Tetris: Threetris

This is a complete reworking of NES Tetris into an original game called Threetris.

Yes, the more obvious (and possibly more appropriate) name would be Tritris. But there are already at least two games that use that name. (Though they are based on completely different ideas.)

Threetris is one of the first Tetris games that uses different pieces that actually ends up being (almost?) as fun as regular Tetris. You can find out more in the ReadMe about why these pieces in particular were used.

You will likely notice that you have to use the bottom 5 new piece shapes to fix problems that the top 2 new piece shapes create. There are at least two good strategies that offset that; but those will be up to you to discover.

After some practice you should be able to clear Level 9 Height 5 somewhat consistently.

Update V1.1: Fixed a minor graphical error.

This is a complete reworking of NES Tetris into an original game called Threetris.

First of all, yes the more obvious and possibly appropriate name would be Tritris. But there are already at least two games that use that name, though they are based on completely different ideas from mine.

Threetris is the first Tetris game that uses different pieces that actually ends up being (almost?) as fun as regular Tetris; at least from those games I have played. At first you will likely notice that you have to use the bottom 5 new piece shapes to fix problems that the top 2 new piece shapes create. There are a couple of strong strats that offset that but I will leave that up to you to discover.

Some back story on how these pieces were chosen. Regular Tetris, as many probably know, consists of all of the shapes than can be made from 4 squares with touching sides. Which, of course, is 7 shapes. If diagonals (touching corners) were allowed, the shapes made from 4 squares would go up by at least 22.

Threetris, on the other hand, consists of shapes made from 3 squares or less. There are only 4 shapes than can be made from 3 squares with touching sides. That increases to 9 shapes if diagonals (touching corners) are allowed. After some testing I removed 2 of those touching corner shapes (that happened to be mirrors of each other) to end up with the needed 7 shapes. I will possibly release the version with the 2 pieces I removed in place of the 2 harder pieces at a later date; though that does end up being a bit too easy.

Either way, after some practice I was able to clear Level 9 Height 5 pretty consistintly and it is pretty fun.

Many thanks to Michael Birken for the amazing teardown he did of this game for his AI project; and to Amber Brault for her disassembly of NES Tetris; and to Eric Anderson for his work hacking and disassembling NES Tetris and for some much needed support.

-thirtythree


Database match: Tetris (USA)
Database: No-Intro: Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20210216-231042)
File SHA-1: 77747840541BFC62A28A5957692A98C550BD6B2B
File CRC32: 6D72C53A
ROM SHA-1: FD9079CB5E8479EB06D93C2AE5175BFCE871746A
ROM CRC32: 1394F57E