Tetris Online

Colours of tetrominoes in various Tetris games

Some people refer to the pieces by the colour in which they are drawn in a particular implementation of the Tetris game, but prior to TTC`s standardization in the early 2000s, those colours varied from implementation to implementation so this is not very sensible. For example, the cyan piece is a different shape in nearly every version of the game below.

On most implementations, players may press a button to accelerate the current piece`s descent, rather than waiting for it to fall. When a player locks a piece in this way, many such versions award a number of points based on the height the piece fell before locking. If a piece is manually dropped x lines and locked before the button is released, these versions will typically award either x points, or (level + 1)*x points. If a piece is not accelerated at all the player will gain no points for that piece unless a line is made.

Scoring in the arcade version

In the arcade game, there are three events which contribute to your score: placing tetrominoes, clearing rows, and completing rounds.

The score for placing a tetromino depends on the height at which the piece lands, the level of a rainbow indicator next to the player`s score, and whether the piece was dropped by accelerating it down. Let h be the height from the bottom of the play area to the block (0-20), let k be the number of bars shown on the rainbow indicator plus one (1-10), and let d be 1 if the piece fell at the normal rate or 2 if it was accelerated. The score for the piece is computed as d ( k + hk ).

You get one bar on the rainbow indicator for every four lines cleared, up to the maximum height of 9 bars. The rainbow bars are cumulative between rounds, but you have to complete the round in order to keep the bars gained -- if you lose a round and choose to continue the game, you forfeit any bars gained during that round.

As you start the game you score a constant value of 1 for each piece you let fall or 2 for each piece accelerated downward. As you get further along and the pieces fall faster, you get a larger base score for each piece plus a bonus that increases the higher you build your puzzle. The down side to building up the puzzle, of course, is that it becomes increasingly difficult to clear lines.

The score for clearing lines is straightforward: 50 points for a single, 150 for a double, 400 for a triple, and 900 for a quadruple (a "tetris").

Upon clearing the required number of lines for a round, you are granted a bonus for the number of empty lines above the top of the puzzle. Let e be the number of empty lines (1-20). The bonus score for completing the round is computed as 5e + 5e (ranging from 10-2100 points).

In addition, if you are playing a two-player game, the first player to complete the round gets an extra bonus of 2000 points.

Variations

Tetris has been subject to many changes throughout releases since the 1980s. It is difficult to place a standard on the game, as newer releases frequently progress it either to make the game better or to keep players interested. Newer Tetris games have made the trend of pace rather than endurance. Older releases such as Game Boy or NES Tetris offer records according to points. Since the meter for points is set to only a certain number of digits, these game`s records can be "maxed out" by an experienced player. The next big Game Boy release after Tetris, Tetris DX, in marathon mode ? comparable to mode A in previous releases ? allowed an additional digit for the point meter. Even so, players still maxed it to 9,999,999 after hours of play. For The New Tetris, world record competitors have spent over 12 hours playing the same game [4]. It is probably for this reason of seemingly everlasting play that in both Tetris DX and The New Tetris, the new modes s print and ultra were added. These modes require the player to act under a timer ? either to gain the most lines or points in that time. Recent releases like Tetris Worlds did away completely with point records. This particular game made records by how fast a certain number of lines could be cleared depending on the level. A drawback of this deviation, along with some other newer features, is that many traditional players rejected these advances all together. Critics of Tetris Worlds said it was broken due to how a piece is able to hover over the bottom for as long as a player needs [5]; although, players of the game generally do not mind this feature because exploiting it will only hinder play, which is unfavorable to making a record time. Tetris LLC has been juggling different features with different modes of play in past years trying to satisfy traditional and newer players alike.

There are many different modes of play added in recent years. Modes appearing in more than one major release include: classic marathon (game A), sprint (otherwise game B or 40 lines), ultra, square, and cascade.

The field dimension of Tetris is perhaps the least deviated among releases, with the exception of some releases on handheld platforms with small screens. (For example, the Tetris Jr. keychain has 8 columns and 12 rows.) It is almost always 10 blocks wide by 20 blocks high. However, the original Tetris for Game Boy is a major exception with 10 by 18. The field height was probably decreased to fit within the Game Boy screen. As a result, Tetris for Game Boy was more difficult compared to its NES counterpart. Although, it is fair to add that Game Boy Tetris also is subject to faster speeds at lower levels.

Blocks spawn traditionally in center most columns horizontally at topmost and second topmost row. The I tetromino occupies columns 4, 5, 6, and 7, the O tetromino occupies columns 5 and 6, and the remaining 5 tetrominoes occupy columns 4, 5 and 6 (or in some especially older versions 5, 6, and 7).

In traditional games, a level-up would occur once every ten lines are cleared. During a level-up, the blocks fall slightly faster, and typically more points are given. In some newer games such as Tetris Worlds, the number of lines required vary upon each new level. The fall speed also varies but is usually no more than 20 milliseconds faster for each step per level. For example, NES Tetris operates at 60 frames per second. At level 0, a piece falls one step every 48 frames, and at level 19, a piece falls one step every 2 frames. This means for each level, pieces fall 16 milliseconds faster per step. Level increments will either terminate at a certain point (Game Boy Tetris will top off at level 20) or will increase forever yet not increase in speed after a certain point. NES Tetris will level up in until the speed of level 29 (due to frame restrictions, pieces are not capable of dropping faster than this), but tool-assisted emulation will show that the level indicator will incre ase indefinitely-- eventually glitching the meter so that it must use hex values. Modern games such as Tetris: the Grand Master or Tetris Worlds, at their highest levels, opt to drop a piece more than once per frame. Pieces will appear to reach the bottom as soon as they spawn. As a result, a hover or slide feature is often implemented into these games to help deal with an otherwise unplayable fall speed. In some games, the hover time is regenerated after a piece is moved or rotated.

Soft drops were first implemented in Nintendo releases of Tetris so that pieces would be able to drop faster while not lock as to slide into gaps. The other option is hard dropping, which is mainly featured in PC Tetris games such as Microsoft Tetris. Here, a piece falls and locks in one frame. Newer Tetris games feature both options. Some games have their locking roles reversed, with soft dropping making the pieces drop faster and locking down, and hard dropping making the pieces drop instantly but not lock.

Single rotation is an older restriction that has since been ruled out in nearly every new official release by the favor of dual rotation, which uses two buttons (one for clockwise and one for counter clockwise rotation). In traditional games, the unsymmetrical vertical orientation I-, Z-, and S-pieces will fill the same columns for each clockwise and counter clockwise rotation. Some games vary this by allowing two possible column orientations-- one for counter clockwise and one for clockwise rotations. Double rotation, only seen in progressive clones such as Quadra, rotates the piece twice.

Piece preview allows a look at the next spawn. This feature has been implemented since the earliest games, though in those early games, having the preview turned on made the score increase more slowly.

Newest features

Newer versions of Tetris add different scoring goals not present in traditional Tetris. As achieving these goals while not topping out becomes more difficult, these games usually add a few features to help the player.

The New Tetris and The Next Tetris were the first official Tetris games to feature multiple piece previews, showing 3 in advance. Tetris Worlds for PCs and game consoles added 5 more, while the GBA version retained the 3 piece preview. Tetris DS uses the 6-piece preview.

The "phantom piece" (referred to in some versions, such as the "Tetris Mania" cell phone game, as the "ghost") is a feature that shows an obscuration in the shape of the current piece over where that piece would drop. The feature disposes with the old problem of misdrops and is relatively new.

Hold piece is an optional ability to reserve a piece for later use, allowing a player to either avoid undesirable pieces or save desirable ones, usually the I piece or a piece needed to complete another goal. Some clones featured it as a powerup that the player could earn and use once. A hold piece available to the player at all times was first featured in The New Tetris. Games that have hold piece generally activate it when the player presses both rotate buttons simultaneously or when the player presses a dedicated button, depending on the game. When hold piece is activated, it causes the falling piece to move to the top and trade places with the hold piece. However, the feature cannot be activated twice in a row; a piece released from the hold must be dropped into the well.

Initial rotation and Initial hold are features that make the game accept rotation/hold button inputs while the next piece is still in the preview area. With initial rotation, when the player holds down the rotation button after the previous piece has locked down but before the next piece comes into the well, the next piece will come into the well in an already rotated state. Initial hold works similarly, as the piece will be already swapped with the hold piece when it enters the well. Initial rotation and Initial hold first appeared in the Tetris: The Grand Master series.

Tetris DS features wireless on-line play through the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection system. This new version also takes advantage of the touch screen in the added "Touch Mode," which has no time limit. Instead, every block is already placed in a tall tower, and the player uses the stylus from the Nintendo DS to shift blocks left and right and, in earlier towers, rotate blocks. The goal is to clear enough lines so that a cage of balloons reaches the ground. (This mode is themed on the NES video game Balloon Fight, hence the cage of balloons.)

Tetris DS also introduces the Metroid-themed "Catch Mode." In this mode, the pieces still fall downward, but the stack is moved and rotated instead. As the falling pieces bump against the stack, they get clustered into it. To clear blocks, there must be a solid area of the stack that`s 4x4 or larger. When this happens, the blocks glow and the music changes. After ten seconds or upon pressing the X button, these blocks disappear and shoot a laser beam in a plus-shape, the horizontal part equal to the number of rows cleared and the vertical equal to the columns. This laser beam will destroy falling blocks and Metroid enemies in its path. The parts of the stack not hit by the laser beam will be pulled in towards the center of the stack after the laser beam dies. If a piece falls below of the bottom screen, the stack hits a falling block while rotating, or the stack hits a Metroid, the stack loses Energy. The player loses if the stack runs out of Energy or if the stack becomes so l arge that it can no longer fit on the bottom screen.

The Tetris arcade game offered different "puzzles" for selected rounds. The first three rounds are played normally, with no obstacles. At the start of round 4, eight bricks are placed vertically along each side of the well. Round 5 begins with ten bricks scattered throughout the bottom five rows. Round 6 begins with twenty bricks arranged in a pyramid. In rounds 7 through 9, the well starts out empty but single bricks will appear at random on top of your puzzle each time a piece lands that does not clear any lines, potentially thwarting any advance planning you may have done. In rounds 10 through 12, incomplete lines will randomly pop up underneath your puzzle, pushing the puzzle upward, when a piece lands without clearing any lines. Rounds 13 through 15 begin with more blocks arranged in predetermined patterns, and the cycle continues throughout the remaining rounds in the game in groups of three.

Tetris variants

Main article: Tetris variants

A number of Tetris variants exist. Some feature alternate rules and pieces, and others have completely different gameplay. A large number of ports exist for different platforms. The most popular online client for Tetris is Tetris DS.

Is it possible to play forever?

Normally, players lose for the following reasons:

They can no longer keep up with the increasing speed, or
A specific implementation of the game without very responsive control fails to keep up with itself when the pieces` downward velocity exceeds the maximum lateral velocity the player can apply to a tetromino. In other words, the possibilities for tetrominoes` movement are limited to the shape of a triangle in the game arena on faster levels. Some players may consider this situation a design flaw; however, it may be reasoned that this is an inherent challenge for the game. Altering this aspect, such as by assigning numerical placements, would change the dynamics of the game approach.

The question Would it be possible to play forever? was first encountered in a thesis by John Brzustowski in 1988 and more recently investigated in published articles by Walter Kosters, a player is inevitably doomed to lose.

Tetris on the Nintendo Game Boy system.

The reason has to do with the S and Z tetrominoes. If a player receives a large sequence of S tetrominoes, the na ve gravity used by the standard game eventually forces the player to leave a hole in a corner.

Suppose that player then receives a large sequence of Z tetrominoes. Eventually, that player will be forced to leave a hole in the opposite corner without clearing the previous hole. Back and forth, the holes will necessarily stack to the top. Since the pieces are distributed randomly, this sequence will eventually occur. If played long enough, and the random number generator is theoretically perfect, any player will lose the game. [6]

Practically, this may not occur. A good player may survive over 150 consecutive S and Z tetrominoes. On an implementation with a theoretically perfect random number generator, the probability at any given time of the next 150 tetrominoes being only S and Z is one in (7/2)¹⁵⁰ (approximately 4 10^-81). This number has the same order of magnitude as the number of atoms in the known universe. [7] Most implementations use a pseudorandom number generator to generate the sequence of tetrominoes, and such an S ?Z sequence is almost certainly not contained in the sequence produced by the 32-bit linear congruential generator in many implementations (which has roughly 4.2 10⁹ states). In fact, newer Tetris brand games from 2001 and later tend to follow a new guideline such that the randomizer generates all seven tetrominoes in a permutation at one time, guaranteeing an even distribution over the short term.

Several of the subproblems of Tetris have been shown to be NP-complete on a playing field of size n.

Music

The theme tune used in the Game Boy edition of Tetris (Music A) has become very widely known, to the point that Level 20 in Tetris DS is based on the original gameboy version and uses that theme (The only retro presentation in Tetris DS to be based on a game boy game). It is a Russian folk tune called " Korobeiniki" or "Korobeyniki."
Music A in the NES version is "Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy," a tune noted to be scene 14c of act two of The Nutcracker, which was composed by Tchaikovsky.
Music B in the Tengen version is the Kalinka, a famous Russian song written by Ivan Petrovich Larionov
Music C in the Game Boy version is an arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach`s French Suite No. 3 In B Minor, BWV 814, IV. Menuett - Trio.

Effect of Tetris on the brain

According to Richard Haier, et al. prolonged Tetris activity can also lead to more efficient brain activity. When first playing Tetris, brain function and activity increases, along with greater cerebral energy consumption, measured by glucose metabolic rate. As Tetris players become more proficient, their brains show a reduced consumption of glucose, indicating more efficient brain activity. [7]

Notes

In order to meet Wikipedia`s quality standards, this article`s trivia section requires cleanup.

Content in the trivia section should be integrated into other appropriate areas of the article.

Until the Sega Saturn, Tetris never (legally) appeared on a Sega system in the US. This led Sega to further expand the Columns series.
Tetris JR was hinted at being the last Nintendo Game & Watch game but Nintendo canceled it, fearing that it would cannibalize Game Boy hardware sales. Years later a Tetris JR would appear as a keychain game.
Tetris was referenced prominently in the video-game oriented cartoon Captain N: The Game Master. It was also referenced in the Muppet Babies episode " It`s Just a Pretendo" and The Simpsons episode " Strong Arms of the Ma".
In the NES game Zoda`s Revenge: StarTropics II, "tetrads" were featured heavily in the storyline as mystical stones the player was required to collect. It, and its prequel, StarTropics, also had an islander, Chief Coracola, whose middle name is "Tetris".
In the European exclusive video game, Asterix & Obelix XXL, a certain part of a level requires the player to solve a Tetris-base puzzle to enter the next room.
Also in the Game Boy Edition, when playing the A-Type Game, reaching 100,000 to 149,999 points will get you an animation of a small rocket lifting off. At 150,000 to 199,999 points, a slightly larger rocket will be rewarded. From 200,000 to 999,999 you will get the largest rocket from Mode A, which is a large Russian-styled rocket. When playing Mode B, completing the game at any of the level 9 stages rewards you with dancers and musicians. Completing level 9 with the height setting at 5 gets a large NASA-styled shuttle, which may be a reference to the abandoned Soviet Buran shuttle, which was later in development than the original US shuttle.
A Tetris hybrid called Joy Joy Block appeared on the Neo-Geo arcade system in 1992. The rules of the game was similar to Tetris, only in order to win the game, a balloon had to be released into the air via the removal of blocks in the Tetris manner. A reference to this game appears in the video game Neo Geo Battle Coliseum, where a character named Ai has attacks that reference this game, including a move where the Tetris-like Joy Joy blocks fall from the sky.
In Resident Evil 3, Jill Valentine must solve a puzzle involving lining up a series of Tetris-like shapes to form a corresponding pattern.
In God of War, Kratos must complete a Tetris-like puzzle to retrieve an item. The T, L and I pieces are included in the puzzle.
In Mario Party 3, there is a minigame called "Mario Puzzle Party" that seems very loosely based on the Tetris formula.
The famous artist Sam Francis dedicated 13 paintings to the Tetris game.
Allusions to Tetris are made in the movie Police Academy: Mission to Moscow, as the Russians are depicted in the movie as trying to hypnotize Americans through the use of a puzzle videogame referred to as "The Game" in the movie.
Tetris was referenced in the Family Guy episode "Prick Up Your Ears".

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Tetris.com, official site maintained by The Tetris Company
Repcred - Respect - Video of the different Tetris endings ( Flash)
Twin Galaxies Scoreboard for Tetris High Scores
The Father of Tetris
Original PC version of Tetris: information and download
Tetris Concept, with various information relating to Tetris
Tetris is officially considered hard, a mathematical analysis
Tetris Dreams, Scientific American summarizes a study of the phenomenon of "Tetris Dreams"
Tetris: a history
h2g2 article on Tetris
One of the biggest Tetris games 2000 square meters
Tetris Page located at NES HQ
Tetris reviewed for Apple`s iPod
Pravda, The game of Tetris was invented in the USSR 20 years ago
MobyGames
BBC documentary on Tetris`s origins
Death 800: Video of a player reaching level 800 on the difficult "T.A. Death" mode of Tetris: The Absolute

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