubles. Dual fisted Wiimote pointing would pretty much rule. (Two arcade sticks or a keyboard would be superior, but I don't have access to the former and clearly there is no support for the latter.) @En Fuego: Haha, man, Tetris Party Doubles just takes all the challenge out of it, eh? Being able to get a feel for what your partner is going to do is part of the fun.
Not that I want to give up positions 1 and 4 , but here's what 2 decently strong players did: 1st Player (the L's and Squares), would place an L block 10 spaces (covering 9 and 10) in and start off LT stacking. 2nd Player would build the notches on the right side, starting from column 12. From there it was LT stacking the whole way. The person on the left simply has to be able to stack the L's (and not stack to high so as not to be able to dig out. The person on the right should be the stronger player with t-spins. We always tried to keep the hold open for the person on the right. The person on the right could call out for blocks (namely squares to correct any stacking problems). Worked well for us... But I think we need to find a solid repeatable method for t-spin singles, as that would result in a higher score, and with the rotation being all funky, it's probably doable.
Details on the 3rd tournament: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release ... 47039.html No surprises. 1200 Wii points to the top 500 just like the first tournament. The marathon is endless OFF high score as before.
Good call on taping two controllers together, iphys. I did this a few days ago and trained a bit and have now managed a score of 155k, which puts me at 47th and I'm sure will be good enough for a prize. I did ST stacking in the middle, but I'm a complete newbie at ST stacking and can't seem to keep it together past 60 lines or so. It's definitely easier (at least on the slowish speeds) than normal single player ST stacking, because you have a much wider area to place everything else, and can set yourself up with one controller if you get a hard-to-place piece on the other - I have a lot of trouble recovering from errors while ST stacking. Past 80 lines even just going for tetrises becomes too difficult to manage for one player (at least, for me) - too much to focus on with two pieces coming in at once.
how long did it take to get used to two controllers? i tried three games and kept confusing which to use. Of course i complicated things by switching top and bottom to see which seemed more natural. then i put it down and went and played TGM... because an hour of fun is more important then 1200 wii points to me
I played for 1-3 hours a day for 4 days or so, and got used to it enough to score in the top 100. It was pretty fun - I like new challenges. If it was unpleasant I probably wouldn't have done it. At first I just went for straight tetrises, and I would rotate from one controller to the next between every piece - that helped me keep them straight, but was ultimately too constraining to get enough points. I still have a little trouble keeping things straight - it took me many false starts to get the 155k
It should just take a few games to get decent at it, but if you try over a few days it gives your brain time to adjust and get better. It helps that you know JLO belong to controller 1 and STZ belong to controller 2, so you can generally tell which controller to use just by looking at the piece. If you consistently alternate between the controllers with each piece and always look at your other piece as your "next" piece rather than the next boxes, it should help keep you from getting mixed up.
I just did a practice game in local play starting on level 7 to see if I could get more accustomed to handling the T-spins at that speed. It felt pretty comfortable, so then I went online and pulled off 354K off 89 lines. It's amazing what a little practice can do!
