In the 1990 Nintendo World Championship competition, Tetris was the game to beat. The winner, Thor
Aackerlund, is still seen by many as the best to have ever played.
Today’s Classic Tetris tournaments are played on that same version of Nintendo Tetris, using original NES
game systems, controllers, and Tetris cartridges.
In 2009, a player named Harry Hong became the first to achieve the highest possible score of 999,999 points.
From the beginning, competitive players of classic Tetris tried to push the game past what its developers
imagined possible.
Once the score was pushed past 999,999, the game would no longer show an accurate score. Because playing in
level 29 and beyond was out of the question, players aimed to break 1 million before the game would
inevitably beat them. This meant maintaining “maxout pace” where players would complete enough “Tetrises”
before the kill screen.
When the Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC) debuted in 2010, the kill screen at level 29 was the
game’s final, unbeatable boss. Players pushed to get the highest score possible before level 29, at which
point the game’s pieces started falling at double speed. It seemed humanly impossible to keep up with the
falling shapes, which would pile up on players’ screens and spell death for their game.
The scoring system for NES is as follows:
level
points for 1 line
points for 2 lines
points for 3 lines
points for 4 lines
0
40
100
300
1200
1
80
200
600
2400
2
120
300
900
3600
...
...
...
...
...
9
400
1000
3000
12000
n
40*(n+1)
100*(n+1)
300*(n+1)
1200*(n+1)
Tetris usually has a maximum score of 999,999.
However, with rom hacks you are able to allow the score to counter to to exceed past this usually capped
score.
They do this by assigning numbers past 1,000,000 to a letter. For example, 1,000,000 would be represented as
A00000 and 1,100,000 would be B00000.
Techniques
There are three main types of controller techniques:
DAS
Hypertapping
Rolling
For nearly all of Tetris’ history, NES Tetris has been broadly split amongst two play styles, DAS (Delayed
Auto Shift) and hypertapping.
The most common way for a long time was DAS. This is a standard way of holding a controller for most people.
Players would hold down the directional pad to move pieces to either side of the matrix. Although
comfortable, this technique bared difficult in later stages as you could only go as fast as Tetris’ built in
side to side motion.
The only technique to gain real advantage over this was hypertapping. Hypertapping required you to tap your
finger on the D-pad at 12 times per second or faster. This is obviously very difficult to do for a lot of
people.
From 2010 to 2017 DAS players have dominated Tetris Championships. As there weren’t many people who were
good at Tetris and could hypertap. However in 2018 when a rookie hypertappper won , a new younger
demographic were inspired to pick up the technique. Ever since, we have seen hypertappers win virtually
every major tournament.
Until now, where a third play style has been introduced called rolling. Rolling is even faster than
hypertapping and it doesn’t require insanely fast finger speed. Rolling was first introduced by Cheez_Fish.
With this technique he could get button pressing speeds of 20hz, meaning 20 times per second, faster than
even the fastest hypertappers.
Soon, Cheez would start using this technique in competition after reaching level 29. The first competition
Cheez would use it would be the classic Tetris open in March of 2021 vs Joseph Saelee. This was both the
first 1.3 million score and the first time someone has ever scored 4 tetrises past level 29 in competition.
Even in the age of hypertappers, seeing this kind of play on the kill screen is not normal. Usually most
games would not reach past level 32 using hypertapping.
Shortly after this, Cheez set a new world record for highest score on a level 29 start with 259,000 points.
This is probably one of the most impressive games of NES Tetris of all time.
Now in 2022, many players have adopted rolling as part of their technique. Therefore, pushing the game to
new limits and even higher scores.
The Future of Competitive Tetris
Due to the evolution of techniques outlined above, a lot of players are now able to comfortably play past
level 29. This has changed the logistics of the game. Now with rolling, many matches are lasting a lot
longer than in previous years.
At the Tetris 2022 Masters event in August, EricICX set a new world record for being the first person ever
to reach level 146. This match also winded up getting the record for longest NES Tetris match ever, with
this one game lasting 37 minutes and 20 seconds. This is over four and half times longer than a traditional
Tetris game.
This has a lot of people in the community debating whether it’s time for the rules to change. The reasoning
behind this is to reduce the amount of time per game. Officials believe that audiences may get bored of
watching extensive Tetris matches and the other reason is so that organisers won’t go past schedule.
The two biggest Tetris tournament have both recently put out statements regarding what they are going to do
to prevent this from happening.
Classic Tetris Monthly (CTM) have announced they will be introducing a line cap in September 2022. Once
players reach level 49, pieces will fall rapidly at a rate of 6 pieces per second making it virtually
impossible to play. The Classing Tetris World Championships (CTWC) in October 2022, have announced they
aren’t going to have a line cap, score cap or time cap at all.
