Attempting Classic Tetris

 In my last post, a anonymous commenter by the username of "John" left the following comment:

The comment left by "John" on last week's post. He is clearly a tetris expert. I wonder who he could be?

This comment made me have a realization that the version of Tetris that I played in my previous posts (the one on tetris.com) is considered to be "modern Tetris", and is different from the original version people played back in the 80's. So I decided to give the classic version a try.

Aside from the differences mentioned by "John" in the comment above (no hold box, random pieces), there are a lot of other small differences that make the game significantly harder. I will list them below:

• There is no way to instantly drop pieces, making the early game a lot more tedious because they fall so slowly.
• You can only see one piece in advance (you can see three in modern tetris), which makes planning your moves a lot harder.
• Pieces stop moving instantly when they touch the ground. This is unlike modern Tetris, in which you have a little time to rotate the pieces before they are set in place, and makes techniques such as t-spins nearly impossible.
• The screen changes color every time you reach a new level. This got bad enough to the point where I had to pause the game multiple times to change the brightness of my screen, and some of the uglier colors made the experience feel like an acid trip. (For any federal agents reading this, I have never done any illegal substances, it is just a common saying.)
• The pieces are random. I know I already mentioned this, but I feel like it deserves an extra mention, since it is possible to go 50 pieces in a row without seeing a single line piece.

In my first attempt, I was still getting used to the stiffer controls, and eventually set myself up in a position impossible to come back from. Not being able to move the pieces once they land is a major difference. I ended up with a score of 14,151, which I think is pretty bad. (I don't know if scores are calculated differently between classic and modern tetris.) On my second attempt, however, I was a lot more used to how the game worked, and was able to play better. My second score was 57,265, which is still pretty bad by modern Tetris standards, but is a lot better than my first score. My experience playing without holds last week definitely helped me get used to it faster.

The scores I achieved in my first two attempts of classic tetris.

After two attempts, I decided to take a break and watch the World Cup. I tuned in just in time to see South Korea score a goal (unfortunately they still lost 4-1). While I can't say I enjoyed classic Tetris more than modern Tetris and probably won't play it again anytime soon, I can see why it appeals to other players such as "John". Thanks for reading, and come back next week for another high-quality post.