Kevin's Watch

Welcome to Gudatetrichef's Classic Nintendo Tetris Hacks and Mods!

I have developed something of a hobby: creating hacks and mods for NES Tetris. (I dabble with SNES, too.) My ultimate goal is to create a modified ROM of NES Tetris which features hard-drop, hold, T-spin recognition, and some sort of scoring modification.

I currently do have all of those functions in different individual ROMs, but I have not combined them all into one ROM. Here is the list of current working mods:

Hard Drop NES (this shit is the bomb-digetty)

T-Spins Count NES

Piece Swap NES ("select" swaps current piece and "next" piece)

"Masters' Edition" NES (fall rate [gravity] is harder; 1.5 falls Level 9 and up)

New Prototype (Level 29 and up new gravity rules)
And how I made the prototype.


Links and Info coming soon!





Oritinal post:
I will edit the top page as I get around to completing my writing goals.

Below I will offer a sneak peak at what is to come as I featuture a live outline for the projected front page, top page, main page, and even a special page. Events.

But first, before I get to the outline, let be dive into things. Lets start talking about how I am going to try to put this together. I want to do a How-To Article on a how to do a How-To. Let's say we start with Game Genie code. Hot to do a How-to on How to Create a Game Genie code. Terry is a curious about a Game Genie code. So Let's show us all how to do a How-To on How To Do a How-to-do.

The How-To "How To Do" is coming soon!

But first, as promised, I present a sneak peak at a sneak-a-peak! It's the outline of the future (pun intended, read ahead and get it).

The Outline will be posted below. Thanks!


(I now present the Outline.)

The Outline:

Pax et Discordia.

--A

Any chance one may obtain the hacked ROM files?

Welcome to the Watch, Ceanada! May you thrive here...and contribute.

Please come by The Summonsing and introduce yourself. We'd like to know more about you and what brought you here.

No promises (especially about a thread that has seen no other activity in eight months), but it can only improve the odds for the request you made on your first post in our community.

What he said.

You can try PM Shuram, but he's been MIA for a while now I think.

Welcome anyway.

--A

I recently had a similar request on YouTube. My laptop crapped out on me shortly after I Decided to undertake "blogging" my experiments....Also more recently my tablet crapped out on me. I have hard copies of my ROMs on a SD card and a cf card but now way to transfer to this pos phone, so idont know how to send it. I do have drop box files too but I don't recall how to use those or access them....but I will look into it. I am jobless and my internet is going to get shut off any day now, too.

On the plus side, nice to see you on the Watch.

--A

Ceanada wrote:Any chance one may obtain the hacked ROM files?

I can email you a link to my drop box files. Any particular ROM you're interested in?

Well, I made a fabulous new Game Genie code today.

The GG code is for NES Tetris. It forces the pieces to drop/fall the way SNES Levels 29-31 works.

Code is a three-liner:
PGNAVPGG
PANEEOIP
ZEEEVPAU

Code in action.

About NES and SNES Tetris:

NES and SNES are very similar in game mechanics. They obey the exact same auto-shift and delayed-auto-shift rules (this is referring to moving the pieces left and right). They also follow the same rules for each level's fall/drop rate (the speed at which the pieces fall to the bottom of the screen). But there is one major difference between NES and SNES game mechanics.

While it is true that both games match each other in falling speed (the rate at which the piece falls to the bottom), there is a difference in the rules of gravity between the two games. In NES, gravity is in effect as soon as the next piece has been generated, while in SNES, gravity doesn't kick in until ten frames of screen time have passed. That means that SNES gives you ten frames of game time in which the piece is "floating"--you can begin to move the piece left or right during this time, it's active but not falling. NES does not give you any sort of "head start"--as soon as your piece appears, it is already falling.

Ten frames amounts to 1/6 of a second. The game displays 60 frames per second, and ten frames is 10 out of 60. That is a really big deal for the Tetris Master.

On Level 19, the hardest playable level in NES, the pieces fall at a rate of two frames per second (1/30 of a second). Auto-shift moves the pieces left or right at a rate of six frames per second (1/10 of a second). That means that your piece drops three spaces down in the amount of time it takes to move it over only one space left or right; the pieces are dropping faster than they are shifting left or right. On NES Level 19, it is very hard to get your piece all the way left before it hits the bottom and locks down.

Level 19 on SNES is a completely different story, though. While the pieces fall and shift at the same rate as NES, SNES gives you those ten frames of pre-gravity--a whole sixth of a second to get your piece moving the direction you want it to go. Your pieces shift left or right at a rate of six frames per second. Meaning, those ten frames of pre-gravity allow you to move your piece almost two whole spaces more on SNES than NES!

Trust me, it's a very big deal.

Take the longbar, for example (also known as the I tetrimino, I-piece, or Tetris piece, depending on who you ask). It takes five shifts to the left to reach the left side of the screen. If you get almost two of those five spaces covered before gravity kicks in, you're already nearly 2/5 of the way there! Four shifts to the right gets you to the right side of the screen, so if you are going right, SNES lets you get almost HALF way there before gravity begins!

Trust me, it's a very big deal.

NES Tetris effectively ends at Level 29. At Level 29, the pieces begin falling at a rate of one frame per drop. That means that your pieces fall six spaces down in the time it takes to move it one space over to the left or right. The Tetris matrix is 20 rows high by ten columns wide, which means on Level 29, the piece falls nearly a third of the way to the bottom before you can even shift it one space left or right. The most you can reasonably expect to accomplish is three shifts to either the left or the right, and it takes for or five shifts to reach the side of the screen. That means you ain't making any lines on Level 29 NES, because you ain't getting the pieces all the way over.

Everything changes, however, when you switch over to SNES. Now you get those precious ten extra frames. Now you can get over to the left or right with some time to spare. Now 29 is playable.

Okay, so everyone knows you have to play a lot of Level 19 to master NES. (Mastering means the ability to max-out the score at 999999.) On NES, you have the option of beginning your games on Level 19. That way you can practice it, get comfortable with it.

But the highest level you can start on with SNES is Level 9. And it takes 20 freaking minutes to get to Level 29. And it's so fast that you usually die right away. This is why my new code is important.

It allows you to practice SNES Level 29 speeds.

But why would I want to do this with NES rather than SNES? Actually, I made a SNES game genie code that allows you to start on Level 29, but a lot of game genie's don't work with SNES. Nintendo fucked over the consumer by altering its design so the game genie wouldn't work with their SNES. Mine certainly doesn't. I can get it to work using my FC Twin, but the SNES controllers don't work with Tetris on the FC Twin, so I have to use FC Twin's garbage controllers.

NES game genies work just fine. Some people seem to think you can't use them with top loaders, but it's actually just a tight fit. If you wiggle and push enough, you'll get it in there faar enough to work just fine. I did, and it never affected the way it worked (smashing my top loader in a fit of Tetris-rage DID affect how well it worked, however). Further more, NES Game Genie's just seem more common, anyway.

The point of all this is: now you can play SNES Level 29 using a game genie and NES Tetris.