Game that I found (I think Edo found it first) in the quiz machine at the bar of my college. http://www.gwhl.co.uk/images/GPSmartV.3.3.pdf - 3rd Page You can win money playing it, but I feel how much you win is largely down to the discretion of the machine. Game is pretty simple, is an authentic TTC game, and it uses SRS rotations and colours. You have two minutes (I think) to play Tetris, with some pieces containing clocks that lengthen the amount of time you have when you clear them, by about 15 seconds or so (at a guess). Pieces also contain stars, which when you clear advance your prize on the left of the screen. It takes six or seven stars to start actually winning money, with the prizes going from 1 (it's 50p per play) to 10. It's a touch screen, so controlled by 5 buttons displayed on the screen under the field, which are: CCW, Left, Down (Soft drop for each press, Hard drop if held), Right and CW. Winning money is basically luck. You can play as fast as you can, and I was, but if the machine doesn't want you to win it'll just stop giving you stars. Ideally I'd probably wait until someone put a bit of money into the machine and then have a game or two to win it back out. Still, interesting and previously unmentioned game.
I think each college in the entire University ('college' has a different meaning here) has its own bar, serving alcohol. And the prices are extremely reasonable too. Also pool and table football (foosball), as well as the aforementioned quiz machine. But yeah, everyone here is over 18 and therefore old enough to purchase alcohol because our laws aren't unreasonable (I actually wouldn't mind 21 for alcohol if the gun laws weren't so lax in comparison).
I typed that post in a hurry and it turned out snippier than I intended in retrospect. The bastardized English didn't help any either...
I'm the national tetris star prize tournament champion (ended 3rd Jan, 1st prize 500 quid!) and as the above people have mentioned after a while it does just refuse to pay any money out no matter how fast you play. On a machine I've not played before I can usually get 13 pounds out from the first two games then after that I could probably push it for a couple more but its just not worth the extra effort! It is quite difficult to get the tenner unless you are FAST and sometimes the touchscreen tech on the screens can let you down big time in that regard - some of them are unresponsive or become less responsive after one game is won! Having said that one time I played a machine and it gave the full tenner on 14 lines with about 1 min and 35 seconds left (start with 2 mins and you get clocks which give you an extra 10 seconds each!) You have a chance at 3 pounds or more if you get the first star with around 45 seconds or more remaining. If you see the name AK or ARK at the top of the scoreboards on a machine, you'll know its me! P.S. Was it sarcasm that you bastardised English while commenting on the fact that you were? (its not bastardized - thats the bastardised American spelling of the word!)
Welcome! Actually it's pretty funny that your intials are ARK. Probably the most popular version of Tetris played here is Tetris the Grand Master, where the default intials are ARK. In that game, it stands for Arika, the developer of the game. ...Or maybe that's your record on all those machines???!?! Also I'm Canadian, so the Z slipped in there unintentionally, because of the US influence no doubt.
Haha I wish - I only just started playing Tetris again about 8 weeks ago - since I realised I could make over a tenner per machine it turned into a nice little extra money earner while I'm at university! I'm just downloading texmaster now since that appears to be the only PC playable game talked about on here! I'm guessing the Tetris the Grand Master games are all arcade cabinet machines?
Ah thanks. I just tried the novice mode and got 5:58 which I assume is pretty poor, but I understand that a joystick is needed to play it properly? It seems impossible to press the keys fast enough to move pieces in the more advanced modes, even if you know where you want them to go!
A joystick isn't a necessity, but many players prefer it. I'm primarily a keyboard player myself. Are you using the autorepeat? If you hold left or right, it'll start autoshifting after a brief initial delay. (A nice little detail to note is that you can "charge" past the initial delay during entry or line clear delay periods.) Once activated, it shifts the piece one column in that direction every frame until the direction is released. You can use it to get a piece to the wall quickly and then tap back a column or two. At low gravity, I believe you can line up any straight-drop placement with no more than two single tap shifts.
What nation? So far I've yet to win more than 3 in a single game, but the machine is in the college bar and the standard of general knowledge is extremely high, so it's not that often that people pour a reasonable amount of money into the machine without getting anything back. And judging from the leaderboard I'm pretty much the only person who plays Tetris. Out of interest, what is your best score?
44 lines is best score at the moment, it slowly gets better but there is a limit by the machine more than anything else.. sometimes end up being sat there waiting for the touchscreen to respond to the presses, then the piece moves 5 places at once and turns itself around and ends up in the wrong place, and there is no autorepeat on the quiz machines! I also seem to be one of the only people playing it, I've seen the occasional machine in Scream bars and the like where some of the students have been playing it but tends to be just me and possibly one other player whos reasonably good (highest I've seen anyone else get is 35 lines, but usually best on a machine is between 22 and 30 lines) National tetris winner in UK on the game fyi, won the prize in Derby and had to go back there to have my photos taken for trade press lol
When I think about it, the number of lines/score is also a little biased by the machine itself because it gives you extra time, again seemingly at the machine's discretion. It seems an odd version to hold a championship for, because it's extremely slow, cumbersome, and there's a lot that comes down to just random events.
Actually it gives you the same amount of added time between each star every time, sometimes it just delays between giving you anything, time/stars included so its all spread out the same amount! Edit: What I mean is for example between the star for one pound and the star for 3 pounds there is either 2 or 3 timers (I think three but I'm not sure without checking!) and thats always the case. Thats how I know that if I've got the first pound with a minimum of 40 seconds on the clock its probably going to be a 3 pound win. If it comes nearer 1 minute 15 seconds or even more time left then its likely to be 5-10 pounds (usually 10!) What it does do is increase the time between the star before the pound win and the pound win star - it always lets you get one away and just puts longer and longer gaps at this point, until its physically impossible to keep on winning The championship version was different - the same number of timers and stars came every time - meaning you could always get all the stars (which in the tournament gave bonus points instead of a cash win) The difference in score at the end was basically worked out by how many tetris/t-spins you managed to pull off so it was a true skill version of the game
