In the Original PAL cartridge, if a player holds Select while placing piece it gives the player 10,000 points which means you can get a PAL maxout in under 10 lines.

This seems like something that should be disallowed in the rules.

i estimate that 80-90% of ALL top NES Tetris players use some form of the TetrisGym Romhack instead of the main cartridge. Most of the latest top runs and almost all future top runs will be preformed on it and it would be good to have some confirmation by moderators that this romhack is permitted for use in runs.

If you're not familiar with TetrisGym then here is the rundown:

TetrisGym is a Romhack that mainly combines a few quality of life improvements but importantly does NOT change A-Type or B-Type gameplay in any way. the main changes are an elimination of cut-scenes and Score-uncap to make the time between games as smooth as possible. This in combination with some seperate training gamemodes and a "SamePieceSets" mode for online Matches means that this romhack is used by all top players who are able to use it.

So is the use of TetrisGym on A-Type permitted since no gameplay is altered and in the base form there is not a single pixel changed that could tell TetrisGym and a regular Cart apart.

It has come to my attention that RNG Manipulation is not mentioned at all by the rules, and therefore by default allowed. And I think this needs to be discussed and decided on.

For a recap of what RNG Manipulation is: In NES Tetris, the RNG is random, however that randomness is still predictable. If you start a game 500 Frames after the console is turned on, then the start RNG you get is the exact same every single time you do so. (there is a bit more to it involving the music screen but thats not important)

This isnt a big deal as the next pieces are determined by the time the current piece hits the stack. so if you had 2 games both started on frame 500 with the same rng and make any differing placements between them. Then the RNG will quickly branch into its own sequence away from whatever moves you might have made any other time, leading to two completely different games and completely different rng.

(pushind down also changes the time a piece hits the stack making the rng different to not pushing down, so 100L 0start, and 0-19 speedruns won't be affected if rng manip is allowed as there is no way to meaningfully do rng manip if the scramble the rng every single piece you push down.)

But this leads to the possibility of engineering a TAS on 19 Starts (where you never push down) for the 300k and 100 Lines Speedruns where you can be as risky as you want, even making dubious moves in order to force longbars at perfect times. You'd only be limited by your horizontal speed (tapping) which due to Rolling is starting to become less and less of an issue.

For an example of what RNG manipulation can do. Here is a video of a slow DAS player replaying his TAS in real time on a console with controller getting 1,504k points before killscreen: (). This was done when the record for the game was barely a 1,300k by one of the fastest tappers, and 1.5 has yet to be beaten by anyone, even as many people have gotten 200k and even 300k+ on killscreen.

if RNG Manipulation is allowed, then it has the ability to drastically change the top of the leaderboard category for 300k, and maybe 100L in time. It'll make the speedrun more similar to SMB1 where people are simply replaying stages trying to get the same inputs every time. But for tetris it'll be just replaying moves done by you or a friend in a tas.

Personally im mixed on if it should be allowed. most games i'm aware of allow for this sort of thing. it allows you to know enemy patterns, and in some games its impossible NOT to notice the game giving you the same rng if you play optimally. But allowing this will change the leaderboard for 300k...

I think the leaderboards need to introduce smaller increments of time to list the Tetris(NES) Runs in all categories.

Currently All tetris categories only count times to the full second. And in categories like the 300k category, this leads to many people being listed as having the same time as eachother. While in reality one of them is over half a second faster than the other.

This lead to Pixelandy Not getting listed as having the world record in the 300k Category after getting a Low 1:40. Because Joseph already had a high 1:40.

Maybe the best solution is to introduce only 1 extra digit instead of all 3 for milliseconds. but regardless, somethig needs to be done. Because I don't want to next person who beats my 300k WR time by 0.7 seconds to not get the recognition they deserve.