Tetris Hacked Version

[Florentina Holcombe]

Ihave to say I didn't really like the Nintendo version.. it seemed way too unforgiving with the block placement. But maybe that's me. The Tengen version was pretty fun gameplay-wise, but the 2 player was always kind of odd since it was just simultaneous play without any competing/interaction.

Glad I'm not the first one to throw that out there for once. I adored the Gameboy game, still do, but the NES one I thought was crappy. I never could quite explain it, but they don't play the same. Maybe it's how it handles the pieces, whatever, wish I knew, but I detest it. First chance I had to snap up the Tengen one I did as I did like the arcade one Atari did and it's fairly solid. Sure it has nice music, but that's the one thing the NES/GB had better, that official/unofficial Music-A masterpiece everyone knows and loves. Korobeiniki is the name in russian at least.

Keep in mind, there is a Tetris hack out there on the NES game, seems it was originally intended to have a 2P mode and it was gutted out perhaps rushed to market due to Tengen? Someone hacked it back in and filled in the missing bits to make it functional a few years or more back, might be worth a peek if someone cares.

We knew. The arcade was the only version any of us saw until the home port. By the time Nintendo's version came out it wasn't popular and usually unrented, while the Tengen version continued to be rented out every single day.

Looking at the polls right now and it seems to be like a pineapple or no pineapple on pizza argument. I played the Tengen version on an emulator yesterday and I still couldn't get into it, it feels slower and it looks ugly IMO, although it does have a better soundtrack than the Nintendo version.

Oh yeah in ways the Tengen one is uglier, but the little guys that do their thing are pretty entertaining at least. It's the better game mechanically speaking and for play variety. The music is amazing on the whole, but still Music-A on the NES one is the best.

Tengen Tetris never gets as fast as Nintendo Tetris. Good players can marathon it pretty easily. Nintendo Tetris is much more of a challenge, and is the one that they play in serious competitions. Also seems like it's the version that more people are getting into thanks to Youtube, CTWC, Joseph Saelee, etc.

Back in the day, when both were available to rent, I tried both and preferred the Tengen version. Though I can't remember exactly why, now. I've never owned either of them. Only Tetris games I own is the GameBoy one and Tetris 2 for the SNES.

A team of researchers from the University of Rochester has published a study about video game players' feelings of aggression, but unlike similar studies, its focus wasn't on violence but on competency.

To make that point, many of the studies involved hacked and modded versions of games. In one of the seven tests, players joined deathmatch games of Half-Life 2; in one of the versions, players could "maim and dispatch the opponents, leaving them spewing blood," while the other version used non-lethal "tag" attacks to make opponents disappear. Other than that superficial difference, the gameplay was identical, and the difference in resulting aggression was minimal. But everyone was a bit aggressive. In contrast, players who had been introduced to the deathmatch with a customized tutorial came away from their sessions less aggressive.

Other studies implemented hacked versions of Tetris with two key changes. In addition to the default control version, one hack changed the controller setup so that buttons were in illogical locations, while another hack analyzed gameplay on the fly to make sure the next falling block would be the least convenient. The test involving the latter hack certainly racked up the aggression. After playing, those participants were asked to put other testers' hands in near-freezing water, which they did for a whopping ten seconds longer than standard players.

"Psychological need-thwarting is something that can and does happen in myriad ways across most life domains, including parenting, sports, work, and education," the study concluded. "Exploring how this happens and how to ameliorate these effects leads to extremely important questions for future motivation research."

The authors hope that future studies go even further in exploring how interactive media handles psychological needs. This study explored the human need for competency, but in its authors' eyes, studies that focus on belonging/relatedness and autonomy/choice could prove just as revealing to how games affect the human psyche.

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While I was out in Batavia to celebrate New Year's Eve (2018-2019), I stumbled upon a console that, at first, appeared to be an NES Classic edition. To my dismay, the console is actually a Famiclone, a clone of the original Nintendo Entertainment System, which was released under the name Family Computer, or "Famicom" in Japan.

The console is designed to look similar to an NES Classic Edition as a way of tricking buyers into purchasing this system, but there are a few key differences that sets it apart from the original NES. On the front of the console, you will find power and reset buttons, though their positions are swapped, and two DB9 ports for controller input, though their positions are swapped as well. The controllers themselves, aside from the different connectors, remain faithful to the original console and are clicky and responsive, aside from the start and select buttons. You will find a micro-USB port for power on the back of the system, along with a 3.5mm TRS Jack used to output composite video and mono audio.

The console itself lacks a cartridge slot, so it instead runs on a built-in multicart that claims to have "620 games in one," a common sight in other Famiclones. While the number of games is impressive, considering the NES Classic only has 30 built-in games, many of the games listed on the Famiclone are just repeats of the games previously listed, but let's talk about the games themselves....

Most of the games on the system I tested are just unlicensed ports of regular NES games, such as Super Mario Bros., Balloon Fight, and Ice Climbers. Although most of these games play well and are faithful to their original ports, many have certain assets removed and lack support for save features and light guns such as the NES Zapper. There are even instances where the games are listed on the multicart menu with unrelated titles, such as Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu (A Japan-Exclusive fighting game by Technōs Japan) being titled "BLOOD WRESTLE." Some games are rendered unplayable due to their backgrounds not updating correctly, but those that run well are just as fun as their licensed counterparts.

When I booted up the first game listed, Contra, I was greeted to a 12-in-1 menu with the first eight listings leading to the original game, though the numbers represent which stage you started at. "Contra 1" lets you start from scratch while "Contra 8" starts you off at level 8 instead of from the very beginning. When playing Super Mario Bros, the music was playing at a rather rapid speed due to the port being optimized for PAL regions and being played on the system at 120% speed.

Along with the unlicensed ports of official NES games, there are also hacks of official NES games where certain characters and sprites are replaced with those from other titles. The console I tested had three Mario-related ones, each different in terms of design. The first was "Super Bros. 10: Kung Fu Mari," which is just a hack of Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu which replaces the title screen and puts Mario's head on Jackie Chan's body. "Super Mario 12" is a simple title screen hack of Yoshi's Cookie, nothing else has changed aside from the title screen.The most intricate of them all, however, is "Super Mario 14," a hack of the Japan-exclusive title Kaiketsu Yanchamaru 3: Taiketsu! Zouringen. Along with the title screen being replaced and Mario's head being put on Kid Niki's body, some enemies were replaced with koopa troopas and spinies and some items were replaced with coins and super mushrooms. The best part about this port, however, was the copyright information on the title screen that reads " 1993 Wario. "

Aside from Mario hacks, I did find a game on the system titled "PIKA CHU," leading me to believe that it is a Pokemon-related game when, in reality, it's just a hack of the Tegen version of Tetris with Pikachu all over the screen, even though the original game is on the system under the name of "Tetris 2." There is even a game titled "Chip and Dale 3," which isjust a hack of the run and gun game Heavy Barrel with the character replaced with one of the two chipmunks.

The rest of the games on the system are basically pirated versions of games that weren't planned for release on the original NES. One such example is "Mortal Kombat 4," which was developed by Hummer Team. Despite the title, the game is actually a pirated version of Mortal Kombat 3 with only seven playable characters, each repeated three times so the game has 28 selectable character slots. Like other fighting games developed by Hummer Team, this port runs on their "Street Fighter II Engine," meaning that the A and B buttons are used for punches and kicks respectively, and each fighter has three special moves accessed by inputting commands that are all the same for each fighter (Nightwolf and Shao Khan have four special moves, but the commands for all four are the same.) Fatalities and other finishing moves are omitted in this port, despite being an essential aspect of the series as a whole.

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