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Playing to Lose: How Competitive Tetris Players Approach An Unwinnable Game

chrishiggins.com

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Re: Playing to Lose: How Competitive Tetris Players Approach An Unwinnable Game

#21

Post by Xcelerate »

hfantods wrote: post #13
Xcelerate wrote: post #2

Enjoyable article! I don't play NES Tetris so much but I do play Nullpomino. I only do the 40-line clear race. 38 seconds is my best so far but I'm a long way from the WR. Holy cow, I just looked up the current record, and it was actually set today! MicroBlizz says in this video description ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzUUKKuye24 ) that he finished a game in 20.28 seconds. It will be neat to see who is the first…

38 seconds! I play nullpomino 40 line too and have been stuck at the 1minute mark forever.

My top 10 times are all between 38 and 39 so I've been stuck here forever too!

Re: Playing to Lose: How Competitive Tetris Players Approach An Unwinnable Game

#24

Post by Evbn »

T-hawk wrote: post #20

This article doesn't go at all into the details of why NES Tetris is unwinnable and doomed to fail. Let me plug that gap. The brick wall limitation comes at level 29, after 290 lines. At that time, the pieces drop so fast that they cannot reach the sides of the well before locking into place. The code rate-limits sideways moves of a piece to about 250 ms intervals, so if the game is running fast enough that the piece…

Gameboy always felt cleaner to play, too.

Re: Playing to Lose: How Competitive Tetris Players Approach An Unwinnable Game

#26

Post by vl »

dasil003 wrote: post #6

When I play too much tetris I start thinking about the blocks all the time and find it maddening. I wonder if these guys can ever stop thinking about the blocks or if it just becomes so hard-wired in their brain that they lose consciousness of it.

When I was playing Doom as a kid, I typically played in the evening. Next morning after the night of sleep I felt like I was playing all night, at the moment I woke up I could swear I was just shooting at monsters a moment ago.

Re: Playing to Lose: How Competitive Tetris Players Approach An Unwinnable Game

#27

Post by joezydeco »

Evbn wrote: post #25

Seems this whole sport exists almost entirely for the generation of people who were exactly 8 years old when Tetris came out. And the sport will die when we run out of functioning NES consoles and CRTs.

You need to read up on American Revolutionary War and Civil War reenactors.

Re: Playing to Lose: How Competitive Tetris Players Approach An Unwinnable Game

#28

Post by vadman »

wikwocket wrote: post #11
chrishiggins wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a well documented thing called the Tetris Effect, where you see the blocks in dreams or when your eyes close. There's been some neuro research on it. When I asked these guys about it, they said they got past it after a while. They all say, yes, I have experienced Tetris Effect stuff, but at some point the brain seems to filter it out. My impression is that these players are spending a lot of their conscious…

I think this extends to any video game or virtual world you spend a lot of time in. There have been periods in my life when I dreamed about healing party members, and when I catch myself instinctively checking nearby rooftops for snipers. Either that, or I have officially lost it. (Or both; they are not mutually exclusive...)

I didn't check the roof for snipers, but I had nightmares of heavy cavalry charging at me in the open field while I was one of the poor underequipped peasants. That's what Total War games can do to you :) BTW - a heavy cavalry charge is very scary, I don't recommend standing in its way.
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