What a Perfect Game of Tetris Looks Like

is tetris a solved game but simply no unlike other strategy games that can have a replicated outcome tetris has immense variability this puts it more in the lane of a game like chess where virtually every game is entirely unique in tetris the vast array of peace placements makes the goal of perfect play difficult to tackle this is coupled with the sheer randomness of the piece distribution where a string of bad pieces can easily wreck a stack even if the board is accommodating this is a hallmark of the 1989 version of tetris but alongside that are other facets of the game that can be exploited to modify the randomness into our favor this is where tool-assisted speed runs come into play involving external tools that are used to create near-perfect gameplay beyond the human level tasks involve the usage of save states mapped out inputs for the entirety of a run and deterministic manipulation of what would otherwise be randomized game elements task runs have been made for countless games but for tetris a task run utilizes the fastest peace movement possible manipulation of the peace randomizer and even glitches that the developers didn't know were present in the game how interesting could a tetris task even be well let's find out the first of these task runs dates back to 2004 a run in the fastest max out category by ac mlm and max how it occurs when the six digit score counter reaches the highest possible score it can display nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine the fastest and most effective way to achieve this is by going for line clears of four in the move of a tetris which can only be achieved with a long bar level 19 is also the preferred starting level as it is both the fastest and highest scoring level to start on requiring just 44 consecutive tetrises to achieve a max out score the 2004 task starts strong right out of the gate bringing us to the first major strategy the tree strat by building a floor on top of the first few vertical pieces the time it takes the following pieces to land is reduced saving fractions of a second with every individual piece drop the frequent flickers you see on the screen occur as a result of frequent pause abuse which is the main strategy used to manipulate peace rng this is because the peace distribution is not truly random and could be influenced by any inputs made by the player in a typical run this couldn't be used to gain any serious advantage but the tools used for a task can allow for trial and error until the right sequence was inputted to produce the desired piece the tasks continued to score tetris through the level 20 transition where levels begin to take 10 lines to increment it isn't until level 22 where the very last tetris is scored for a max out at the earliest threshold of 164 lines the task immediately tops out afterwards ended with a final time of 4 minutes 6 seconds this test was later verified on actual hardware proving that it was in fact viable with the built-in hardware of both the 80s era nes and a tetris cartridge the 2004 task had several inefficiencies that would be ironed out in the coming years as not only was the run aiming for perfection it was also going for speed a time cut of 10 seconds was achieved by nico in 2005 using a much more efficient center wealth strategy this was followed with a 14 second improvement by ac mlm later in the year the first sub 30 run by baxter in 2007 and it wouldn't be until three years later that we would see the biggest breakthrough in the category ac mlm's 3 minute 11 second run this introduced a brand new discovery to the game one that would prove to be the most time saving of all the wrap around glitch when the uppermost three rows are completed and cleared the game is tricked into clearing the bottom row of the stack this not only counts a three line clear as a tetris but it also lowers the stack a full row creating an excess row of material after enough wrap around tetrises are performed this creates enough extra rows of blocks for four additional tetrises with the tree cycle repeating afterwards even for the task the top row could only be cleared on level 18 speeds but despite the need for two more tetrises in order to get a max out the wraparound glitch still saved nearly 15 seconds a huge amount for a run this linear for a while afterwards it seems like this max out task was just about perfect and as the years came and went no new discoveries were found or implemented in any run that was until 2020 when ground was broken on a new task that had potential to shatter the previous time tasser's r57 shell and arcaneful began to work on a task that was an extensive overhaul of the previous one but the theory crafting behind it would be a lengthy process in fact it would take over two years from the inception of the project for the task to be finalized this task would end up shattering the previous time using several new strategies to combine in what might truly be a perfect game of any as tetris the run starts out with a subtle time save using a more optimal set of pieces to build the initial tree putting it nearly two seconds ahead of the previous task through the first tetris the seemingly imperfect build early on is for a very good reason a strategy that arcaneful calls the chessboard by creating long bar sized holes in different columns directly beneath each other the time it takes to reset the tree is significantly reduced this is because the travel time of the first few long bars takes way less time this saves enough time for the new task to be 7 seconds ahead of acmlm's run through the 500k mark and the time saves continue to pile up from here at level 20 the new run opts to not create a tree for the third time and instead works on top of the already built material the wrapper on glitch can't be performed at level 19 speeds so the material at the bottom of the stack remains in place until the final strategy is utilized on level 21 a similar chessboard strategy pattern emerges only this one is for the grand finale clearing the entire playing field with four tetrises in a row due to hardware limitations on the nes console the odds of a given long bar aren't truly one in seven and for four in a row the odds work out to point zero zero zero nine percent a one and one hundred eight thousand p sequence naturally this couldn't be done by pure chance in the run and so rng manipulation stepped in once again to produce possibly one of the coolest endings to any game of nes tetras with the very last input marking the end of the task the time for this run clocks in at 2 minutes and 53 seconds saving over 18 seconds from the previous variant of the task this run optimized nearly every facet of the game from the beginning with the tree clearing the material in the middle and with a perfect clear that cleared every piece at the end it's very likely that this task marks the end of any major discoveries being found for the run but given the nature of how flimsy nes tetris can be we can't be so certain about that for now though this is the benchmark for both speed and perfection from perfection in the form of the shortest max out playthrough we pivot to the opposite side of the time scale what's the longest possible playthrough of nes tetris the answer to this is much more straightforward and brings us to the stackrabbit ai this ai was developed by greg boomkan with the goal of creating a bot that could perform flawlessly with the randomness of nes tetris there's no rng manipulation here and instead jackrabbit is handling each new piece with the fastest reaction time and peace movement possible on these settings the ai is able to cruise through the level 29 kill screen reaching levels that were thought to be impossible by the developers on level 138 it reaches the bug color schemes a mark that only two players have reached in the game but the bot isn't stopping there after over an hour and 3 000 lines of play later stack rapid reaches a kill screen that it can't avoid one caused by the game's inability to calculate the line clears all the way at level 237 if a code was put in to circumvent this crash the game would effectively roll over the level counter at 256 starting all the way back at zero again that means that with this code in place an infinite game of tetris is theoretically possible but it appears like that's the only way to accomplish this let me know if you want me to cover the stack rabbit ai in greater detail it's definitely a topic that warrants its own video if you enjoyed this video a like would be appreciated and consider subscribing to never miss future tetris content as always thank you so much for watching and i'll see you in the next video

Channel: okCobalt

Views: 239,939

Keywords: tetris 99, puzzle game, tetris effect, nes tetris, classic tetris, classic tetris world championship, rolling, rolling tetris, tetris, agamescout tetris, tetris comeback, classic tetris monthly, tetris top score, tetris world record, tetris rolling, nes, nes tetris world record, nes tetris rolling, retro gaming, world record, A bored god plays Tetris, tas, super mario bros tas, tetris tas

Id: wnwZdBjBI7Q

Length: 7min 30sec (450 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 25 2022