Since I had to leave early, I'll give an initial report. Location test is happening. The cab is in the very back corner of the arcade, with the fighting games and shmups. It's set up for 2 players with new buttons/sticks and is 25 cents per play. The game is actually a dev build running on a Vista era Dell laptop. Every once in a while, the monitor loses signal and the graphics tear for a frame or two. You can select between World and Classic rules, same as TGM3. 2 modes are available right now, Rounds and Konoha. Two more modes are on the select screen, Worlds and Kamui. The have a description that reads something like "Mode is unavailable right now". Rounds is a death mode that starts out in 20G, and the initial speed curve starts out similar to TA Death (instead of Shirase). There is a rumor that Rounds has 2600 levels total. At level 300, the bottom 10 rows of the playfield are encased in ice, which prevents any line clears. Nothing happens when you fill up a line in the ice area as long as the effect is active, and you simply stack on top of it. When you exit level 399, the effect ends and whatever line clears you have process instantly, which is really disorienting. Levels 400-499 have no ice, and you may downstack as normal. I'm not sure if this is right, but I believe the effect happens on sections 300, 500, 700, and 900. When you enter level 1100, the effect changes slightly. Instead of alternating sections of ice and not-ice, the ice effect disappears for exactly one frame to process line clears when you pass a section. This makes cleaning up bottom half of your stack effectively impossible, and your mistakes build up quickly because more of your stack falls into the ice section when the game process line clears at the section boundaries. I'm not good enough to say anything about the speed curve as a whole, other than that it must be gentler than Shirase. There appear to be no torikans in Rounds at the moment. When I left, the highest level achieved was something like 1580. Levels beyond 1300 definitely exist, and play as normal. The ice mechanic is the only gimmick encountered in Rounds so far. No spawning garbage or ancestor blocks. Konoha mode is a time attack mode using big Tetris blocks. You have a set amount of time to make as many bravos as possible. Making bravos or clearing lines etc. will not give you more time. The game keeps track of how many Bravos you make, and also increases gravity/speed with your level. The gravity starts out at regular low G speeds, and then shifts into 20G at level 200 (I think). There's a silhouette of an anime girl in the background. Whenever you do a Bravo, the silhouette fills in, and every 4 bravos the picture completes and then a new girl takes her place.There's a rumor that something special happens when you make 20 bravos. Current high score is 15. Every once in awhile, a normal person comes by and goes WTF since it looks like you're playing strip mahjong. The piece preview is changed slightly. The current piece falls from the initial position at the top of the screen, and a blank spot is left in its place. It's sorta like having a 4 piece preview. There's a three piece preview to the right of that, plus the hold box to the left. Because of this, the playfield in Rounds mode is slightly greater than 20 lines tall, as the piece can spawn with its bottom block on either the 20th or 21st line. This does not appear to be true for Konoha mode. The game currently does not keep track of section times or scores. Medals are still in. Section time, combo, and skill medals are in, at the very least. I don't know about the input lag. Consensus says that it must be less than TI. The game prevents a second player from joining while the another player is in mode select. Versus play is not in at the moment. No doubles mode appears to be in. I think there's about 20 players total playing Tetris. Imagine 5-10 guys huddled around a single cab at a time. The machine has been played pretty much nonstop, but since games are so short, you can get lots of playtime. I played 40 games in about 5 hours. Most people are playing Konoha mode instead of Rounds, since Rounds is hard as you'd expect.
Ya, what Z said. Some more fun facts: 1) Hilarious world bug where IRS has opposite (classic) rotation compared to rotating after the piece spawned 2) Move reset instead of step reset. Difficult to say exactly what the numbers are at this point or how they change at higher levels. 3) In classic, the C button now rotates like the B buttons, instead of the A button like in TGM 3, throwing some people off. No idea why this was done. 4) Less ARE in general at later levels. 5) The attract screen just says "The grand master" nothing about tetris 6) You have to get to level 1500+ to get a remotely positive "better try next time" message. Won't even try and remember them, just wait for screenshots. They're all the golden broken english sayings we love.
To clarify, the 2600 levels comment was in a tweet from Mihara regarding when the next gimmick was supposed to appear. This seems kind of crazy, but perhaps there is an end to the permafrost fog wall with no gimmick before the next one starts. Or, maybe it is just a pure test of endurance, with little room for error or hesitation. Either way, we're still quite a ways out from the next supposed checkpoint. In Konoha, line clears and bravos do give additional time. (I also noticed the line clear animation shows some clock icons disperse to indicate that time is added.) Bravos add more time than standard line clears -- I heard the estimates fall somewhere around 8~10 seconds.
2600 levels of that gimmick seems like a hell of a long time, though I guess that's maybe what the name "Rounds" is in reference to. Seems interesting. Not really interesting enough to inspire me to drop all the other games I've been playing lately and take up Tetris properly again, but I'm not really sure what would. At the very least I like the move back towards a focus on stacking clean and punishing mistakes rather than just getting faster ad infinitum. Looking forward to some videos at some point, given that I doubt text explanations will ever properly do it justice.
Man, I'm feeling second-hand excitement just reading all the tweets and posts you guys have been making about the location test! It sounds like you're all having a great time! It would be really cool to see some kind of pictures or videos of the gameplay, but I feel like it would be really disrespectful to try to get either of those, even if they are only shared privately. They did kinda set some guidelines after all, and I don't think people should like, betray their trust? I dunno, that's just how I feel anyway haha. But I don't blame people who can't be there for wanting to see some of the action.
That ice gimmick is pure evil. In the second part of the game, where it reactivates every level, it effectively converts your mistakes to garbage. and when you finally leave the ice section, i suspect the NEXT gimmick will totally screw people who have too many holes over. And pictures are allowed when the arcade staff says so, provided you stand a few feet from the screen.
whoops! should be an easy fix. Yeah this was in tgm4 as well. In TGM4, i think this was a DAS override button. This is because they haven't been given the green light to use the tetris trademark yet. When the game is finished, it will have tetris in it's title. looking forward to it. In konoha mode, after a certain level it becomes impossible to earn more time. this ensures the game will eventually end. so you must earn as much as possible before that point. I'm not sure when that point is off hand, but it's probably level 1000 It also appears that the C button retains the turbo function it had during TGM4.
this game does not seem enticing so far aside from it being a new tgm game. for a company that seems to adore this series (or at the minimum adores its ownership of it) it is strange that they did not come up with any substantial changes to the tgm formula in the time between the game's cancellation and now.
keep in mind we never saw two of the modes. of course they want to reuse stuff from the cancelled game. if it does well a new one will show up, which shoudl innovate more.
Though them not having the green light to use the Tetris trademark would also mean they've not been given the green light yet to actually release a game. Which would make sense to an extent, given they most likely wouldn't go through with the license before they've validated the business case, but also means that things are far from concrete yet. And you're basing that assumption on what, exactly?
Seems fairly reasonable to me. it seems the game is turning out to be profitable at the location test, if i'm to believe the tweets, which suggests that a release is fairly likely. each game so far has added something gamechanging, and this one seems no different. TAP added sonic drop, and decreasing are and lock delay. TI dded hold, multi-preview, a few limited floorkicks, and a ton of extra speed, allowing a totally different stacking method. the haze gimmick is a real game changer. inside the haze, tetrises don't matter. Until the haze is filled, you stack for stability and lack of holes instead of for tetrises, to then get a huge line clear at section end. trying t skim hurts your section time considerably, and that might even matter.
stuff like the haze/ice, rising garbage, monochrome blocks, etc are extraneous to the game's basic mechanics. they force you to play less/more aggressively or whatever, but they don't change the basic gameplay. the aforementioned changes throughout the series (sonic drop, decreasing ARE, etc) are what i consider to be additions/changes to the formula.
Apparently the pics start showing less clothes when you get 20 bravos. The girls then wear swimsuits.
I'm too excited just reading your reports and records on twitter A couple of questions guys: -BGM is still recycled from TGM3, right? -Line clears' level up are TGM3's as seen on those two videos a couple of days ago? I mean, Single = 1 level, Double = 2 levels, Triple = 4 levels, Tetris = 6 levels? -I'd seen some tweet informing that Kev reached 1500+. Aproximately, how much time those runs lasted? I mean, if there are levels beyong 2600, it seems this mode is really long in contrast with those 5~8 minutes runs we are accustomed to. A really endurance challenge as said before. Looking forward some videos of these modes PS: They MUST add a subtitle to the game I really liked "The Masters of Round" previous subtitle xD
BGM is indeed recycled from TGM3. Not sure on the line clear values, but those seem right; will try to get a more exact answer. I think Kevin's record was something around 5.5 minutes, but for some reason my brain wants to say 7. Again, I'll try to get a better answer later. The girls don't wear less at 20, it's just a single swimsuit image, which really is actually pretty tame. The next girl after that is an extremely elaborate and covering dress. All the images are surprisingly very tasteful and tame.
