Tetris The Grand Master

Tetris The Grand Master
Developer(s)	Arika
Publisher(s)	Capcom
Platform(s)	Arcade
Release	1998 Aug
Gameplay info
Next pieces	1
Playfield size	10x20
Hold piece	No
Hard drop	No

Tetris The Grand Master is the first arcade game in Arika's TGM series.

Gameplay

TODO: I think we should possibly include one of those anatomy screenshot dealies that points everything out (score, grade, time, and level). Sort of like in the IRS patent. Maybe with a caption that says "beginners should care most about level, while advanced players care only about their time". Or something.

Unlike typical tetris games where the goal is indefinite survival and a high score, TGM is a challenge where you have a finite opportunity to attain a high Grade. With the exception of the final grade of Grand Master, grade is derived from your score. This indirectly makes the grading system strongly favour survival, with a special emphasis on clearing non-singles late in the game during 20g.

With only a small number of grades, there are often ties. The highscore table ranks a tied grade higher if it was attained faster. In practice, solid play will award players the highest rank of Grand Master. As such, for adequately skilled players the game becomes a time attack to level 999.

Level

Level has a unique implementation in TGM. The level counter will increase by 1 for every piece that enters the well. It will also increase by 1 for each line cleared. The game ends once level 999 is reached.

When you are about to increment the hundreds digit (eg. at level 399), only line clears will count towards your level. Level 998 is treated similarly, with a final line clear required to reach 999 and finish.

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 player can force constant 20G, by entering a code before starting the game, though this will exclude their play from the highscore list.

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[1]

Level	Interal 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	243
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.

Delays

Level	ARE (frames)	DAS (frames)	Lock (frames)	Line clear (frames)
000 - 999	25	16	30	40

• DAS is inclusive of both the initial shift and the autoshift frames.
• In addition, there are also 3 frames of "lock-flash"; 3 frames of delay after ARE but before the appearance of the next tetromino (during which DAS will not charge); and 1 frame of delay before line clear animation begins.

Scoring

TGM shares the same scoring gimmicks of many other Tetris games, though they are not quite implemented the same way:

• You receive more points for clearing more lines at once.
• Lines are worth more with each passing level. (The nature of "level" in TGM, however, means the amount of points a line is worth is constantly changing, and especially in the 0-99 section, it is to the player's advantage to stack high before clearing lines.)
• You receive points for forcing a piece down. (Though only when this results in cleared lines, unlike in several other games.)

There are a few scoring gimmicks unique to TGM:

• You receive a combo bonus for clearing lines with consecutive pieces.
• You receive a bravo bonus for clearing the entire screen.

Incidentally, for all players good enough to attain the rank of S9 score becomes irrelevant and the focus changes to a time attack rather than a score attack. Nevertheless, here is a more technical description of the scoring formula:

Score = ((Level + Lines)/4 + Soft) x Lines x Combo x Bravo

Where:

• Level is the current level you are on.
• Lines is the number of lines you just cleared.
• (Level + Lines)/4 is rounded up.
• Soft is the cummulative number frames during which Down was held during the piece's active time. Note that this means manually locking pieces already on the ground will increase the Soft value by 1.
• Locking a piece without clearing lines sets Combo to 1. Otherwise, the game updates Combo as follows before calculating Score:

  Combo = (previous Combo value) + (2 x Lines) - 2

  Example: 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 TGM1 grade is entirely determined by score. As you pass certain milestones, TGM will assign you the next grade:

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		126,000 (see below)

Grand Master rank has four requirements:

1. At level 300, score is at least 12,000 (grade 1).
2. At level 500, score is at least 40,000 (grade S4).
3. At level 999, score is at least 126,000 (slightly higher than grade S9).
4. At level 999, time is 13:30.00 or less.

Codes

All codes should be entered at the title screen.

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

• TLS Mode: ABCCBAACB
• 20G Mode：DDDDDDDDCBA
• Big Mode: LLLLDCBA
• Uki Mode：ABABABABABABABABB
• Reverse Mode: DUUDCBA
• Monochrome Mode: RRRUCBA