List of Issues with Tetris Forever

[DAwesme]

I've run into a lot of issues with Tetris Forever. Some are glitches, some are weird design choices, and some are nitpicks; I'll tag each one appropriately. I'll add more to this discussion if I find any more issues, please feel free to add your own.

[Glitch] 2 inputs cannot happen simultaneously in Tetris Time Warp (I.E. If I'm holding a direction, I cannot Hard Drop).

[Glitch] It is not possible to remap buttons on console games to the Z Key, it just goes to another key, usually X (Important since Z is used for Counter Clockwise rotation with default keyboard layouts).

[Design] Tetris Time Warp's Marathon mode isn't Marathon mode, it's endless (Marathon caps out at 150 lines).

[Design] The Time Warps in Tetris Time Warp do not accurately depict their source material: all the modes use SRS (when it is not broken), 7 Bag (I think, since it just reuses your next queue whenever you warp), and extensive lock delay.

[Design] The Guideline is not properly implemented in Tetris Time Warp: Due to the glitch with inputs, certain spins & kicks do not function as intended.

[Design] It is not possible to rebind controls for the PC games (I get the authenticity argument, but I want to play the games in a way that's comfortable, and a lot of these games assume the player's keyboard has a numpad, which a lot of keyboards nowadays do not have).

[Nitpick] It is not possible to use modern keyboard controls in most games, as only 1 button or key can be bound to a given action: This means X and Up Arrow cannot both be Clockwise Rotate (Niche scenarios when this is needed, but it comes up in higher levels of play).

[Nitpick] There are not separate control schemes for menu navigation & game play: this means if you want to play the classic games with Modern PC Controls, A will be Up Arrow, and Space will be Up on DPad, which gets more confusing than menu navigation on a leverless fight stick (A possible solution would be to have 2 control mapping profiles, that could be swapped via a key that's not used, like the number keys or maybe tab)

[Nitpick] The Time Warps in Tetris Time Warp do not give the player enough time to adjust between warps: at level 15 a piece will usually be placed before the Time Warp effect finishes, leading to possible goals being made near impossible to reach (depending on what board you start with)

[Nitpick] Tetris Time Warp is boring in single player. Since there's no line cap, the game can go forever, and be constantly interrupted by the warps. The warps get old fast since the objectives are static and always appear in the same order. Combine this with the glitches around inputs and the game just isn't very fun.

I want to be able to enjoy the games presented, but there are so many issues that it's hard to enjoy almost any of the games available.

[ninnyjams]

As to the marathon mode being endless, hopefully they don't just remove endless. Should be both, of course.

[prudenut]

Game should also just load up faster and have a quickplay button for time warp like how puyo puyo tetris 2 has a quickplay for marathon puyo puyo or marathon tetris and loads up faster. The only decent mode here is time warp, but to get there you got to Wait for 20 seconds for the logos to load up, start, game list, then scroll all of the way to the right to access time warp everytime and choose a mode. Very clunky and slow. Also literally no way to exit most of these roms to the game selection menu besides electronika60 for some reason and time warp. I started tetris battle gaiden but want to pick a different game? Too bad, you got to relaunch the entire game and choose after the slow loading and menu hopping. Bc for some reason there is no way to simply go to the game selection or bring up an emulation menu after you pick a rom? And no save and load states? These are basic emulation features that are missing.

[DanAmrich_DE]

Thanks for this list -- it's clear and actionable and the team's aware of your feedback. Hopefully we can make some adjustments to improve things for you.

But.... :) TTW's Marathon mode stops at 150 lines as Marathon mode was designed to be, make it to a predetermined finish line. TTW Score Attack mode is endless. Play again and check -- I think you might have these confused.

[Nick]

i'd like to add two more to this list:
in the gameboy time warp, a t-spin double/triple does not count for clearing the objective of a double
and the time warp mode freaks out if you make a big line clear with the cascade effect (think 10 lines+)

[Zerker]

Two things I noticed (playing the GOG release but I expect it's the same):
1. The Electronika 60 version's help says Space is drop, but it doesn't seem to work. Numpad 5 does though.
2. The Electronika 60's score tracking is unusual. It seems to wrap around and get a tick mark every 1000 points, but if my "current" score is less than 100 (default scores on the board), regardless of tick marks, it doesn't get recorded. Also, even if it is recorded, I noticed I got two tick marks on the scoreboard when I had three in the game.

PS: I'm also running in Wine on Linux, though I expect that shouldn't make a difference.

[DAwesme]

Publicado originalmente por DanAmrich_DE:

TTW's Marathon mode stops at 150 lines as Marathon mode was designed to be, make it to a predetermined finish line. TTW Score Attack mode is endless. Play again and check -- I think you might have these confused.

I mistook the first mode for marathon, that's my bad

[prudenut]

There really should be a universal controller layout as i remember many times it was difficult and annoying just typing my name for some of these roms after a game. You would think simply pressing up and down to choose letters than pressing A would be the same for all, but no, it’s not, some of those tetris roms have weird default controller schemes that make simply typing a name unintuitive so i had to annoyingly rewind back to type my name correctly.

[Pie Eater 9000]

Publicado originalmente por Zerker:

Two things I noticed (playing the GOG release but I expect it's the same):
1. The Electronika 60 version's help says Space is drop, but it doesn't seem to work. Numpad 5 does though.
2. The Electronika 60's score tracking is unusual. It seems to wrap around and get a tick mark every 1000 points, but if my "current" score is less than 100 (default scores on the board), regardless of tick marks, it doesn't get recorded. Also, even if it is recorded, I noticed I got two tick marks on the scoreboard when I had three in the game.

PS: I'm also running in Wine on Linux, though I expect that shouldn't make a difference.

As to your first point, I've noticed the same playing on Steam with Windows 10.

[brakeMg]

A few things from me too. These are use a translator.

• [Glitch] Controller Reset Freeze --
  Some games (mostly Bombliss) allow to reset the game from the controller, but SFC Super Bombliss only stops the game with a black screen. This issue was also confirmed on at least the Switch version.
  
  • Combined with the reset issue listed below, player data is lost every time the game is booted or when resetting from an out-of-game menu, and the game freezes when the controller is reset. [Spoilers below are in Japanese]
    これらの不具合とスタッフロールがコントローラーのボタン一つでタイトルやモード選択に戻る事が無い仕様な為、全てのモードクリア後の、対戦相手及びスタッフロールでの集合立ち絵が絶対に見れない。
  
  
• [Issue] "Reset" to completely erase data at boot up or from the out-of-game menu --
  Even if the game was originally a backup ROM compatible game, if you reset it at startup or from an outside game menu, the save data will be erased. Where did the built-in battery go? Basically, when playing a game that falls under this category in its original format, the general operation is to press the reset button on the main unit or turn off the power once.
  
  • Regarding the [issue] in this section, as a reference medium called Tetris Forever, it may be correct in a sense that "it should always start in an initialized state (that's how I interpreted it)" Of course, I know that It can save suspend point the game from the menu outside the game. (I think these can be classified as [Design]). However, as the original medium, it would be strange if the save data was not retained (I think it would be classified as [Glitch] in that respect). Since it can be classified either way, I decided to write it this way. (Personally, I would classify it as [Glitch].)
  
  
• [Glitch]1 lined after returning from time warp --
  In Modern Skin, if perform a time warp by placing (or erasing) in a specific way, the terrain will be aligned in 1 line after return and the game will continue. The line that was aligned when you placed the Mino you were controlling will disappear.
  
  
  
• [Design]([Nitpick]?)Both are P1 --
  It is not possible to assign player 1 to the keyboard and player 2 to the controller (and vice versa). Both are treated as player 1's input, which is inconvenient as you need to have two or more controllers (Tetris 3 & Time warp) in local matches.
  
  
• [Design]Tetris Time Warp's Bombliss cascade is incorrect --
  Of course, because the behavior is different from the original, it works for better or worse.
  
  • In the original game, it would disappear halfway and become a stupid shape, but in this version, the part directly above where it disappeared will fall, which is helpful even for beginners and people who don't know about Bonbliss.
    
  • On the other hand, it is not possible to line up more than five cascades in one go, blocks get stuck next to each other while falling, or get completely suspended in the air, and even if a chain reaction occurs, the explosion range does not increase. In other words, the game behaves strangely (if you use the original game as a standard), making it impossible to use techniques (or something like them) that would be used by an expert of the original game.
  
  

• Publicado originalmente por DAwesme:

  [Glitch] 2 inputs cannot happen simultaneously in Tetris Time Warp (I.E. If I'm holding a direction, I cannot Hard Drop).

  It's a glitch if you say it's a glitch, but when playing with a controller, the default is to use the left and right buttons on the directional pad for horizontal movement and up for hard drops, but this has the advantage that the input of a hard drop during horizontal movement doesn't get caught up in an unexpected trigger (a problem with the structure of certain controllers).
  However, if you change the key mapping of the controller to a special layout, or if each key or button for keyboard operation is isolated, I agree that it feels like a glitch when you press it but it doesn't work.
  I hope each player can choose which to do.

There are probably a few more details, but I've listed the parts that particularly caught my attention.

[DanAmrich_DE]

All good points, thank you -- keep them coming.

[DAwesme]

Publicado originalmente por brakeMg:

• Publicado originalmente por DAwesme:

  [Glitch] 2 inputs cannot happen simultaneously in Tetris Time Warp (I.E. If I'm holding a direction, I cannot Hard Drop).

  It's a glitch if you say it's a glitch, but when playing with a controller, the default is to use the left and right buttons on the directional pad for horizontal movement and up for hard drops, but this has the advantage that the input of a hard drop during horizontal movement doesn't get caught up in an unexpected trigger (a problem with the structure of certain controllers).

I use default controls when playing on controller, and I can confirm games like Tetris 99 allow you to hard drop while holding a direction button, which I do frequently. I can see how controller's implementation in Tetris Time Warp could be seen as a design choice to prevent accidental hard drops, but I think that it is a glitch given that it conflicts with the controller controls implementations on other Tetris games.

That being said, I haven't played Tetris Time Warp on Controller yet, as I have only played it on PC with keyboard controls. In other Tetris games on PC (Like Tetris Effect: Connected), You can hard drop even if you are holding another button.

[Ghost_Train]

More issues:

- I think there might be a typo in one of the dates (but i can't confirm for sure.
Chapter 2: Tetris (Apple II)
"...which had initially been released in 1977".
The first Tetris was 1984, wasn't it? I think it might mean 1987

- The cursor on some of the games for entering your name after a play stays as a solid white square so we can't see the what letter its on before entering it.

[DOSNostalgic]

Publicado originalmente por Ghost_Train:

- I think there might be a typo in one of the dates (but i can't confirm for sure.
Chapter 2: Tetris (Apple II)
"...which had initially been released in 1977".
The first Tetris was 1984, wasn't it? I think it might mean 1987

The text is referring to the platform itself, the Apple II, which has been released in 1977.

[DOSNostalgic]

Publicado originalmente por Eldin:

Per Google, Tetris release date is correct which is reflected here, unless that is wrong.

It's the 1977 part that confused them.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/37812124477920707/451E8D787E048CAB1AD6CDEF4E6DF5F21AAA6927/

[Ghost_Train]

Publicado originalmente por DOSNostalgic:

Publicado originalmente por Eldin:

Per Google, Tetris release date is correct which is reflected here, unless that is wrong.

It's the 1977 part that confused them.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/37812124477920707/451E8D787E048CAB1AD6CDEF4E6DF5F21AAA6927/

The first Tetris on Electrinika 60 was released 1984 according to this same game, so it doesn't make sense one that came later was released 1977 unless im missing something here. it looks like a rerelease of the one from 1988 just next to it, so looked like a typo