Magical Tetris Challenge

Magical Tetris Challenge
Developer(s)	Capcom
Publisher(s)	Capcom
Platform(s)	Arcade, Game Boy Color, Nintendo 64, PlayStation
Release	Feb 17, 2000 (Game Boy) 1999 (N64) Nov 26, 1999 (PlayStation) Japan: Nov 20, 1998 (Nintendo 64)
Gameplay info
Next pieces	Two
Playfield size	10x18 visible
Hold piece	No
Hard drop	locking
Rotation system	Original

Magical Tetris Challenge is a game released for the Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Game Boy Color, and arcades featuring various Disney characters.

Modes

Magical Tetris

Magical Tetris is the game's signature mode. In this mode, players have a shared next queue from which each player's next queue draws. Making line clears will send various types of "magical pieces" to the opponent. The magical pieces include pentominoes as well as larger pieces.

Clearing a line while the player has magical pieces in their queue will counter some of their magical pieces, causing to turn into square blocks that are sent back to their opponent. These can be re-countered and grow in size up to a maximum of 5×5.

Magical Tetris can be played in story, versus, or endless mode.

Updown Tetris

Updown Tetris is a two-player game mode which functions as a standard Tetris battle mode with garbage.

Updown Tetris can be played in story or versus mode.

Classic Tetris

Classic Tetris is the game's one-player marathon mode. The player can choose from three difficulties.

Modes (Game Boy Color)

Owing to the Game Boy Color's smaller screen there is only space to fit the player's playfield. Magical Tetris and Updown Tetris appear in this game but the opponent's stack is indicated by a bar at the left showing their stack's height.

Quest Mode

In this mode the player has the goal of collecting coins scattered around the map. Each coin is held by an NPC and must be won by winning a match of Tetris, with the mode depending on the character. The player will have a specific set of numbered coins to collect.

By clearing Quest Mode further modes of Tetris can be unlocked.

Signal Tetris

In Signal Tetris the player has a sample row and a signal row below their playfield, and must change the colours of the signal row to match the sample row. Colours are changed on line clears based on the columns corresponding to the blocks that filled the cleared rows. If the colour is changed to match the sample row then extra rows will be cleared from the bottom of the stack corresponding to the number of matches.

Towering Tetris

In Towering Tetris the player has to downstack through garbage rows that appear at timed intervals. Downstacking will cause the meter on the left to update, and the player wins when they clear the row containing the key block at the bottom. In addition, the player can get a special domino block that can drop single blocks while it is on the screen (similar to Flicky from Bloxeed).

Target Tetris

Clear all the marked blocks from the screen given a fixed sequence of pieces. A classic puzzle mode.

Harmony Tetris

A cooperative two-player mode. The main gimmick of Harmony Tetris is that when a line is completed it only clears once the other player has completed a line.

Gameplay

This game uses its own rotation system, wich seems to be a bastard mix of Atari rotation and SRS, with different initial piece orientations. all pieces other than T and square start vertical (!). Ls and Js start upside down, and their rotation centres are outside the piece, so that when they rotate their long sides maintain contact with the outside of a 3 × 3 bounding box. I rotation is a left handed sega rotation system.

It uses a total lock time system, where you are given a certain number of frames of lock delay for each tetromino.

There are some wallkicks as well, but they don't seem to match SRS.

Apparently the ghost piece system was licensed from Arika.

External Links

• Wikipedia on Magical Tetris Challenge
• TASVideos on Magical Tetris Challenge
• Map of Quest mode