Thanks! I got a lot of inspiration from Shisuku's Bornnam 2-ALL on Nicovideo. The second loop is strict, but finding 3~4 winnable races seems to do the trick. I find the most nerve-wracking stage in this route to be Cold Corridor -- just whipping past enemies with all your option spellbooks at risk, and really needing that firepower to quickly beat the boss (and to pass the beginning of Forest of the Dead safely as well!).

@@KitaruTC Definitely can see it in cold corridor, the spinning 8 way enemies look like a nail biter with no room

@@PAN-- Exactly, those fast rings almost had me putting Cold Corridor in first loop instead! But in the end I think the Deeply Dungeon boss on loop two is too much of a threat.

@@luisreyes1963 Thanks! I also recently uploaded a 2-ALL as well; I really got hooked on this game!

@@LZRCuteR I highly recommend it! I feel they made the SNES style racing with updated boost and spin mechanics work really well. There's also a Classic mode with the old-school mechanics/balance and a 20 racer cap. They periodically add new content like remix tracks to the 99 mode; we recently got the Ace League tracks from Satellaview.

Thank you! I may come back to work at 2nd loop some time, but for now a potential Shippu Mahou 2-ALL has my attention. :)

@@LZRCuteR Thanks!

Yes, most of the Mahou series guest bosses in Batrider are from this first game, and a couple (Bashinet-R, Hayatemaru) are from the sequel Shippu Mahou Daisakusen / Kingdom Grandprix.

Agreed, it's a splendid first outing from Raizing! I also like Bornnam, his toolkit is a close 2nd for me. In addition to generally enjoying Miyamoto in each game, an additional tipping factor in choosing him for this clear was so that my first ending would be one that properly saves the kingdom rather than plunge it into Bornnam's new reign of chaos. ;)

Thanks! Snail is my original Garegga main, although something like Baron also felt like a comfortable all-rounder for me here. They definitely massacred my boy's flamethrower lock-on logic, but the piercing main shot was still putting in work (e.g., it was ripping up Grubby's back turrets) and the Option power subtype seems useful regardless of which Garegga ship is selected.

I certainly couldn't have imagined it when I first started. The road is long and winding, but if you enjoy the journey along the way then you might look back one day and be surprised to see how far you have traveled.

@@KitaruTC maybe i will be good as this lol

@@DaNormalGuyathon Best of luck!

@@KitaruTC i can barely reach 300 400 part and barely survive 20g with ars Kappa

@@baf__ Thanks! I'm certainly looking forward to adding the guest characters for the extra bosses.

Yes, to score kokushi musou in this game, you need (at least) 13+1 connected on the board without forming any other melds. The duplicate tile doesn't need to be directly touching its pair. Here's an example: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aoioapunr82MhKs The chiitoitsu detection is similar in that 7 pairs need to be created without clearing any melds, but differs in that they can be located anywhere on the board rather than required to form a single connected region.

for communication with tetrists only :)

@@POWned911 Hah, it never really gets to me, although it definitely gets stuck in my head the next day. 😉 Lately I also queue up some videos on KZbin to listen to while playing puzzle games, but it doesn't bother me if the playlist runs out mid-game.

@@AlastairGames I'm not sure if I have a strong preference, although I do like the design of Sega/TGM top previews showing piece spawn alignment. Other than that, as long as the previews are in a conventional place (game doesn't do something cursed like swap next/hold) and going a conventional direction (to the left of horizontal, to the top if it's vertical, or both if it snakes around an L-bend), then I can read the previews fine.

@@KitaruTC thanks!

@@AlastairGames np!

Thank you! 🎩👑

The Game Boy version controls much better and has a top speed of 1/2G (likely due to the reduced screen height). GB Tetris Plus is a nice introductory game when easing into the Sega/TGM family of games. The arcade and console versions have a very strange input buffer that seems worse at high gravity; the need to input early in anticipation makes the top speed of 1G with tight lock delay a bit of an awkward challenge. I feel that extra care must be taken to reduce the complexity of moves and to focus on stability of the stack in order to keep the game going to one million; it's all too easy to crash and burn. My recollection is that the PlayStation version was slightly better in regards to input lag, but nonetheless unresponsive and with other problems (I vaguely remember something about the "Special Bonus" animation for perfect clears coming out so delayed that it interrupted the next piece falling).

@@KitaruTC Good to know! I happen to have been playing TGM with hella input lag on MAME + laptop screen latency over the past week while I was on a trip for a LAN party, which in retrospect may be nice prep for this challenge.

Agreed! This mode may only have one music track, but it's pretty enjoyable. The console ports have more music tracks in the Puzzle mode - I recommend giving those a listen. I like the Game Boy version's arrangements a lot.

This particular video was played on a Hori Octa gamepad (button config in video description). Most of my other TGM videos were played on arcade stick (Sanwa JLF).

Cheez coming up with indirect rolling definitely got the ball rolling, as once you have those speeds then any goal is hypothetically on the table. Fractal's name also needs to be in the conversation; he achieved first PAL colors and was a frontrunner in the races for NTSC colors and NTSC crash, and I think all of that effort motivated other players to push for those milestones as well. Fractal has been working on linecount goals and talking about the theoretics of crash avoidance for a long time coming.

@@KitaruTC Most people argue that Joseph Saelee is the single most important person in NES Tetris history and his 2018 CTWC plays were the Beethoven's 9th of NES Tetris, though a significant number of people still point to Jonas Neubauer for being the longtime undisputed leader and Cheez for devising the legendary art of rolling. Alex, what do you say on this one?

@@KitaruTC Even now since the first game crash achieved by BlueScuti, aGameScout who is one of the best sources on NES Tetris that I watch, still asks IF and not WHEN the record will ever be beaten. People now set down records as if there's no tomorrow. Yet still, there are always questions on how impossible a world record is to beat. Then, the record is crushed. The cycle rinses and repeats. The days of a few ten thousand points of margin for what was once an impossibility are now long over and if Joseph Saelee killed it, Cheez with his 2.3 million is the final nail in the coffin and BlueScuti finds it a new, deeper grave.

​@@probium2832 Jonas was definitely a central figure in the DAS era by having consistency above and beyond the rest of the playing field. Another key figure in setting the stage for the hypertapping era is Koryan, who pioneered the one-handed tapping grip. Joseph coalesced what he learned from players like Jonas and Koryan, and his meteoric rise served as inspiration for the new generation. I think the history of the game is defined by a sequence of events and key figures; we're all building off of who came before us, or collaborating with our peers. So, what if the most important person in NES Tetris history is a secret missing link, such as SQR? :) When SQR brought his NES Tetris cartridge to the arcade Pier21 Kodaira for other TGM players to try out for the first time, that marks the beginning of Koryan as a NES player. Just a bit of food for thought. ;)

@@KitaruTC Introducing a more foreign Tetris to a more classic international Tetris seemed like and was a great idea at the time. Speaking of Grand Master Tetris, since there are a lot of guides to master NES Tetris, I found there weren't that many for Grand Master Tetris - so I referred to the wikis on the speed transitions for all factors of play into Tetris. I wonder how many people know that the main technique here to pass Master mode is to clear the first 70% of each section (a hundred levels) on time so that you can clear the next one within two seconds of or faster than the previous one, so go all-out on section 9 (800-869) and take your time on section 10. That's just so you can get the appropriate end credits to get the illustrious Grand Master rank.

I feel you on the leaderboard woes, it's part of why I haven't really played much portable Big away from an internet connection. Also hmm, endurance Big, that does sound like it could be a pretty fun format! I'm even starting to imagine a battle royale, BigTet 99. ;)

I save a spin attack for the lead-in to this jump plate now. ;) Lesson learned!

I'm happy to hear it serves as a useful example! :) I've long felt that KZbin/Twitch/etc. can help to serve in forming a sort of "virtual arcade" in lieu of a local physical space. It's great that we have the means to connect, observe, discuss, and research together!

I hear ya, that's definitely an area of potential improvement for TGM educational materials. Reviewing your own replays or those of other players on slower playback can sometimes yield some useful insights, but hopefully one day we can figure out how to put more key takeaways for 20G stacking into words or diagrams.

Thanks! I sometimes try out the other bullet highlight colors, but I tend to prefer this blue/pink setting as it differentiates the colors of certain attack patterns. I think it would have been cool if M2 had given us a "color edit" setting to mix-and-match the different highlight colors. :)

2021/04/07 to 2023/10/08, a suspiciously precise 30 month lifespan. :( Gonna miss this one a lot.

oh so it actually lasted 2 years

@@creepercraftytT99 Yep, 2 fun years, but I really wish it could have stuck around. It's sad whenever a game is treated as something disposable without any path to continue playing it after the main online service comes to an end.

​​@@KitaruTCi believe its just a licensing thing, bandai immediately released their own pacman royale after

@@skybird23333 That is definitely the vibe it gives off. In a way it's good that a former Stadia-exclusive was rescued, but I still wish that didn't come at the cost of the life of a very different game.

Thanks!

Sure, I have some general advice. Focus on the surface, prefer simpler "flat" stacks over complex ones (less surface area = less to remember and less to get wrong), and pay mind to how line clears do/don't affect stack (tetrises just lower elevation with no surface change, whereas skimming on the side can "flatten" the surface somewhat). Also, there are some visual cues like the movement of the piece tracing the stack or the outline during lock flash that can help you confirm your memory or allow you to re-assess; in TGM3 specifically, the white lock outline will be absent on edges that have neighboring minos and present on edges that do not, which can help identify when holes have been created (or even help locate them when downstacking). When you are the one playing (vs. reviewing video), you can also do movement/rotation checks as a sort of "option select" to protect against mistakes; if the piece doesn't move then you were correct, and if it does then you protected yourself from making a hole. If I can narrow down some more good advice for conceptualizing or practicing invisible Tetris, I'd be interested in revisiting this topic for some sort of guide or video at some point.

@@KitaruTC this is an extremely helpful starting baseline thank you so much! If you have more you'd like to share, I'd be very interested in a video guide bc the M roll doesn't have guides to my knowledge, and I'm not even GM level in TGM1 (S9 with failed GM reqs currently). I can't imagine how flustered I'd be even reaching the M roll in TGM2, so I wanna be prepared for that moment.

​@@BizerkPixel (late comment, ik) I'll say the best way to master the credit roll is just to practice a lot. Doing so, there's a point where you'll acquire a mind vision that allows you to play fluently without seeing anything. You'll even be able to analyze the stack of an invisible play without focusing that much. I would recommend to play Phantom Mania from Nullpomino or Quick Play from Tetrio with the invisible card turned on to get used to it.

Ideally, yes. ;) But every now and again you can tank a hit, and tapping a red snail thankfully didn't hold me up as much here as the other racers' similar run-ins.

Thanks!

Yep, seems like they went with frame-based timing for F-Zero 99. :) We touched the finish line on the same 1/60th of a second, so it counts as a tie. I think the 3D games used positioning to calculate out millisecond timing, so perhaps ties would be less likely in a hypothetical F-Zero GX HD. ;)