Revision as of 21:21, 4 January 2019

The New Tetris for N64 was developed by H2O and published by Nintendo. Like Tetrisphere before it, The New Tetris features a soundtrack by Neil Voss. In this game, the Tetrominoes can be assembled into Gold and Silver Blocks.

It has lock delay, soft and firm drop, 4×4 squares, hold piece (though not IHS), three next pieces, ghost piece (TLS), and milder wall kick than SRS (notably, T-spin triples don't work but lock delay is still abusable on no-garbage play). The speed never gets anywhere near 20G. [ oh? roughly where does it top out? Maybe 1G? ] Colors of some tetrominoes differ from those of the Tetris Guideline: L is magenta, T is yellow, and O is light gray.

Top-out condition is the same as in Atari's Tetяis and the "push" mode of Nintendo's Tetris DS: the game ends when one block is placed above the playfield's top row.

The New Tetris defines twists (known in the manual as "spin moves") differently from the "T-spin" rule used in Tetris Worlds, Tetris DS, and other games that use SRS. In this game, a twist occurs when a tetromino locks in a position such that it cannot move left, right, or up without rotating.

Tetromino behavior

ARE: ca. 500 ms
Randomizer: Preliminary data suggests a 63-piece bag
Entry position: rows 21-22, centered, JLSTZ rounded to the right
Lock delay: ca. 500 ms, step reset, no manual lock
DAS: ca. 10 frames, repeating 5 frames
Up: Firm drop, not locking
Down: Soft drop, not locking
Top out: tetromino locks with a block in row 21

TNT64-pieces — The New Tetris: Rotations in free space. Top row: I, O. Next rows: J, L, S, T, Z.

The rotation system of The New Tetris is a predecessor to SRS, with somewhat flexible wall kicks and floor kicks. But surprisingly for a game co-developed by BPS, its handling of J, L, S, and Z in free space is more like Atari Games' arcade game and its unlicensed NES port than like BPS's previous games.

Wall kick is yet to be fully described.

Squares

Main article: Square Platforming

A 4x4 block square made out of four tetrominoes becomes a monolithic square of the same size.

A square is entirely within the playfield.
If things are projecting out of a 4x4 block region, it is not a square.
If it has a hole in it, it is not a square.
If it contains blocks that form part of a tetromino or square that was partially removed, it is not a square.

Monosquare: A 4x4 block square made out of four identical tetrominoes.
Multisquare: Any other 4x4 block square made out of four tetrominoes.

Details

If a tetromino forms two overlapping squares at once, the gold wins over silver, the top wins over the bottom, and the left wins over the right. It is impossible to verify whether the top-right wins over the bottom-left, because that would require an impossible o-spin between two partial squares.

The following diagrams use The New Tetris colors, which are not the same as the later Tetris Guideline colors:

Drop O, L, I

Drop O, I

Drop another L

Prefers the square
on the left to the
square on the right

Two I, an O,
and an L

Drop L

Slide in an O

Prefers the top
square to the
bottom square

Drop J, I, I

Another J and I

Drop another I

Prefers gold
over silver

Drop L, L, O

Drop O and
slide in L

Slide in L

Prefers gold over
silver vertically

Given that The New Tetris is proprietary software, the public does not know exactly how the detection is implemented in the game program. But given the definition of a square above, it is straightforward to transform this definition into an algorithm for recognizing squares that behaves identically to the game's algorithm:

The playfield is stored as a matrix of 10 columns by 20 rows. Each entry has 4 bits for color, 1 bit for right connection, 1 bit for down connection, 1 bit for left connection, 1 bit for up connection, and 1 bit for being part of a tetromino that was broken by a line clear.

Before and after checking for lines, the engine scans the playfield top to bottom, left to right, looking for monosquares and marking them as gold. Then it makes a second pass, looking for multisquares and marking them as silver. To see if there is a square in the 4x4 cell region whose lower left corner is column x of row y:

Make sure that the left edge isn't connected to anything. That is, make sure that the blocks at (x, y), (x, y + 1), (x, y + 2), and (x, y + 3) don't have their left connection bit set to true. Do the same for the other four edges.
Make sure that all cells in the region are filled with blocks.
Make sure that all blocks in the region belong to whole tetrominoes (not tetrominoes with a block broken off, and not pieces of squares that have already been marked).
In the first pass, make sure that all blocks in the region are the same color.

Side note: The author of The New Tetris claims that the game used a different, unspecified, secret algorithm to detect squares.

Lines

1 line accounted for when each one is cleared.
5 for a tetris and when a 1×4 strip of silver square is cleared.
10 points when a 1×4 strip of gold square is cleared
no instant reward for
- completing a 4x4 square (gold or silver)
- spin moves (twists)

So a tetris with all four lines of a silver square is worth 25 points (4 + 1 + 5 * 4), and a tetris with all four lines of a gold square is worth 45 points (4 + 1 + 10 * 4). The greatest possible reward for a single move is therefore 85, as in the following case:

The total of 85 is made up of:

4 from the four lines cleared
5 as four were cleared simultaneously
10 × 8 = 80 as eight 1×4 strips of gold are cleared

Game modes

The game modes are:

Marathon – game continues indefinitely (or until only one player remains in multiplayer)
Ultra – a race to 150 lines
Sprint – a three minute countdown

Each mode can be single player or multiplayer. In multiplayer mode up to four players can compete, with the option of no garbage, directed garbage or hot potato garbage.

Garbage modes:

None – garbage is disabled
Directed – each player can choose the recipient of his or her garbage by using the left and right C buttons
Hot potato – one player is outlined in red and receives all garbage. When this player completes a line the hot potato moves to a random player (which could be the same one)

In single player mode a computer-controlled opponent can be activated (which also forces garbage mode on), but even on the highest skill level it is not challenging to stronger players. The CPU opponent's name is randomly selected from a set in the ROM; "Nachanca" has been seen to exploit infinity to completely prevent topping out.

Successor: "Square Tetris" mode in Tetris Worlds

Cheat codes (article)

Enter these codes as your name to activate it.

Code	Pun	Effect
AI2EZ4U?	"AI too easy for you?"	Increases speed of CPU's tetriminoes.
01DERS	"Zero wonders"	Clears all lines and resets wonders
1N175R4M	"Init SRAM"	Clear high scores
2FAST4U	"Too fast for you"	Increases speed of player's tetriminoes.

External links

Programmer David Pridie hidden rant (contains censored swear words)

Changes: The New Tetris