Mission Mode in Tetris DS challenges the player to perform various tasks such as clearing a line with pieces that spawn in random orientations and can't be rotated. The Time Trial sub-mode in it has 5 levels, each with 10 missions given in a random order, with the objective being to clear all 10 missions as fast as possible.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: DeSmuME 0.9.10 x64
- Turn OFF "Enable Advanced Bus-Level Timing"
- Turn ON "Use dynamic recompiler" with block size 100.
- Aims for fastest time
Comments
Each level will always give you the same 10 missions in random order. I aimed to get the lowest time in every level in sequential order. Since I cleared many of the missions before they ever appear on-screen, below is a list of all the missions in the order they appeared in this run:
Level 1
- (Limited Tetriminos) (Use only O) Clear 5 lines total!
- Use a T to clear 1 line!
- Clear 5 lines total!
- Clear 2 lines at once!
- Use a L to clear 1 line!
- Use a J to clear 1 line!
- (Line Target) Clear the line marked by the arrow!
- Use a S to clear 1 line!
- Use a I to clear 1 line!
- Use a Z to clear 1 line!
Time: 10.28
Level 2
- Use a O to clear 2 lines at once!
- Use a J to clear 2 lines at once!
- Clear 4 lines at once!
- Use a L to clear 2 lines at once!
- Use a O to clear 1 line!
- (Limited Tetriminos) (Use only T) Clear 5 lines total! -- To save time on line clear animations, I built up 4 lines ahead of time and saved an I in the hold box for this.
- (Line Target) Clear the line marked by the arrow!
- Clear 2 lines at once!
- (Speed Up) Clear 5 lines total!
- Use a Z to clear 2 lines at once!
Time: 12.03
Level 3
- (Line Hurdle) Clear 2 lines, skipping 1!
- Use a S to clear 2 lines at once!
- (Line Target) Clear the line marked by the arrow!
- (Speed Up) Clear 5 lines total!
- Clear 3 lines at once!
- (I Banned) Clear 2 lines at once!
- (No Rotation) Clear a line! -- Again, the hold box comes in handy here. Using your held piece makes it spawn in the default orientation.
- (Limited Tetriminos) (Use only O) Clear 5 lines total!
- Use a Z to clear 2 lines at once! -- Had to clear an extra line here to set up the 2-line clear with the Z. There might be room for improvement here, but I couldn't find a faster route.
- Use a T to clear 2 lines at once!
Time: 12.15
Level 4
- Use a L to clear 3 lines at once!
- Use a J to clear 3 lines at once!
- Use J Tetriminos to clear 3 lines total!
- Use S Tetriminos to clear 3 lines total!
- (Speed Up) Clear 5 lines total!
- Use a S to clear 2 lines at once!
- Clear 4 lines at once!
- (Limited Tetriminos) (Use L J) Clear 5 lines total!
- (Line Hurdle) Clear 3 lines, skipping 1!
- (Line Target) Clear the line marked by the arrow!
Time: 13.95
Level 5
- (I Banned) Clear 3 lines at once!
- (Line Hurdle) Clear 2 lines, skipping 1!
- (Line Hurdle) Clear 2 lines, skipping 2!
- (Limited Tetriminos) (Use only I) Clear 5 lines total!
- (Speed Up) Clear 5 lines total!
- Use Z Tetriminos to clear 3 lines total!
- Clear 4 lines twice in a row!
- Use L Tetriminos to clear 3 lines total! -- Here I prepare another 4-line clear for mission 10.
- (No Rotation) Clear a line!
- (Limited Tetriminos) (Use S Z) Clear 5 lines total!
Time: 15.71
Other comments
Luck manipulation was pretty difficult since Tetris DS uses a bag randomizer, i.e. it deals one of each tetrimino in random order, then repeats. Additionally, the game doesn't seem to pick up entropy after startup, although the initial seed is determined by the system time. It may be possible to shave a couple more frames off the time with some seed searching, but I don't have enough real-life time to do it.