I thought being addicted to tetris was automatic, but I guess not after reading a few other posts. I was hooked on the game, and I always get hooked again whenever I put it in to play. My first tetris game was for the gameboy, and I now own NES Tetris too. I’ve played Tengin Tetris, Tetris Gaiden (super famicom I believe), Tetris & Dr. Mario (snes), and Tetris Attack (snes).

On the regular NES version, I’ve been able to get 249 lines. It sounds unreachable, but I’ve played many many times on Game Mode A. It’s not something I can achieve regularly (I usually top out around 200, since there is a big jump in speed when you reach level 19), but during that particular game, I was in the zone. Also, there seems to be a point when the falling rate doesn’t really speed up. Sometimes I start on level 19 for fun (move the cursor to level 9, hold A, press start). My record lines starting on level 19 is around 45-50. It took quite a while for me to beat the Game Mode B on Level 9, Height 5, but eventually I did it. For fun, what I like to do is try to beat 9/5 every 3 out of 5 tries. I don’t succeed very often, but it’s fun to try.

It was 1993 or ’94 when I played tengen tetris for the first and only time. A roommate of mine worked for a video game store, and I went with him one day. I was invited to the back room, where the employees got to play games, and I swear I wanted to move in permanently so I could play all the games they had. I walked over to the tv, and on the way I had a good chuckle at a ruler I spotted that someone wrote “SHINGEN” on, and they were playing tengen tetris, which was available for around $100. All I can really remember is that the speed of the blocks did not speed up like they do in the Nintendo version. In fact, I believe I quit before actually losing, since they speed of the blocks never seemed to get too alarmingly fast. It was either that, or else I was nervous because one of the store owners was on their way, and I didn’t think I should be in the back room since I wasn’t an employee. Oh well. Pretty fun. I know I had a desire to see how far I could go in the game, but I was a little more interested in trying out so many other games that were accessible.

I'm good at getting lots of lines, but other people have their expertise, such as high scores, which I haven't really paid much attention to, and then there's the people that are extremely good at placing blocks FAST, such as the winners from the Nintendo Powerfest 1990 (Nintendo World Championships). In fact, I did want to make the suggestion of having THAT cartridge (the NWC cart) as the Game of the Week. Not sure if I have to make one of those original NES designs though in order to get that one chosen. I figured it would spark people's memories of the NWC though.