| smbhax [sys=NES; cat=Puzzle; reg=NA] |
| | | Japan had got its own Tetris for Famicom a year earlier, programmed in C by Henk Rogers' Bullet-Proof Software. That version did have a version of the famous Russian folk music. It had hard drop with one of the pad buttons, no soft-drop, and only one rotation direction, using Down on the d-pad.
Got an inexpensive cart with marker on it. I kind of wish all my carts had the names of the former owners scrawled on them. ^ _^ |
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Wow I couldn't even say "Tetris" right when I tried to dredge the name of this ROMhack out of like five minutes ago in my darned brain. The ROMhack that replaces the game's usual abstract gray tile background with a starry full moon night sky over onion domes is
Nes Tetris Nostalgic by CAndiman: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7594/
I'm not sure why it's named like it is, but having onion domes in the background is reminiscent of Tetris business partner Henk Rogers' Bullet-Proof Software's "Tetris" for Famicom that came out a year before Nintendo's Tetris came to NES in the West. You can see some screenshots of those Famicom Tetris onion domes midway down this page: https://tcrf.net/Tetris_(NES,_Bullet-Proof_Software)
Oh! And the walls of the uh piece drop chute are little bricks, reminiscent of the sides of the chute in Tetris for Game Boy--which had come out before NES Tetris...oh but only about four months before, gawrsh. You can see those little GB Tetris bricks in my video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dckr_eMDBbY
OH it even says "GAMEBOY - NOSTALGIC" on the modified title screen, so uh yeah. : P
Since the strobe effect that happens when a Tetris is made affects just one of the gray colors, and most of the gray in the background is replaced by the Nostalgic ROMhack, it has the effect of significantly curtailing the strobing effect--so now I can play NES Tetris w/o having to worry about getting a migraine or something on my tired eyeballz!
I can finally face my own severe limitations in Tetris play. ^ _^ Love them procedural block colors though, so sweet. And the music OF COURSE. And this new starry night ain't bad either. : )
OH okay I was totally wrong about the color palettes for the Tetris blocks; they are coded in or something not procedural, I guess? And they repeat every 10 levels (100 rows), as you can see in the longer runs here where the block color palettes match for levels 1 and 10 (purple & blue) as well as 2 and 11 (green). They do glitch out starting at level 138; the video where I saw that is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SctVBfLjpLg .
OH okay this video about the glitch https://youtu.be/l_KY_EwZEVA?t=655 says once past lvl 137 the game starts reading random ROM data as the colors, so at that point they DO kind of become procedural, although it wasn't intended; eventually it crashes ~level 237. |
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I talked about the "Kremlin" at one point; what I really meant I suppose was Saint Basil's Cathedral on the Red Square (just to the west of the Kremlin), that famous building with all the onion domes--depicted on the ending launch screen in Tetris.
But what does "MMP" or maybe even "MMP7" at its base mean??? ^ _^ |
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| | | | In Mesen, leave aspect "Unstretched"--keeps blocks of tetrominoes square. |
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| | | Mesen will save a "Last Session" save when you exit a game with the "Power Off" menu item or shortcut key...but not when you say just close the program window with the game running--UNLESS you also enable the --preferences.gameSelectionScreenMode=PowerOn command line setting, it seems.
So for a game like Tetris, which saves high scores but only for a single session, ie the game itself has not save capability, you can keep it going in a state maintaining the scores by combining PowerOn with the --loadLastSession switch. Not very intuitive but seems to work. My Tetris command line for instance is
C:\downloaded\mesen\Mesen.exe "C:\downloaded\mesen\roms\Tetris (USA)_nostalgic.zip" --preferences.gameSelectionScreenMode=PowerOn --fullscreen --video.aspectRatio=NoStretching --audio.masterVolume=40 --loadLastSession --doNotSaveSettings |
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I think as a kid I decided I didn't like B-TYPE and subsequently ignored it.
But in A-TYPE I pretty much always hit the same speed limit wall ie I get to level 11 or so at best and then it's too fast and I just croak so I was kinda out of things to do in Tetris! But with B-TYPE you set up your own parameters with LEVEL and HEIGHT and just go for 25 lines and try to maximize your score and that's kinda feeling more interesting to me, 'cause you're clearing random garbage lines rather than just trying to build for Tetris all the time--my A-TYPE at best would go: build for Tetris, build for Tetris, build for Tetris, (...) oh hit the speed wall, GAME OVER--which felt like being stuck in a rut.
Eh I mean I'm horrible at Tetris so I guess that's why I have to play this weird way but whatever it's working for me at the moment. ^ _^
After recording I figured out that I can sort of get Tetris to keep my high scores--the NES cart itself has no battery back up so doesn't save its scores between sessions--by combining two Mesen command-line parameters: --preferences.gameSelectionScreenMode=PowerOn and --loadLastSession. Not very intuitive, but seems to work: now when I start the emulator back up from my shortcut, it picks the game right up where it was when I last closed the emulator; it, keeps it going as if you're in a never-ending single session, so the scores are maintained. Like using "-autosave" to (sorta) keep my Pac-Man high score going in MAME, for instance. ; ) |
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NES and GB Tetris in Mesen with "modern Tetris" romhacks:
Nostalgic by @Candiman6502 : https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7594/
Hard Drop by @gridbugstv : https://www.gridbugs.org/reverse-engineering-nes-tetris-to-add-hard-drop/
Excel by Controllerhead: https://www.romhacking.net/reviews/6536/
Rosy Retrospection by Ospin: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5813/
0:58 - NES Hard Drop
3:51 - NES Hard Drop w/o ghost
5:08 - NES Excel
13:45 - NES Excel & Hard Drop
18:10 - NES
19:02 - NES Excel (2)
19:48 - NES Nostalgic
21:44 - NES (2)
22:25 - NES Nostalgic (2)
24:10 - NES Excel & Nostalgic
28:24 - NES Nostalgic (3)
31:46 - NES Nostalgic & Excel
35:11 - NES Excel & Nostalgic (2)
36:11 - NES (3)
36:44 - NES Excel (3)
37:25 - NES Excel & Hard Drop
39:00 - NES Excel (4)
41:23 - GB Rosy Retrospection
49:15 - NES Nostalgic (4)
51:27 - GB Rosy Retrospection DX
55:09 - GB Rosy Retrospection (2)
56:19 - GB
57:09 - GB Rosy Retrospection (3)
57:45 - NES (4)
58:18 - GB Rosy Retrospection (4)
58:43 - NES Excel & Nostalgic (3)
1:01:29 - SGB2 Rosy Retrospection
1:05:47 - GB Rosy Retrospection (5) Mesen colors
1:18:16 - NES Excel & Nostalgic (4)
1:26:56 - NES "Floating" patcher
1:28:02 - NES Hard Drop & Nostalgic
1:29:44 - NES Nostalgic & Hard Drop
1:32:05 - NES Excel & Nostalgic & Hard Drop
1:32:41 - NES Nostalgic (5)
1:40:35 - NES Excel & Nostalgic (5)
1:59:39 - GB Rosy Retrospection (5)
2:14:01 - GB (2)
2:17:13 - GB Mesen inverted etc colors
2:25:01 - NES Nostalgic (6)
2:35:25 - GB Rosy Retrospection (6)
2:42:05 - NES Excel & Nostalgic (6)
2:49:02 - GB Rosy Retrospection (7)
2:51:43 - NES Excel & Nostalgic (7)
2:59:51 - NES Nostalgic (6)
I'd love for someone to make a Rosy Retrospection type romhack--you know, bringing in the modern Tetris gameplay, basically--for NES Tetris--'cause the bright "inverted" (compared to the NES version) background of GB Tetris scorches my eyeballs, it turns out. ; D (A day after recording I finally realized that in Mesen I could just lower the brightness of the BG color--making it a nice medium mauve, for instance--and that seemed to solve the eyeball scorching. ^ _^ More on that two videos from now!)
And I can't handle the twitchy control of Excel, or the not-toned-down Tetris strobe effect of Hard Drop--which isn't compatible with the Nostalgic romhack--so I'll be sticking to regular ol' NES Tetris, with Nostalgic for reducing the flashing a bit, and just the nice cool look.
(Also after recording, I went and tried Tetris the Grand Master 4--but it wasn't doing anything for me and my decidedly non-grandmaster ability that NES Tetris doesn't do, and the graphics and sounds weren't as much my thing--so again, it's still gotta be NES Tetris for me, apparently! ^ _^) (Anyway, see next video for my experience with TGM4. ; D) |
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| | | Oh before that last one there was this one where I learned to zoom the view in in Mesen:
0:00 - GB Tetris w/ Rosy Retrospection romhack
1:37 - NES Tetris
2:09 - NES Tetris "zoomed" w/ overscan setting (top 47, bottom 33)
3:20 - NES Tetris w/ Nostalgic hack "zoomed" (top 48, bottom 33)
14:18 - end screen overscan |
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| | | | Oops, the proper link for Excel (romhack) is https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4973/ . |
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| | | Controllerhead who made the Excel hack is @Controllerhead on YouTube; they gave me some info about the hack in a comment on the video:
"...i just kind of made it for myself and released it to the public, it was a thought experiment on how fast / modern i could make NES Tetris feel. I always have other music on in the background so i just defaulted it to no music. I should have added adjustments for horizontal piece drift speed, but it was beyond my paygrade when i made this hack years ago as i was just learning..."
"yes, i made sure that you could not double hard drop by holding up in mine, that was absolutely purposeful. I also altered the block graphics, mainly because i could and also i could study which pieces were where when looking at any board." |
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B-TYPE
0:41 - height 3
8:01 - height 5
22:55 - session best run
Man I'm getting mic drop-out even in Tetris now. New headset with an actual condenser mic is on its way, c'mon c'mon c'mon get here.
According to a FAQ I checked (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/nes/563470-tetris/faqs/28961), you don't get bonus points for clearing the pre-generated rows of blocks; it says the score formula for B-TYPE is "Clear Score = Real Score + Level # x 1000 + Height x 1000."
And the game ends when you've cleared 25 lines (or let the play area fill up).
So my high score was basically getting a single Tetris on height 5. ; D ;_; |
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