Teen achieves first NES Tetris "rebirth," proves endless play is possible

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/10/nes-tetris-first-ever-rebirth-loops-past-level-255-and-back-to-zero/

by Tomte • 2 years ago

55 20 2 years ago

mitsu_at2• 2 years ago

Gravity at levels 19-28 is 2 frames per cell, and level 29+ is 1 frame per cell. Rolling is pretty much required to survive at level 29+ speeds.

  Lvl 19 (start): 140 lines
  Lvl 20-28:      9 x 10 lines
  Lvl 29-234:     206 x 10 lines
  Lvl 235:        810 lines (because of level up overflow bug https://cohost.org/rgmechex/post/5264863-rgme-article-33-81)
  Lvl 236-255:    20 x 10 lines

Total of 3300 lines cleared before the level overflowed to 0.

Looks like Dog continued playing on for a while, ultimately reaching level 91 again before ending the run with an additional 916 lines cleared after rebirth, due to not being able to recover from an i-piece misdrop.

To clarify, this was on a modified version of the game that prevents game crashes. The original unmodified version of the game actually starts experiencing possible crashes after reaching level 155 (Bluescuti being the first to reach this point is what made headlines some months ago).

mmmlinux• 2 years ago

-- modified version of the game.

Well that really makes this less interesting tbh.

jdlshore• 2 years ago

Only very lightly modified to prevent crashes, which seems legit to me.

mitsu_at2• 2 years ago

Fair, but it's still an impressive feat in its own right.

Crash dodging comes with its own challenges, explained more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3f4T0WaDVM

There are some player actions that can avoid or reduce the risk of crash, including:

  - Pushing down <7 points
  - Pushing down 7+ points (note: very difficult at lvl 29+ speeds)
  - Turning off the next box while a line is being cleared
  - Avoiding specific line clear types on specific levels

However, on some levels, these actions will crash the game instead.

Crash probabilities are summarized here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zAQIo_mnkk0c9e4-hpeD...

drilbo• 2 years ago

Only slightly. It's not as if the patch changes the core game play mechanics, it's only to make it past the "kill screen". When you keep in within context with the fact that making it to this "kill screen" was unheard of less than a year ago, it's still pretty damn impressive.

kernal• 2 years ago

To be fair, Blue Scuti also used a modified Tetris ROM to set his record.

JohnMakin• 2 years ago

Artiaga's record does come with a small asterisk since he used a version of the game that was modified to avoid the crashes that stopped Blue Scuti's historic run.

This is an important caveat - they patched the glitchy behavior and that made this impossible. In the unpatched game, this is not possible and the previous record likely will stand.

UncleMeat3• 2 years ago

That's not even really true. The rom that most people use competitively was created because it makes things like score tracking above the ordinary limit easier. It just happened to also patch out the crashes (which were discovered later). It isn't like Dog said "I'll use this rom to avoid crashes". The community has mostly used this rom for years as their base choice already.

mrob4• 2 years ago

It's true when you advertise the accomplishment as being played on "NES Tetris". The vast majority of readers will assume this means it was played on the original NES Tetris. This kind of misreporting is especially bad because it will subtract from any level overflow achieved on the original game. Despite being a much more difficult task, if somebody does manage it, it will get less attention because the reporters made it seem like it already happened.

yieldcrv2• 2 years ago

So much mindshare across games like Tetris and Mario 1

I always wonder how many other more interesting glitches and analysis are hidden amongst the hundreds of thousands of other games

crtasm• 2 years ago

Displaced Gamers goes in depth on a lot of other titles: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWoSKWs8h6lFdiEDAjuIfpA

xk_id• 2 years ago

So much mindshare across games like Tetris and Mario 1

Because they’re real games and not 2TB of textures with regurgitated gameplay and microtransactions

yieldcrv2• 2 years ago

People wanted games to look like the promo art for the games so now we have “2TB of textures”

mystified5016• 2 years ago

I think a lot about how Super Mario 64 is one of, if not the most studied program out there. So many people have ripped that game apart down to assembly and studied every facet of it looking for glitches and speed running strategies. It's honestly super impressive

pupppet• 2 years ago

Imagine being one of the original Tetris devs knowing that decades later people have made it their livelihood to work around your bugs.

Teen achieves first NES Tetris "rebirth," proves endless play is possible

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