NES Tetris "fastest 255 levels" TAS in 1:13:03.01 by quad8

Finally, a little "Soviet Mind" game movie I created that I believe would totally blow a "Soviet's mind"!!! Read more...

This is a near-repetitive but improved TAS of Tetris for the NES. The old time was 1:17:07.81. This TAS features close adaptation of more substantial luck manipulation, avoidance of glitched delays, Acmlm's twin-tower strategy, and continuous use of neat 4x3, 4x4, and other tile stacking strategies, and even a 5x4 toward the end. I also decided to celebrate this 4-minute improvement with some graphics I did using Photoshop - to create an expansion of the entire Tetris background to make the game a true widescreen 8-bit experience. The resolution is simulated at 400x224 to achieve the 16:9 widescreen format. Once again, there is a true Tetris GOD in us all.

A tool-assisted speedrun (TAS) consists of an emulator that uses frame-advance, movie recording, and save-states. These common tools are commonly used to record a small movie file containing the player's input, which in turn makes the emulator play the movie frame-by-frame, placing human limitations (skill and reflex) on the shelf. Some movies can also help players discover and exploit glitches found in most NES games to beat the game even faster. No game genie codes or other cheating software was used in the making of this movie.

Just a reminder, you get 10 different sets of tile colors every time you clear 100 lines, where colors change every 10 lines you clear. However, when you get to at least 1,380 lines (D80) cleared, you get access to hidden sets of colored tiles outside the normal 10 sets. Getting up to "L90" will get you stuck at the same tile color set for a while, Level "EA" remains the same, and it stays that way until you eventually clear "U00" lines. You can clear more lines if you find the right shapes to stack its tiles in 4x2's, 4x3's and 4x4's, which demonstrates a useful strategy. If you have to increment one to two lines at a time (like I had to) to bring the tiles down some, it's better to do that than to press your luck and end up greedy.

How did I get from "X52" total lines to "X60" in a single Tetris toward the end? An abnormal glitch occurred toward the midpoint of this TAS where the game does a miscount. It happened around the 39:50 mark. If you clear 4 lines, this glitch won't add that 4 into your total until you clear another number of lines on top of that. For example, you're at 1 line and you cleared an extra 4. This glitch occurred and you're still stuck at 1 line but you cleared an extra 3. The system finally adds the 4 lines you cleared earlier (resulting in a total of 5) but not the 3 you just cleared, so you might have to keep the 3 you cleared in your head, assuming your current is 8. In this case due to this glitch, I was already at X56 (while the system miscounted as X52) and I cleared the final Tetris that placed me at X60. Reaching Level 336 (X60 lines), which then resets back to zero, will easily straighten out the system's miscount and bring your total lines cleared up to current.

Final statistics (from top) (courtesy of Pika250):
T - 1,294 (C94)
J - 1,252 (C52)
Z - 1,031 (A31)
O - 1,240 (C40)
S - 1,026 (A26)
L - 1,171 (B71)
I - 1,387 (D87)

Total pieces: 8,401

Special thanks: Acmlm, english1stud, Alexey Pajitnov (creator), tasvideos.org, SDA, and the entire Tetris community.

quad 8 studios ~ 2014

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FM2 link: https://www.mediafire.com/?6hz6yswhbh...