Since its birth in 1984, Tetris has not only become the best-selling game in history among all its versions, but also a mass phenomenon that the vast majority of planet Earth has played at some point in their lives.
However, you are most likely unknowingly playing Tetris poorly, at least if you want to level up and potentially be able to break some records.
If you take control well, you are doing it wrong
We could all think that in a game as old as Tetris everything is invented. From time to time, however, new ways of tackling Alexei Pajitnov’s creation continue to emerge to get past those levels where each palindrome takes just a second or less to reach base from the moment it comes out.
Since a few years, there is a new professional technique to play Tetris on NES to achieve new records or win tournaments. For those casual users, DAS (Delayed Auto Shift) is the standard way to play Tetris, using the D-pad to move pieces from left to right.
However, when the desire to break records and push the limits of the game began, another way of playing called “hypertapping” entered the scene. Hypertapping is one of the techniques best known to professionals and his method involves pressing the D-pad with many rapid taps , resulting in faster movement of the pieces. While this method is effective, it took a long time for the community to fully adopt it.
It wasn’t until 2018, after a young player won a prestigious tournament using hypertapping , that more players started using it. It is now considered the most popular movement technique among top professionals. But hypertapping is difficult to master and can quickly strain muscles and fingers, or even cause minor hand injuries, so it was only a matter of time before another technique would replace it.
Rolling is breaking Tetris records
Cheez_Fish is the player to whom this new technique is due, since at the end of 2020 he began to experiment with a new style of hitting the D-pad that would end up being dubbed ‘rolling’.
Rolling is a somewhat newer technique and is the one they are basing on to break certain records in the game . This new strategy consists of rolling the fingers on the controller while applying pressure to the crosshead. This allowed Cheez_Fish to move pieces in the NES Tetris faster than anyone had ever done using hypertapping .
Other players have noticed and have started trying to learn the rolling g technique . One player, TegaMech, even created a version of rolling where he used his foot to keep the controller steady.
As of now, rolling isn’t widely used yet, with hypertapping being the most widely used pro technique, but as more players look to increase their skills and climb the ranks, this new method could be a great way to get better at Tetris on the NES without potentially injuring yourself in the process.