I Finally Did It

[Sullla]

Finally broke 700,000 in Tetris, my goal for about the last three years now. To give you a little back history, I've been playing this game since I first got it for the NES when I was about 9 years old; that would put it in 1991. I can still remember when I first hit 400,000, how happy that made me. I was in high school at the time, so that would have been about 1996 or 1997. I first broke the 500,000 mark when I was in my first or second year of college, probably in 2001 or 2002. And it was a big deal for me when I first hit 600,000, which was two years ago in 2005. So you can imagine how this has been a LONG time coming, 15 years now and counting.

I don't know if anyone else is familiar with this particular version of Tetris (there's a million of them out there, of course). The game essentially ends at 290 lines, because the pieces at level 29 move too fast to reach the sides of the playing area. I've known for some time now that 700,000 was possible, but would require flawless execution from start to finish to pull off. I've probably made at least a thousand different attempts in the last year to try and hit this mark, before all the stars aligned and I got my perfect game. I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am today.

This would be second highest score of all time, according to the official record holders at Twin Galaxies:



That score by Harry Hong is unbelievable, and I'm never touching that. This is also of course an illegimate score for Twin Galaxies purposes, since it was done on an emulated PC. But it's nice to know that I have a score that stacks up with the best that has ever been done.

I mostly wanted to share this with the rest of you, but also throw open the question of whether or not some of you have similar stories to tell. Thoughts, comments?

[sunrise089]

Congrats Sullla, that's amazing. I cannot begin to comprehend how someone could have an even higher score - how could they even move the pieces into place at level 29? How long did this game take to play?

As for our own achievements....I have nothing. I may like video games, but I've never claimed to be particularly good at them. I'm lucky to be above average at one; the top of the world isn't even worth dreaming of.

[T-hawk]

Awesome! I've done 350,000 on NES Tetris, and I know that 700K would be a couple orders of magnitude more difficult than that.

My Twin Galaxies claim to fame is on Crazy Taxi, Dreamcast version. $114900 on Arcade mode and $127000 on Original. Both are official records, verified by videotaping the games. To put that in perspective, those scores involved getting about 237 out of 240 possible passengers (which requires nearly perfect planning and sequencing of the passengers as well as reflex skills), and $100K was once thought to be on the edge of world-class possibility.

http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=22&p=4352

My other video game claim to fame is on the Pro Pinball series. On Pro Pinball The Web (the first one), I put up a score of 8,000,000,000,000 (8 trillion) when the previous world record was 1,200,000,000,000. (This isn't as hard as it sounds; the game is fairly easy to play indefinitely by earning extra balls faster than you lose them). I've topped 10 trillion a few times since then, but the game has always crashed instead of giving me the high score code.

And on the next game, Pro Pinball Timeshock, the company ran a contest using the demo version limited to 5 minutes of game play. I won that contest with a score of 1,200,000,000. Basically the secret was to stack both types of multiball at the same time to collect concurrent jackpots quickly. The prize for that was a real live Terminator 2 arcade pinball machine, which is still proudly in the den at my parents' house. (My apartment is too small for a pinball machine.) I most definitely remember the call from the company's representative informing me that I'd won -- I was at work (an internship in college), and got excited and loud enough that most of the department overheard what I'd done.

Finally, it's not world class, but I can roll over the classic arcade game Galaga at will. That usually starts to draw a crowd once I pass 500,000 or so. And I definitely remember the first time I did so, since my previous attempt had fizzled out at an agonizingly close 969,000.

[Zed-F]

Hm, arcade games... never was willing to spend enough money on most of them to become truly good.

About the only game I can remember being really good at was Willow (based on the movie), which I could beat at will back when I was playing it regularly. I tried an emulated version and the controls were different enough that I lost patience with it.

[ShadowHM]

Congratulations, Sullla !

I can't begin to imagine the coordination needed to achieve that, let alone the dedication.

The only 'game' I have even tried to get good at has been crokinole. I have had a never-ending succession of competitors blessed with good natural coordination to keep me challenged, and after a lifetime of play, I still lose to them.

[mostly_harmless]

Man, you have way too much time on your hands!
IIRC there is still something to do with that Dance Sensation thingy?? So you can focus on this now!
mh

[Jude Phailin]

Congratulations

[Sullla]

My Twin Galaxies claim to fame is on Crazy Taxi, Dreamcast version. $114900 on Arcade mode and $127000 on Original. Both are official records, verified by videotaping the games. To put that in perspective, those scores involved getting about 237 out of 240 possible passengers (which requires nearly perfect planning and sequencing of the passengers as well as reflex skills), and $100K was once thought to be on the edge of world-class possibility.

Thanks for the nice words. I definitely remember Crazy Taxi; I think I even own a copy of it, actually (although not for Dreamcast). I was terrible at the game, could never get the Crazy Stop to work right! Heh. My one friend played the game a lot and was decent at it, but I think his best was about 25k. Needless to say, I can't even imagine what it would take to get 100,000+! You more or less picked up EVERY passenger in the game?! Great stuff.

I'd comment on pinball, but it sounds pretty self-explanatory.

Man, you have way too much time on your hands!
IIRC there is still something to do with that Dance Sensation thingy?? So you can focus on this now!

Too much time on hand? Maybe, but Tetris is a great game that I use to take a quick break from doing other things. My job has me working mostly from home, so I can spend a couple hours grading papers or doing dissertation reading and then slip in a game of Tetris when my brain is starting to fall asleep. Makes for a nice change of pace, in a way that you can't really do with a complex game like Civ.

As for your second point, there's ALWAYS more to be done with the "dance sensation thingy" because getting a perfect score is nearly impossible. But I have managed to get more than 200 of those perfect scores ("AAA"s) so far, and still counting. Here:



I should probably use my camera to videotape some of this; we'll see.

[T-hawk]

TWO HUNDRED AAA combos on DDR? And documented every one with screenshots?! You're certifiably insane. I've managed about five AAs ever, and one above difficulty 4.

I can hit every note in most DDR and Beatmania songs up to about difficulty 7, but I sure can't time every one of them within 1/64 beat for Perfect. Apparently the Japanese notion of improving a rhythm game is to constrain the timing tighter and tighter. I've actually been having lots of fun with Guitar Hero II lately, which finally gets the music genre right. It allows loads of leeway with the timing - hit a note within about a half-beat and you get full credit - so you really actually get to play the _music_ rather than worrying about the responsiveness of the controller.

[sunrise089]

Hey Sullla, I'm moving to DC in July/August for law school, and I know you're nearby. Can we please go out to an arcade some time, so I can place some sort of bet with anyone there about relative DDR skills and then have you school.....everyone?

Seriously, you're a gifted player. I don't think I can grab a single "AAA".