Game:

Tetris (1984)

Duration: 11:25

159 views

1

Okay, so I've got to confess something here... this isn't an entirely selfless series of uploads I've been going on in this brief little diversion of sorts. It's actually the very first Game Boy game I ever owned. (Well, technically Tetris came with all the Game Boys then, so technically it's my second...but you know what I mean!)

I chose it over Super Mario Land at the time, because I had played that on my cousin's Game Boy and was absolutely terrified of the Stage 1-3 boss... y'know, the little sphinx guy with the unnerving shift in music and the crazy tendency to SCREAM when you throw fireballs at him. I was young and impressionable and it was a technologically-advanced terror the likes of with the world had never previously known! You'd have been scared witless, too! (...maybe!)

---

So anyway, I mentioned last time that this game has had a huge impact on me as a result of how early on I encountered it in my game-playing-and-owning "career," and it's just one of those simple little scenarios with incredibly far-reaching and complex abstract implications where you can just let loose pieces and players to make things get a little more chaotic with each passing turn. It also helps that it's extremely easy to play and a whole match can unfold in a matter of minutes.

So that end, yet another level of selfishness to my interest and thus my interest in forcing the game upon you all is that the effect this game had on me was SO unreasonably strong that it started to seep in to other areas... that is, when I was bored in my high school web design class, I actually took the dangerous bits of JavaScript we'd learned (which wasn't much, mind you) and combined it with the computer programming class material (I had a cool high school or something, right?) to produce a clone of this game purely from memory and a Notepad as my text editor. Oh, and I guess some AutoShape doodling for the pieces.

I wish I still had it, because it would be really funny to sift through the code and see how far I've come since then. I think I should have some CD-Rs (those were new and neat then!) with my old side projects on them, but I digress as this has gotten totally off-focus. Point is, I'm kinda obsessed sometimes. (Kinda.)

---

This time around, we'll take a peek at the remaining option, the Board Edit function. The game will hold whatever variation on the play field you want in its runtime memory and let you play on it. Basically, the extent of modification is simple: you can fill in squares and make them unoccupiable. (I'm sure that's not actually a word, but it is now! I made it. What're you gonna do about it?)

The only limitation is that you can't block off the starting squares in the corners or the spaces directly adjacent...although for some reason you CAN fill in the diagonally-adjacent spaces in a rare case of the distances not being treated as equal, but whatever.

Now, I'm not hugely familiar with all the implications in what board designs will produce what strategic considerations, but the attack patterns will obviously change and defensive considerations will be greatly affected by even a single nearby filled square. That said, I'm hardly qualified to design any masterpieces of custom boards anytime soon...but I can quite readily scroll through the various presets and automatic layouts that the game can offer me.

I decided upon one that was pretty simple-looking and not too completely riddled with obstacles so as to keep the considerations within my ability to grasp in a pickup game with the AI.

---

Speaking of which, I've upgraded the AI once again, of course, this time to Level 3. (Huh, is it possible there's a pattern at work here?) I can safely say that the outcome was totally up in the air as far as I was willing to say, particularly in the midgame phases. It isn't until the endgame that I can start claiming that I'm taking calculable risks and trying to nickle-and-dime my opponent for last-minute control.

If I may say so (which inherently means that I probably shouldn't), I think in a few short matches I've managed to reclaim whatever pretense of strategic thinking I might have once possessed. The game is simple, but as I keep stressing, far from trivial...so even the slightest differences in movement can make a pretty big difference.

The first match I played, I was actually interrupted by a brief phone call. I remembered to pause the game, but this doesn't stop the "waiting for you to take a piece in hand" music stop, so I couldn't edit it out...so I decided to play another match, even though I really liked the various head games in the first one. But then I also liked the second one. So I said heck with it and here they both are! (Deal with it!)

I can't really offer a play-by-play or even a key-moves commentary, but if you should have any questions, I would be happy to answer them.