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Tetris DS. Standard Marathon Mode (200 line clear) cleared in 1 minute and 18.7 seconds, complete with must-watch credits. Enjoy!
This movie was made in DeSMuMe 0.9.4+ r2881. It works also on 0.9.4+ r2872, and probably, the newest SVN version.
Fix ARM Cycle Count must be on. Fast Fetch-Execute should be left off.
  • Aims for fastest completion of Standard Marathon.

About the game

Tetris DS is well-known for its intense Nintendo theme. It is also known for three other things that make it appealing to TAS:
  • The hold piece, which allows a player more freedom.
  • Sonic or Hard drop; where pressing up causes the blocks to fall immediately. This isn't new; it existed in some PC Tetris versions.
  • No delay between pieces, except during line clears. Similar to PC versions. In Tetris terminology, ARE=0.
  • Sliding pieces along a surface. If a piece comes to rest on a surface, or is nearby, rotating it will cause it to slither along the surface, sometimes in unexpected ways. This is particularly noticeable in the late stages of this run. It is possible to create "T-Spins" with the T-Block.

About the run

This run took longer than expected. Every time I thought I had figured out something, the game threw in something new. I redid the last few sections three times because I kept running into I-Block trouble (I need 50 Tetrises). The last 8 lines took a long time to optimize. Due to the unlucky piece sequence, I cannot complete it in 500 pieces, needing 501. To complete it in 500 pieces requires either an even number of T-Blocks in the first 500 pieces, or an I-Block as the 501st piece, neither of which happened.
I initially made the run without using Fix ARM Cycle Count. After completing the run, I figured out that Fix ARM Cycle Count is required to avoid a graphical glitching of the Level 4 transition (when the run reaches 40 lines). So I edited the DSM by a menu redo and gameplay copypaste. In doing this, I saved 38 frames on menu transitions and 1 frame in the gameplay itself.
Fix ARM Cycle Count is also required for Catch Mode to work correctly, although Catch Mode is not relevant to this run.
Gameplay is 4722 frames (1m 18.7s) long, from the first "ghost piece" appearance to when the line count reaches 200. A TAS I found on YouTube goes from frame 807 to 5571 (4765 frames). However, it is not exactly known what the beginning and ending points were.

Thanks

Thanks to Baxter for various discussions about a possible TAS showing off different modes. Since selecting what to show off is subjective, and potentially long, I decided to do a fastest run on the showcase mode because it is short and objective.
Thanks also to an anonymous TASer (probably a Japanese speaker) who made the TAS linked above so I can compare.
Greenalink and LightBlueYoshi deserve mention for other TASes, respectively.

mmbossman: Fast, technically sound (the youtube version that was posted is tough to verify, if someone can find the source for it, I reserve the right to review this decision), people like it, and the goal is easy to understand. Accepting for publication.

mmbossman: I would like to apologize to FractalFusion for prematurely accepting this. I thought I had followed along with the thread well, but I somehow managed to miss this post, which provides a [dead link removed] to a .dsm input file that beats this same mode with same goals in 1:37.53, or just shy of 3 seconds faster than this submitted movie. And, as I stated above, and as is stated in the rules, since this movie does not beat all existing records when aiming for the same goals, I am now setting this to "Rejected". I apologize again to FractalFusion for this oversight.


Former player
Joined: 7/14/2005
Posts: 103
Very cool! Although, I do have some constructive criticism for you. If starting on the first level isn't important, then you can save time by starting on the last level and take advantage of floorkicks in a 20G environment. I've confirmed on my own research that you can reduce inputs per tetromino this way in SRS. Also, you can easily save keys (and thus time) by not using the hold. Hold is far from necessary to beat marathon (except for maybe getting an all clear for the final tetris). Lastly, time may be saved by tetrising on column 6 instead of column 10. This is because you no longer need to make 4 movements to get the vertical i-tetromino all the way to the wall. Playing the middle column in 20G is really, really difficult in real life, but may be doable in a TAS.
Active player (347)
Joined: 3/21/2006
Posts: 940
Location: Toronto, Canada
Wait....what?! Sometimes true art is incomprehensible, and this is definitely one of those cases. I loved it even though I had no idea what the fike was going on. Yes vote :D
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!) My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
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Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 1821
nico wrote:
If starting on the first level isn't important, then you can save time by starting on the last level and take advantage of floorkicks in a 20G environment. I've confirmed on my own research that you can reduce inputs per tetromino this way in SRS. ... Lastly, time may be saved by tetrising on column 6 instead of column 10. This is because you no longer need to make 4 movements to get the vertical i-tetromino all the way to the wall. Playing the middle column in 20G is really, really difficult in real life, but may be doable in a TAS.
When starting the game for the first time, you can only pick the first 5 levels. Every level that is reached is unlocked. This is why the guy aiming for highscore in the youtube movie first beat this mode as fast as possible (like this TAS) in order to unlock level 20, in order to get a good highscore. So this suggestion can't be applied. I don't think that that last suggestion is necessarily true... since you still need to get other blocks to that 10th row.
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Other blocks are wider than I, though, so they require less moves to the side. Is this wrong?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Former player
Joined: 7/14/2005
Posts: 103
Ah, I see. In that case, 20G can't help here. And that's correct moozooh. You can occupy the same spaces with other blocks that require less movements to get them to the wall.
Skilled player (1409)
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moozooh wrote:
Other blocks are wider than I, though, so they require less moves to the side. Is this wrong?
Well, you do get 4 blocks at the right instantly with an I piece, while you get less with any other piece.
Former player
Joined: 7/14/2005
Posts: 103
Yeah, it's pretty theoretical, I admit. Who knows: open column 10 might be better afterall. It'd be interesting to see it put to the test, though.
Editor, Expert player (2072)
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 3282
Well, it's not like I spent one day making the TAS. I spent one week. As for the piece physics, I didn't want to be overly restrictive on myself, but had a number of choices, and chose the ones that minimized piece movement. At 20G, however, the pieces that stick to the surface often "jump" when rotated (even extraneous rotations do this sometimes). So using rotations may save a couple frames, even though a piece sticking to the surface costs one frame. This is most notable with putting the I-Block in column 10. It took me a while to optimize piece movement in 20G. I also managed to fit in a couple T-spins (not line clears) from lines 150-170. Also, I wanted to make floating Tetrises (not on the bottom) on a few occasions. It's not easy to plan out.
Baxter wrote:
No offense at all meant to Fractal_Fusion... but this 200 line submission I could have made months ago, in a matter of one or maybe two days of work.
Fact is, you didn't, and that was part of the reason why I wanted to make this run.
Active player (437)
Joined: 4/21/2004
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Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Another win for Fractal ^_^ Always love watching your runs (by the way, what an obscure game you submitted prior to this) Yes vote.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
Kaylee
She/Her
Editor, Active player (434)
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Why I am voting yes: -it is extremely fast paced and entertaining -technically up to the level of the site -LOOK AT HOW FAST THE PEOPLE ARE SPINNING Good job!
Banned User
Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850
Personally I'd rather see a playarounnd using all the various modes in another movie. Go for the faster more exciting modes first (Catch, etc) then the slower ones (Touch, or whatever) It'd be neat to see the biggest combos in a different movie, but pure speed is fine all on its own. Sort of like the 999999 and B-mode movies of the NES version.
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Best Tetris ever. I need more time to click on yes than the time you need to beat the game.
Joined: 10/2/2009
Posts: 13
Oohhhh YEAH!! Very fast. Yes vote.
Former player
Joined: 7/14/2005
Posts: 103
Baxter wrote:
- Push mode, (If it works, first game, get a draw) then beat level 5 as fast as possible [...] - Regular line clear mode, get highest possible score as fast as possible
For the push mode tie, a friend and I documented this glitch shortly after the game's release. After an all clear, the camera pans up to the top, and pieces fall from top to bottom indefinitely. I suppose you could TAS this and then pause out of it to do something else. As for the goal of maximizing the score in line clear mode (as well as regular marathon), you can max out the score counter in both of these modes. But to do so, you have to take advantage of a design oversight of being able to rack up points with a single tetromino (i works best) by floor kicking and then soft dropping continuously. To do so would mean a very long, repetitious, and boring game to watch. I suppose you could add a stipulation to your goal which says not to use this exploit.
adelikat
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Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3570)
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I voted no because I think this game has far more potential than what is shown here. Something along the lines of what Baxter had planned would be much more entertaining.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Former player
Joined: 11/6/2004
Posts: 833
Umm... yeah it's fast and all, but I wasn't especially entertained past the first 10 seconds of the crazy speed. Somehow it needs more Cool.
Editor, Expert player (2328)
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A comparison video featuring FractalFusion's and 5z98qTHveupDQ5kL's movies. http://dic.nicovideo.jp/v/sm8779719 I thought it deserved mention in this thread.
mklip2001
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I sort of agree that the video is amazing for the first 10 seconds, and then it gets repetitive. The speed is still awesome, though, and I do like the floating tetrises. I wish you'd ended with an all-clear, or gotten more all-clears along the way, but I can understand why you didn't. I think this is a good run, but for the points above, and given what Baxter mentioned, I'll vote meh. However, I have nothing against this being published, with the idea that a more stylish run with a harder goal could obsolete this.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Editor, Expert player (2072)
Joined: 6/15/2005
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I am aware of all the choices of goals, but unfortunately, there has been a history. A few months ago, I had planned to do a number of interesting modes, but wanted to keep it short. Because the game is so ridiculously fast when TASed, I had the opinion that the movie would become boring quickly to most viewers if it was any longer than a few minutes. It could even cause attention shutdown. Most of the modes are variants of the standard, and for the new interesting mode (Catch), it is debatable how far it should be taken. When I PMed Baxter about my plans (about 1.5 months ago), there was a particular disagreement about the goals being used, mine being short, his being long. Though I conceded the possible shortcoming of my choice of goals, I was under the impression that Baxter was highly defensive of his choices and thought of them as unimpeachable. Because of this, and due to limited resources (I can only run this game at 30 fps and I don't have much time), the difficulty of making a TAS of many modes, and my desire for TASing to be fun, I did not work with him, but decided that, because our goals were so arbitrary, I would make a TAS with as few goals as possible. I chose the goals for this TAS simply because it was very short, likely to entertain a casual viewer, and gave me something to aim for. I understand though if a TAS should be judged on merit rather than just entertainment; after all, otherwise half of the published movies on TASVideos (and my latest published movie) would not have made it.
mklip2001
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Hmm... Sorry, I didn't know about all the history. I don't know if this was clear from my post, but I do like this run. I would not be opposed to it being published until another run comes along which aims for disputably more entertaining goals. I think the quality of this run, given its goals, is certainly high, though I am curious about the video MUGG links which shows a slightly faster run with the same goals.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I just wanted to put this out there. I'm a casual watcher of TAS videos from this site, and I ABSOLUTELY loved this run. I'm also a very detail-attentive gamer myself, and have made many of the fastest Worms Armageddon tool-assisted mission speedruns (check Other Games forum). This run's goals are the most obvious goals for Tetris DS. The entertainment for me comes from being a player who has been practicing Tetris DS for months now, and having been able to beat it in under 10 minutes only a couple times (unassisted on a real DS, of course). With this run, I got to see some really interesting strategies (like how to fix holes at the bottom by utilizing floating tetrises etc.) that I personally hadn't thought of and have a hard time planning out while I'm trying to beat the game quickly. To me, the other modes in Tetris DS are awkward and uninteresting, not to mention very difficult to play on a normal DS, where the screens are ~2cm apart. This mode is straight-forward and classic with a twist. I voted YES immediately after watching this run a few times (sometimes in frame-by-frame in my video player) because of the above. In my opinion, it would be absolutely absurd to deny as straight-forward and obvious a run as this. If Baxter thinks he can do better on these goals with a day's work, I challenge him to beat this run! That's what this site is all about, right? Tool-assisted competition, and what better way to compete than this mode? This mode demonstrates all the classic precision-TASing of yesteryear, where we made very precise changes to save frames here and there, like avoiding using the "hold" can save frames (very precise random-manipulating instead?), rotating off objects to move farther can save frames at max level, etc. Honestly, the only thing I would change about this run's goals is require it to be played on level 20 difficulty, which requires saved data. I know that's against the rules, but that would be most entertaining to me. This run as it is should be published to show the world how fast this mode can be beaten, and to put others to the challenge, because this is hands-down the most popular mode to play in Tetris DS, period. Would-be-double-post edit: I have another point to make. This is no average Tetris TAS where the author didn't take the care to make every line cleared a Tetris, like the bad TAS casuals seem to think is so great here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLu428ppNa4. This is a TAS up to the standards of this site, where every line is part of a Tetris, and the author never made an obvious mistake. That's more than I can say for some of the more obscure published runs I've watched, where I see obvious mistakes where the author could have saved frames.
Joined: 11/4/2007
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Lex wrote:
That's more than I can say for some of the more obscure published runs I've watched, where I see obvious mistakes where the author could have saved frames.
Care to post those in the games topics? It'd probably help the TASers to get some motivation if they were told that their run has flaws and that there is interest in getting them fixed.
Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
That's a good idea. I've been watching some runs with a friend who's new to the whole concept of TAS and haven't been pausing and playing things back frame-by-frame to check specific points, but next time I see something like that, I'll take note of it and post in the appropriate thread. I've been a lurker generally, but I just had to say something about this great TAS.
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Lex wrote:
If Baxter thinks he can do better on these goals with a day's work, I challenge him to beat this run!
You sound like Nineko Either way, I picked my words carefully when I wrote:
Baxter wrote:
this 200 line submission I could have made months ago, in a matter of one or maybe two days of work
With this submission, I meant a 200 line submission, but I haven't said anything about being able to beat this run, or that there were particular mistakes in this run... so I have no claim to defend or proof here. Does this mean that I think this run can't be improved, or that I can't improve it? Not at all, it is a Tetris game after all, where there are virtually a limitless amount of options to make 50 tetrisses. It probably wouldn't be a large difference, I don't see any obvious mistakes (which is basically your point in your "would-be"-double post)... but because it's Tetris, this TAS if by definition not perfect (as there are too many different possibilities... but these possibilities do make this run improvable).
Lex wrote:
and what better way to compete than this mode?
Competing for entertainment with other modes would be a better way probably than competing for frames in this mode.
MUGG wrote:
A comparison video featuring FractalFusion's and 5z98qTHveupDQ5kL's movies. http://dic.nicovideo.jp/v/sm8779719
The submission text says Fractal_Fusions movie is faster, but in this comparison video, the other version is clearly faster... what's the deal?
Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Baxter wrote:
MUGG wrote:
A comparison video featuring FractalFusion's and 5z98qTHveupDQ5kL's movies. http://dic.nicovideo.jp/v/sm8779719
The submission text says Fractal_Fusions movie is faster, but in this comparison video, the other version is clearly faster... what's the deal?
That looks like a good start for obsoletion/competition right away. If that guy's is faster, he should submit his movie and obsolete this one. Considering this is a very popular mode/movie already, and you've just proven it can be improved despite not having obvious mistakes, and (almost) everyone who watched it was entertained, it seems like an ideal candidate for publication. What more do you need from a run to consider it ideal? Let me list the points again: -This mode is the most popular, and therefore most likely to be run by a human (SDA-style). -It's improvable, but not obvious how (Super Mario Bros. is entertaining in this way, and it's published). -Most people are entertained. Entertainment is subjective. Isn't that why there's a voting system? If not, why not just remove the voting system?