Tetris The Grand Master

Tetris The Grand Master
Arcade flyer for Tetris The Grand Master
Developer(s)	Arika
Publisher(s)	Capcom, HAMSTER Co.
Platform(s)	Arcade, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
Release	Arcade JP: August, 1998 PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch WW: December 1, 2022
Sequel	Tetris The Absolute The Grand Master 2
Gameplay info
Next pieces	1
Playfield size	10 × 20
Hold piece	No
Hard drop	No
Rotation system	ARS

Tetris The Grand Master (テトリス・ザ・グランドマスター) is the inaugural game in the TGM series. Developed by Arika, it was first released in Japanese arcades in August 1998. On December 1, 2022, the game was made available for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch as part of the Arcade Archives series.

Players place pieces and clear lines as the game goes on, increasing their grade along the way. At later levels, the game will force them to keep up with the high speeds using special techniques, such as the Initial Rotation System introduced in the game.

Gameplay

TGM's gameplay is heavily inspired by it's arcade predecessor, Sega's Tetris released 10 years earlier. It uses a modified rotation system, color scheme, and relies heavily on mechanics such as lock delay. Another game which inspired TGM is TETRIS SEMIPRO-68k, a fan game which was the first to introduce 20G gravity.

The main goal in TGM is to score points, awarding the player a higher grade. The game ends when a player reaches level 999. If the player scored enough points, they will be awarded with the grade S9. To achieve the grade GM, the player must also meet some time requirements during play. If the player tops out before reaching level 999, the game ends, awarding the player the current grade and its "mastering time", the time at which the grade was awarded during gameplay.

Level

Level has a unique implementation in TGM. The level counter will increase by 1 for every piece that enters the playfield. It will also increase by 1 for each line cleared.

When the player is about to increment the hundreds digit (e.g., level 399), only line clears will increase the level. Level 998 is treated similarly, with a final line clear required to reach 999 and finish.

IRS

Main article: IRS

Abbreviation for Initial Rotation System.

Normally a piece will appear in the rotation showed in the piece preview. With IRS, holding either the left or right rotation button will cause the piece to appear rotated 90 degrees. This allows the player a higher degree of freedom when placing pieces at higher game speeds.

TLS

Main article: ghost piece

Abbreviation for Temporary Landing System This system is a semi-transparent representation of where the piece will land if allowed to drop into the playfield. It is displayed up to level 100.

Buffer zone

Above the playfield, the game uses a single-row buffer zone, effectively extending the height of the playfield from 20 to 21. Row 21 allows blocks that lock in it to reappear once the stack is lowered. Any row above it, however, is not part of the buffer zone, meaning that blocks that lock in such rows get deleted and will not reappear once the stack is lowered.

Scoring

The Grand Master shares the same scoring mechanisms of many other Tetris games:

• The player receive more points for clearing more lines at once.
• Lines are worth more with each passing level.
• The player receive points for forcing a piece down. (Although only when this results in cleared lines, unlike in some other games.)
• The player receive a combo bonus for clearing lines with consecutive pieces.
• The player receive a bravo bonus for clearing the entire playfield.

Scoring formula

${\text{Combo}}={\text{Previous Combo Value}}+(2\times {\text{Lines}})-2$

${\text{Score}}=(\left\lceil ({\text{Level}}+{\text{Lines}})/4\right\rceil +{\text{Soft}})\times {\text{Lines}}\times {\text{Combo}}\times {\text{Bravo}}$

Where:

• Level is the current level the player is on (before the lines are cleared).
• Lines is the number of lines the player just cleared.
• $\left\lceil ({\text{Level}}+{\text{Lines}})/4\right\rceil$ is rounded up.
• Soft is the cumulative number of frames during which Down was held during the piece's active time. Manually locking pieces already on the ground will increase Soft by 1.
• Locking a piece without clearing lines resets Combo to 1. Otherwise, the game updates Combo as follows, before calculating Score:

  E.g., a double-triple-single combo will have combo values 3, 7, and 7 respectively.

• Bravo is equal to 4 if this piece has cleared the screen, and otherwise is 1.

Grading

In TGM grade is entirely determined by score. As the player passes certain milestones, the game will assign the player the next grade.

Grade Conditions

Grade	Required Score	Grade	Required Score
9	0	S1	16,000
8	400	S2	22,000
7	800	S3	30,000
6	1,400	S4	40,000
5	2,000	S5	52,000
4	3,500	S6	66,000
3	5,500	S7	82,000
2	8,000	S8	100,000
1	12,000	S9	120,000

GM Grade Conditions

Level	Required Score	Time
300	12,000 (Grade 1)	<04:15:00
500	40,000 (Grade S4)	<07:30:00
999	126,000 (slightly higher than S9)	<13:30:00

Secret grade

Main article: Secret Grade Techniques

Secret grade is a hidden grading system that recognizes a ">" pattern in the playfield by leaving holes. The first hole becomes Secret grade 9, and each subsequent hole increasing the grade until row 19, the GM grade. The player must top out to have the Secret grade awarded. A minimum grade of 5 is needed to see the message.

Vs. Mode

If the arcade operator has enabled Vs. mode, two players can start a Vs. game. One player must first start a game, and during any point of that game the second player may press start to challenge them, and begin a game.

When the player clears 2 or more lines at once, those lines will be sent to their opponent's playfield as garbage lines. If the match does not end within 5 minutes, the game ends in a draw.

Item blocks

Item blocks can be used to attack or defend from the player's opponent. The player gets a random item with every 20 blocks placed, regardless of line clears.

Clearing lines will fill up the item meter adjacent to a player's playfield. When the meter is full an item block is dealt to the player. They may use it by clearing a line which the piece is part of.

It is possible to cancel active item blocks by activating an attack item before the opponent's block is placed. Note that purely visual attacks, such as X-Ray, Press Field and Spin Field, do not destroy enemy blocks.

There are 18 different item blocks.

Attack items
DEATH BLOCK	Makes the opponent's next block big.
NEGA FIELD	Flip the playfield's occupied cells to empty, and empty cells to occupied.
SPIN FIELD	Rotate the opponent's field for a short time.
180° FIELD	Rotate the playfield upside down and move the newly rotated cells down.
SHOT GUN!	Randomly shoot a group of holes in the opponent's stack.
HARD BLOCK	The opponent's next piece must be cleared twice to be removed from the playfield.
LASER BLOCK	Remove a column of holes in the opponent's stack. The attacker many move the laser by pressing left and right.
ROLL ROLL	The opponent's next 3 pieces are auto rotating by a fixed interval.
TRANS FORM	The opponent's next 3 pieces will change tetromino every time the piece is rotated.
X-RAY	A partially invisible effect is applied to the opponent's stack for a short period.
PRESS FIELD	Shrinks the opponent's playfield for a short period.
Defense items
↑ DEL FIELD	Deletes the upper half of the player's playfield.
↓ DEL FIELD	Deletes the lower half of the player's playfield.
→ MOV FIELD	Push every cell in the player's playfield to the right.
← MOV FIELD	Push every cell in the player's playfield to the left.
DEL EVEN	Deletes every 2nd row in the player's playfield.
Special items
FREE FALL	Forces all cells to move down in the player's playfield removing any holes.
EXCHG FIELD	Swaps the player's and opponent's playfield.

Hidden modes

All codes must be entered at the title screen. Codes may be combined (i.e. Big 20G mode + Reverse Monochrome mode.) Scores achieved using codes will not be stored on the high score table.

Key: L = Left, D = Down, U = Up, R = Right

20G mode 20G Mode Immediately enables maximum gravity (20G). Input code: DDDDDDDDCBA	Big mode Big Mode Tetrominoes are twice normal size, simulating play in a 5x10 playfield Input code: LLLLDCBA
Rev mode Rev Mode Play in reverse! Pieces will spawn at the bottom of the playfield and "fall" upwards Input code: DUUDCBA	Mono mode Mono Mode All tetrominoes are monochrome Input code: RRRUCBA
TLS mode TLS Mode Shows the "Temporary Landing System" aka "ghost piece" for the entirety of the game, not just 0-100 Input code: ABCCBAACB	Uki mode Uki Mode Instead of line clear sound effect when clearing multiple lines, a child's voice will say "Uki" repeatedly, the japanese word for the sound a monkey makes. The child will say "Waaahhh!" instead if the player scores a Tetris. Input code: ABABABABABABABABB

Other modes

• No item VS (Play VS mode without item blocks):
  Hold both player Start buttons together before the match begins.

Speed timings

Gravity does not increase uniformly, unlike many other tetris games. It rises and falls, depending on the level as shown in the table below.

The unit for gravity is G (rows per frame), as a fraction with a constant denominator of 256. This means G = Internal Gravity/256. For example, at levels 90 through 99, the gravity is 64/256G, or 1/4G.

Internal Gravity

Level	Internal Gravity (1/256 G)	Level	Internal Gravity (1/256 G)
0	4	220	32
30	6	230	64
35	8	233	96
40	10	236	128
50	12	239	160
60	16	243	192
70	32	247	224
80	48	251	256 (1G)
90	64	300	512 (2G)
100	80	330	768 (3G)
120	96	360	1024 (4G)
140	112	400	1280 (5G)
160	128	420	1024 (4G)
170	144	450	768 (3G)
200	4	500	5120 (20G)

Unlike TGM2, the line clear delay, lock delay, ARE and DAS do not change throughout the game. The following are the timing values adjusted to what a player would observe, including inclusive DAS counting.

Delays

Level	ARE (frames)	DAS (frames)	Lock (frames)	Line clear (frames)
000 - 999	30	16	30	41

• The player's DAS charge is unmodified during line clear delay, the first 4 frames of ARE, the last frame of ARE, and the frame on which a piece spawns.

Arcade Archives version

The Arcade Archives version released for the Nintendo Switch and PS4 features new modes and online leaderboards.

Original mode

A replica of the original arcade release.

Hi score mode

A mode where you compete for the highest grade possible in the shortest amount of time. 20G mode can be enabled.

Caravan mode

A mode where you attempt to get the highest score in 5 minutes. Big Block mode can be enabled.

Emulation

The tables below provide verified lists of archives and files to make sure that Tetris the Grand Master can be emulated properly. There aren't any guides, at this point, for dumping these required files from a PCB; but these files can be searched out on the Internet.

Downloadable Archives

Archive	MD5 Hash
tgmj.zip	7fcc8a72b4bc1f3340e1db4724b0628d
coh3002c.zip	4f97958fe67444637b5c6700fb62849c
cpzn2.zip	99304c05983b337217ab4b56400a14ac
qsound_hle.zip	758388893761ea3ff0d820f60344a38e

Required BIOS Files

File	MD5 Hash
cp10.ic652	26574f621b61ea09eef08e8a7eba5a65
m534002c-59.ic353	1254b215f64aee1f83895e0213a9ac82
coh-3002c.353	1254b215f64aee1f83895e0213a9ac82
dl-1425.bin	108b113a596e800a02fece73f784eeb0

Required TGM Files

File	MD5 Hash
ate_02.2e	591fe13727496e4037e53cc834e24ccd
ate-01m.3a	b832063bef8d81ff6a318f39da6f4c74
ate-05m.3h	99740df1cf1201a4efe5d5b2c4806425
ate-06m.4h	2188d3a9be4769a21e44d33cbfbd2024
atej_04.2h	14e13f937163b6db734d3220a017bfc0
cp11	439f9c44559f2f4761d433dd4b96866d

The current version of MAME is capable of running Tetris the Grand Master. MAME can either be run as a standalone program on Windows or the Macintosh, or as a core through other Emulator frontends such as RetroArch or OpenEmu (Experimental). It is recommended that all of the BIOS files from the above archives are added into the "tgmj.zip" archive before importing the game into an emulator. If the tgmj.zip archive is imported without the BIOS files inside, the emulator will report numerous file requirement errors, or it will simply not start.

Physical scans

Capcom Sony ZN-2, JP
PCB, 244×245×50 mm

See also

• List of TGM series bugs

External links

• Tetris: The Grand Master on The Cutting Room Floor