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After 34 years, someone beat Tetris [video]
- philihp 3y agoAlexander wept
- kaffekaka 3y agoi know a guy too
- ajdude 3y agoSee also: Celebrating the first NES Tetris game crash (biggieblog.com) 197 points by davidrjones1977 10 days ago | 56 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38734106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38734106
- dragontamer 3y agoI knew about hypertapping or rolling, but I wasn't plugged into the developments after that. Exciting to finally get to the kill screen of this classic!
- kypro 3y agoIt's almost inhuman how good some people can get at rapid and highly complex muscle movements with enough practise. What an amazing achievement.
- somenameforme 3y agoAnd mental, think about something like chess! In general it's just incredible how good we can become at anything. It's kind of interesting to think about in times long past where warfare was melee based and how there would have been similar outliers. Somebody who lucked into some good genetics, good diet, and good training would have been a mountain among men.
- whatshisface 3y agoThey must have been incredibly disappointed when they first encountered a well-disciplined line of mediocre pikemen!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thechao 3y agoDiscipline, not training, for sure! The Spartans considered training (for war) to be demeaning. https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/ https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
- epups 3y agoYour reference does not seem to substantiate your claim. While interesting, it seems overly occupied with offering heavy moral judgement based on a modern perspective, to the point where it is exhausting and frankly annoying.
- AlwaysRock 3y ago> It's kind of interesting to think about in times long past where warfare was melee based and how there would have been similar outliers. Somebody who lucked into some good genetics, good diet, and good training would have been a mountain among men. The UFC exists today. Some fighters, like Jon Jones, are incredibly gifted and have won, and held, a championship title despite doing a lot of things "wrong" outside of the ring. Part of the enjoyment of watching modern MMA is seeing chess matches and tactics play out between the most highly skilled fighters in the world.
- wnevets 3y ago> like Jon Jones, are incredibly gifted with lots of steroids and other PEDs
- myfonj 3y agoI'm not sure if the parallel with the virtuosity of musical instruments was intended, but in any case one cannot disagree.
- imiric 3y agoI think there's a reason most top Tetris players are kids. There's no way an adult could achieve the same level of hand-eye coordination, no matter how much they practice. This is also why young players are generally better at first-person shooters, and why I'm unlikely to stay alive for more than a minute in CoD. ':)
- lawlessone 3y agoIs this all only possible with old consoles? I'm speculating that modern games limit the amount user IO on PC and Consoles?
- tokai 3y agoOnly Teris for NES matters.
- anthk 3y agoIronically the Tengen release was better.
- jerf 3y agoDepends on what you mean by "limit user IO". Standard USB keyboards have a limit on the number of keys you can hold down at once but otherwise the limits are your physical speed rather than the protocol. Similarly, these techniques for fast clicking are still under what even the NES hardware is capable of; this rolling technique allows clicking buttons much more quickly than you normally can but they're still a long way from the 30Hz strobe the hardware itself will accept, as used by Tool Assisted Speedruns on real hardware. So even in the NES generation the "limits" were still far, far beyond human capabilities.
- lawlessone 3y ago>this rolling technique allows clicking buttons much more quickly than you normally can but they're still a long way from the 30Hz strobe the hardware itself will accept That actually kind of what I was thinking of :-) . I would have though more "modern" games , particularly multiplayer, would have software limits even as the hardware got more capable.
- kroltan 3y agoQuite the contrary, actually. Some games check for inputs every frame, and computers nowadays can run modern games at up to hundreds of frames per second. The simulation rate is often lower than the draw rate though. Minecraft is as low as 20 updates per second, while something like Counter Strike 2 handles events immediately and sends precise timestamps to the server, not discretized to any sampling rate beyond your hardware.
- mr_sturd 3y agoUnreal achievements being made in the game. I hope the "rebirth" screen can be reached! I'm left wondering if the game score be overflowed to produce different kill screens?
- prng2021 3y agoI’m not into Tetris but that was surprisingly interesting.
- vidarh 3y agoYeah, same. I hardly ever even watch youtube videos, and skipped a bit at the start but then quickly got caught up in it...
- jasoneckert 3y agoI beat Tetris back in 2020 (although by a different means): https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/i-finally-beat-tetris/ https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/i-finally-beat-tetris/
- strunz 3y agoMan I would change your font, that is super difficult to read as large blocks of text.
- recursive 3y agoI guess I'm just really good at reading text. It wasn't even a challenge for me.
- Kiro 3y agoText looks normal to me. What's the issue?
- turtlebits 3y agoThe default font-family for that page is cursive, you see during the FOUC (before the webfont loads). Maybe the user has web fonts disabled?
- jasoneckert 3y agoAuthor here. I just changed the default font in the css from cursive to regular for those who have web fonts disabled. Try it now ;-)
- getwiththeprog 3y agoDon't pander to the haters! PS love the by-line "WARNING: FULL FRONTAL NERDITY"
- QuiDortDine 3y agoIndeed serif fonts are considered easier to read for big blocks of text. I would consider the font too thin as well.
- johnisgood 3y agoI get why this is exciting and all that, but how is bad code (or insufficient resources) leading to the bug or crash equivalent to "player beating the game"?
- noman-land 3y agoWe're on hackernews. Think instead of the player triumphing over the game as a hacker.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mensetmanusman 3y agoBecause the game is code.
- ghusto 3y agoIt's the last thing that can happen in the game, which I think is a fair definition of getting to the end, or "beating" it.
- johnisgood 3y agoWhen I made a game crash through a bug before I did not consider myself beating the game, that is why I have or had difficulties understanding. I suppose the difference is making it crash through playing as many levels, for example, as possible.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y agoI guess that's the difference between playing a game to the end, and exploiting a game to jump to the end or crash it. The former might be considered beating the game, the latter might not.
- JohnBooty 3y agoIn order to get the "kill screen" on Tetris (or Pac-Man, etc) you need to play at an absolute master's level for an extended period of time Also the Tetris player here (edit: arguably) isn't "exploiting" a bug. The game just literally hits a limitation that can only be hit via extended and nearly superhuman play
- 7373737373 3y agoNow the question is: can the RAM code execution lead to interesting game states/exploits like the Pokémon Yellow Total Control Hack? https://youtube.com/watch?v=p5T81yHkHtI https://youtube.com/watch?v=p5T81yHkHtI
- rzzzt 3y agoThere's also one for Super Mario World: https://youtu.be/jnZ2NNYySuE https://youtu.be/jnZ2NNYySuE
- kirjavascript 3y agoIt can and we have achieved Arbitrary Code Execution in NES Tetris. The setup is horrifyingly complicated and precise though, involving getting some near-impossible scores and entering specific names in the highscore list, then reaching the crash on the same frame that the internal values for random number generation happen to represent a jump instruction to said highscore list (and we get lucky and various registers also happen to contain values we need). Then from there, there is some bootstrapping before total control is achieved.
- 7373737373 3y agoHoly shit, and massive kudos!
- fractal161 3y agoHowever, I'm like 90% sure that this can be made easier using p3/p4 controllers through the famicom expansion port. In particular, Hydrantdude and I found a consistent enough setup using the single at 1489 lines (pushdown gives you a 50% chance, and I think). This setup would even allow crude human-possible ACE. Right now we're limited to small payloads (I made a proof of concept that activates the unused two player mode), but more sophisticated setups might give us more power.
- ejona86 3y agoSize-optimized, RAM-only mods. Sounds interesting...
- Whitespace 3y agoI was very saddened to hear that his father passed away not that long ago. That has got to be very hard for a 13 year old.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jayflux 3y agoReally? I was only today reading a Reddit comment from last week of who I assumed was his dad? https://www.reddit.com/r/Tetris/s/hDAjX39SGt https://www.reddit.com/r/Tetris/s/hDAjX39SGt
- sureglymop 3y agoThe comments seem to be from his mom.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoThe last couple of years in Tetris have been wild I grew up with Tetris and playing a traditional DAS [1] style and never was able to put the time into learning hypertapping. Once rolling came out a few years ago I totally abandoned trying to keep up. My highest score was almost a maxout on 29 Something you'll notice too is that the younger players are crushing the traditional players by changing the rules. So, NOBODY at CTWC is playing DAS anymore and I think Jonas was the last big DAS player, before moving to Tapping. I attribute this to anyone over 30 learning in the DAS style while younger players can START with rolling. RIP Jonas Neubauer (NubbinsGoody https://www.twitch.tv/nubbinsgoody https://www.twitch.tv/nubbinsgoody) he was the guy that kind of lead the explosion of Tetris after the movie came out and Thor more or less retired. He and his wife were very helpful to me trying to get to maxout with some tips back in 2018 to get a CRT monitor as that was a limiting factor back then. [1]https://tetris.fandom.com/wiki/DAS https://tetris.fandom.com/wiki/DAS
- hannofcart 3y agoI thought I knew Tetris. I guess I don't. I'm just humbled by how little I understood of the comment above.
- shadefinale 3y agoWhat's cool is a lot of the above terms are specific to NES tetris too. Tetris has a lot of depth and there's a ton of variants out there depending on what you want to get out of playing. Personally I love the TGM series but it's totally different from what you'd think of if you started with NES tetris.
- crdrost 3y agoQuick glossary: DAS - "Delayed autoshift," the delay is between when you press the button and when the long keypress starts to register as multiple clicks, auto-shifting the piece to the sides. So this is kind of a software-based "convention" that everyone knows, you open your word processor, you press the down arrow, it goes "down" one line and then waits for a quarter-second and then starts going in a more fluid motion steadily downwards as the software converts the continuous keypress to effectively be a stream of down-button-presses. Tetris has this too, if you hold down left/right you'll move once then after a delay it'll start shifting constantly to the edges. tapping, hypertapping - tapping a NES controller very quickly by using pressure in your grip to create a "springy" system where you can rapidly flip up/down across the actuation point, so that you don't wait for the delay and the computer-auto-button-presses but communicate each button-press yourself CTWC - Classic Tetris World Championship, hosted by the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. Rolling - strategies where you flip tapping/hypertapping "upside down", so that the hand holding the button in tension is actually pressing on the D-pad while the hand actuating the button rapidly is pressing on the traditional bottom of the controller. I don't know what styles are popular but the controller itself might be held upside down to facilitate this. This is something like pressing on your mouse button with two or more fingers in an alternating rhythm in clicky-style games, normally the directional pad is too small to hit with multiple fingers but this technique allows multiple fingers to each register a separate keypress. Maxout - I believe this refers to when the score overflows the digits available for display and the game just tells you that you have 999,999 points and you have to use independent means to confirm how much you actually scored CRT monitor - hopefully I don't have to explain this to folks here but a big bulky sort of display that was used before LCDs became ubiquitous, short for "cathode ray tube," which is a big electron gun that we would eagerly point at our own faces hoping that the electrons all got 100% absorbed by little phosphors on the actual screen, which could be reliably triggered to emit red, green, or blue light.
- hintymad 3y agoWhat an inspiring video. I might go so far as to say it is this level of geekiness that moves our civilization forward.
- Angostura 3y agoI found this video weirdly moving. Thanks for posting OP.
- 3abiton 3y agoWent through the Tetris rabbit hole.
- brianbreslin 3y agoWatching this reminded me of The Wizard movie from the 1980s. Which at the time (I was 7) I had no idea what ASD was, now it resonates in a completely different way. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098663/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098663/
- anticorporate 3y agoI only ever knew the version of Tetris that shipped with the Windows Entertainment Pack <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Entertainment_Pack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Entertainment_Pack>. Since this version was made for 16-bit Windows, it was no surprise that they used a 16-bit integer to store your score. What was surprising is that they used a signed 16-bit integer, meaning that after you passed 32,767 points, your score would roll over into the negative. Teenage me was so good, I'd consider it a disappointment if my score didn't turn negative in every round I played.
- danielvaughn 3y agoI played Minesweeper almost every day during the summer in the 90's. I got so good at it that I eventually whittled down my time to a mere 17 seconds on the largest puzzle (expert). At that point I figured I couldn't get any faster, and moved on to a new game. Years later, I was looking at the Guiness Book of World Records and noticed that the record for the expert minesweeper is something like 25 seconds. Of course, I'd have to dig up my old computer from a landfill to try and prove it, so I just have to live out the rest of my days knowing that I'm an unrecognized world record holder.
- xtracto 3y agoxyzzy !
- itchyouch 3y agoFunny story. When my friend started playing minesweeper, I would go to his computer and clear out all of his scores by editing in my scores as "beating" him. Being super competitive, in order not to lose to me, he became a fiend at minesweeper, being able to do solve the beginner series in under 20 seconds. As he would get better and better, I would continue to beat his high score until he had the beginner down to somewhere around 7 seconds. I changed it to 6 seconds. He beat it to 5 seconds. I changed it to 4 seconds. At that point he was like, WHAT IS GOING ON? And then I showed him how I could just edit the scores. Boy was he dissapointed. But it goes to show how far we can push ourselves if we know that it's "possible."
- tslocum 3y agoSpeaking of Tetris, you can play it (single-player or multiplayer!) in your terminal via SSH: ssh playnetris.com Code: https://code.rocket9labs.com/tslocum/netris https://code.rocket9labs.com/tslocum/netris
- Stevvo 3y agoA minute or two into a game I got booted off; Connection to playnetris.com closed by remote host. Connection to playnetris.com closed. >ssh playnetris.com ssh: connect to host playnetris.com port 22: Connection refused
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sixQuarks 3y agoWow, practicing for 3-4 hours per day! I feel like they’re gonna be regretful for spending that much time on this later in life. I spent way too much time playing battlefield 1942, had fun but way too much time wasted.
- nvarsj 3y agoTime enjoyed is not time wasted.
- recursive 3y agoYou think most other kids are spending that time on something less regrettable? This is a serious accomplishment. Being able to commit to a goal, and putting in the work to achieve it is a useful skill. I believe it's transferable to some degree between disciplines. It might be called "grit". He's not just goofing off. In order to get to this level of performance, he'd have to have an organized training program, not just be goofing around with tetris. I see it as similar to getting good at bowling, golf, or tennis.
- shermantanktop 3y agoI'm not a sports person, or an organized-competition person for that matter, but I see a qualitative difference between "best bowler in school" and "setting world records for bowling." I wouldn't say being the first is a waste of time, because I think virtually any effort at self-improvement has some value. But being among the best in the world, even in a smaller competitive environment, is extraordinary regardless of the intrinsic value of the activity. It also reflects a certain tunnel vision which can be helpful or harmful later in life. But he'll be dining out on this story for a long time.
- nullhole 3y agoTo quote Arcade Fire, If I could have it back All the time that we wasted I’d only waste it again If I could have it back You know I would love to waste it again Waste it again and again and again
- throw7 3y agoIs there a definitive definition of "glitch"? To me, it's just a bug...
- singlow 3y agoI think its a subset of bugs. A glitch usually is not fatal, allowing the program to continue in a possibly degraded/altered way. In games it most often refers to a bug that allows for some unintended behavior that may be advantageous for certain desired outcomes, although it also can be just a visual artifact or it could get you stuck. But I wouldn't expect it to be used to describe a bug that caused the game to shut down or end instantly.
- sschueller 3y agoThe game is beaten IMO when you beat level 255 and rollover back to 0 avoiding any position that would result in a crash before then.
- klyrs 3y ago[flagged]
- charcircuit 3y agoA comment is just as valid as contributing to a conversation as a video.
- klyrs 3y agoThe video is the topic of conversation, because it is a record of an achievement. A lowbrow dismissal of that achievement is, as you say, a valid contribution to a conversation about the video. But I would not put the achievement and the lowbrow dismissal on a level as you have suggested. And for whatever it's worth, my kneejerk dismissal of the lowbrow dismissal is just as valid a contribution to the conversation. So, good day to you.
- kbutler 3y agosschueller offered a differing opinion, klyrs attempted to gatekeep the conversation. I agree the rollover to level 0 would be the ultimate milestone, if it really resets to the beginning and doesn't introduce a bunch of new challenges and crash conditions. But this would be a much less satisfying milestone, as it just leads to the endurance-fest of being able to play until your physical/mental stamina is exhausted.
- klyrs 3y agoI gatekept with the force of a peanut husk. Boo hoo.
- 3y ago
- 1letterunixname 3y agoI'm gonna have to ask you to go ahead and come back another time. ---- Edit - Also worth a look: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409371 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409371 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12758060 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12758060
- havkom 3y agoI did not know about the scene but this video made me happy! Great to see such dedication!
- ChatGTP 3y agoThis guy is like Neo from The Matrix
- tennisflyi 3y agoBeen “solved” via playing forever, https://harddrop.com/wiki/Playing_forever#:~:text=If%20you%20play%20the%20standard,over%20again%20and%20play%20indefinitely https://harddrop.com/wiki/Playing_forever#:~:text=If%20you%2....
- exabrial 3y agowith what... a stack overflow error? (pun... just in case anyone didn't get it)
- gareth_untether 3y agoI fell in love with Tetris back in the 90s, I’ve played it on a bunch of platforms (including a keyring). To learn VR game dev I’ve been working on a 3D version of Tetris: https://youtu.be/o6RH_iVxlyc?si=Ha15IF1jPKkOsUwa https://youtu.be/o6RH_iVxlyc?si=Ha15IF1jPKkOsUwa
- hiccuphippo 3y agoThat looks great! Have you played BlockOut? It was a 3D Tetris for DOS. You might get some good ideas from it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo2b4--pI60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo2b4--pI60
- epiccoleman 3y agovideogamedunkey has a pretty entertaining video that covers a bunch of various versions of Tetris through the years: https://youtu.be/EUJb1BD63ME?si=mRiq3p_f7Mh0VgX4 https://youtu.be/EUJb1BD63ME?si=mRiq3p_f7Mh0VgX4
- galkk 3y agoThe speed of change in Tetris after invention of rolling is crazy. Just like 4-5 years ago it felt like Joseph is GOAT and his records will hold for a while, and now he and the style that he perfected (hypertappjng) looks like relic of dinosaur era.
- lbeckman314 3y agoAmazing to see the progression lately, and GameScout is up there with Summoning Salt as one of the best gaming story tellers out there right now. Here is another great introduction to the Tetris community by John Green from 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twS0SrDg-fc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twS0SrDg-fc
- novolunt 3y ago[dead]
- HackerThemAll 3y agoThe best ever implementation of Tetris was Twintris on Amiga. The Soviet Union flag with bouncing hammer, then wonderful music and smooth animation, exploding sounds when clearing full rows - oh, my. Go and watch a bit of it on YouTube.
- martinbaun 3y agoAmazing how this game have influenced my generation and the next generation of people and games. Beautiful
- wladamir 3y agoAmazing sportsmanship, talent and determination! Kudos to this young man and this community, a true lesson of humanity.
- ComputerGuru 3y agoSo for a certain class of games, I have found the secret to be — after having developed the muscle memory and the instinct — completely “zoning out” and playing solely by reflex. You simply can’t mentally process and intentionally respond in the timespan required to beat these games at higher levels, it has to be fully subconscious and automatic to win. The only issue is that I haven’t figured out how to intentionally disconnect. It’s almost like falling asleep: you can be jarred back to reality and realize you were “zoned out” and can sometimes feel yourself on the edge of zoning back out, but the very act of “cognizantly deciding” to relinquish mental control is at fundamental odds with actually doing so. So you just have to “let it happen” so much as I can tell. (My personal best high score in snake or some similar game on TI-82 or whatever came when I was playing covertly under the desk arm in math class in middle school while paying attention to the lesson with all my non-visual senses.)