VGS September 2024 Contest [ENDED]

[RH | 5,226]

Well, I know it's the lowest one posted, but I wanted to put up something.  Been busy, but I do wish I could have participated more.

Score: 31,339

[Splain | 2,720]

Pro tip: play with the music off, but listen to Game Boy Tetris music in the background.

275155

[multiboot | 26]

31,659

[ZeldaFreak | 3,740]

Alrighty, with scores of 433,563, 400,711, & 275,155 respectively, @mbd39 has (once again) won in 1st place, @Sumez has won in 2nd place, and @Splain has won in 3rd place! Congrats and super super well done to you all. You all will be PMed shortly!

As always, thank you all for participating! Happy to see some higher participation numbers this time around, that's more like it

@mbd39 @Sumez @Splain @PII @D~Funk @Gaia Gensouki @NESfiend @Aguy @G-type @multiboot @RH

With that, the September 2024 VGS Contest has come to a close! Hope y'all had fun with that one, Tetris is always a good time.

See you all again in a few weeks for the next annual Pumpkin Carving Contest

[Sumez | 3,165]

Gotta remember the sneaky last-minute post edit trick for the next contest  

(not that I was ever gonna go for a higher score anyway)

Edited Thursday at 08:00 AM by Sumez

[mbd39 | 2,099]

12 hours ago, Sumez said:

Gotta remember the sneaky last-minute post edit trick for the next contest  

(not that I was ever gonna go for a higher score anyway)

I also had a 450k score I could have posted if I needed to, the highest i was able to get with a level 0 start.

It would have been much more interesting to face you in a contest where we could pick the starting level. Your PB is probably better than mine which is around 685k.

 

[Sumez | 3,165]

It's been a while, but I think my PB is around 800k. I know we got at least one maxout player here, though.

Getting a high score from level 0 is a lot tougher because it takes so long to get to the point where you actually score, and at that point every single line clear needs to be a Tetris.

[mbd39 | 2,099]

58 minutes ago, Sumez said:

It's been a while, but I think my PB is around 800k. I know we got at least one maxout player here, though.

Getting a high score from level 0 is a lot tougher because it takes so long to get to the point where you actually score, and at that point every single line clear needs to be a Tetris.

Level 0 starts are so rng dependent when playing for score because there's  such a narrow window for high scoring tetrises. Not much you can do when the game doesn't want to drop long bars when you need them.

 

[Splain | 2,720]

It's no joke: https://tetris.wiki/Scoring#Original_Nintendo_scoring_system

It's annoying to notice that I'm at level 6 with a screen full of garbage. "ooh I gotta clean this up!" Those are never the record-setting rounds.

Not that I've ever played a record-setting round lol.

[Sumez | 3,165]

8 hours ago, mbd39 said:

Level 0 starts are so rng dependent when playing for score because there's  such a narrow window for high scoring tetrises. Not much you can do when the game doesn't want to drop long bars when you need them.

Yeah. NES Tetris in general is extremely RNG dependent when doing record chasing. Well, at this point people have found ways to make the game go on indefinitely which arguably ruins that aspect even further - but back when the killscreen meant the game had to stop then and there, you had to get that one round where the stars aligned and you'd stack well, maintain DAS, avoid misdrops, and have the fortunate RNG to avoid I-piece droughts.

Even if you play perfectly and know how to handle droughts, it's gonna hurt your score when you're forced to burn lines, because anything lower than a Tetris isn't really worth it in this version of the game. A score chase needs to take high risks constantly, or it's never going to be a record.

But at the same time, it's also that constant risk of droughts that makes NES Tetris specifically so interesting. The RNG is a lot more fair compared to the BPS releases around the same time (ie. nearly every other Tetris game released on NES/Famicom or SNES) which used a pure RNG pick for every piece, so it doesn't feel like complete bullshit, but it can still screw you over whenever it wants, which I think is exciting.

The game really is more suited for best-of-3 head to head matches. Even if you don't fix the game with a seed to ensure both players get the same pieces, it's still a surprisingly fair competition this way, and I don't think it ever gets boring to watch.

Edited yesterday at 05:49 AM by Sumez