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YMMV / Tetris: The Grand Master

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  • Awesome Music: Even if most of these games lack "Korobeiniki", they still have some pretty awesome music. TGM ACE has an awesome remix of "Katyusha", heard only in Another Road.
  • Broken Base: The Arcade Archives port of TAP has been quite divisive due to being locked at 60.00 FPS to follow common television refresh rates, as opposed to the arcade original which runs at 61.68 FPS, meaning the ACA verison is running about 3% slower. While there are those who are just content with the existence of this port, others feel that this is big enough of a difference that it illegitimizes records achieved on it.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Expect everyone who plays Ti with any sort of competitive mindset to use Classic Rule (Arika-style mechanics) over World Rule (Super Rotation System). Justified, as World Rule was added in order to comply with The Tetris Company's guidelines on Tetris games.
  • Contested Sequel: Fans are split over whether TGM3 is an improvment upon TAP with its improved Arika Rotation System (specifically, the new "floor kick" added to the I-piece to make it easier to rotate when in 20G and the piece is horizontal), or Fake Difficulty: The Game due to the COOL system resulting in an unreasonably fast speed curve and encouraging Do Well, But Not Perfect tendencies in the name of better grades and the Easy mode having unintuitive and guide-requiring scoring mechanics.
  • Cult Classic: Although the series is known through memetic videos at best outside of Japan, it does have a small dedicated following in the West. This seems to be changing in 2015, as demonstrations of it at Games Done Quick have helped bring more exposure to Western gamers. In Japan, the Pier21 arcade in Kodaira maintains a dedicated set of TGM setups, with periodic competitions still being held for the games over 20 years after the original TGM was released.
  • Default Setting Syndrome: World Rule in TGM3, particularly amongst those who haven't played any of the TGM games prior to it.
  • Even Better Sequel: The first game is already pretty good, being a tough, but fair challenge that encourages quick and efficient play coupled with wise stacking decisions. The second game cranks the difficulty up, but also adds some quality-of-life touches like non-locking hard drop, the option for players to to refuse VS play, and the Plus version in particular introduces the famous T.A. Death mode.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • Mihara's sperm: The level 100-199 background in TGM1.
    • Torikan: The time-based checkpoints that trigger a Non-Standard Game Over if their requirements are not met (for example, 3'25" in TAP's T.A. Death mode at level 500 and 7'00" in Ti's Master mode at level 500). The term comes from toriaezu kansuto, or "counter-stopped for the time being". More details can be found here.
    • "Awkward G": The gravity during levels 300 to 499, during which blocks are falling at a rate of at least 1 grid cell per frame, but still below the "20G" instant drop speed. The "awkward" part comes from the fact that it's hard to tell which moves are possible, as the high-speed-but-not-quite-instant gravity means that one cannot really tell if sliding a block across a gap or far enough into one's desired position will succeed.
  • Friendly Fandoms: You can expect a lot of TGM players to also be BEMANI or shmup players, most likely because all three of these comprise challenging skill-based single-player arcade games.
  • Good Bad Translation: The message you get in TGM3 if you take too long to pass certain levels: "EXCELLENT — but...let's go better next time"
  • Mainstream Obscurity: The game has seen a lot of positive reception from Western fans...the problem is that few play it, partly because for most Westerners, the only way to play legally prior to 2022 was to be lucky enough to live near an arcade with it (of which there are very, very few), or to buy the arcade hardware for a non-trivial amount of money.
  • Memetic Mutation: Drift-compatibleExplanation 
  • Mis-blamed:
    • It was believed that TGM4 was canceled due to the Tetris Company's meddling, but it was revealed on December 5, 2010 that Sega refused to publish it and that Henk Rogers and the Tetris Company actually like this series. There are still some details left to speculation, but the troubles related to clones are no longer the only point of contention.
    • Many TGM fans were quick to blame Henk Rogers, founder of Blue Planet Software (previously Bullet-Proof Software) and founder and managing director of The Tetris Company, in part for why TGM4 was cancelled. According to a forum post from a longstanding member of the TGM community who emailed him, Rogers had nothing to do wtih the cancellation and in fact enjoys the TGM series.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: The grade-increase sound. Daaaa dadada daaaaa!
  • Older Than They Think
    • 20G has appeared previously in an obscure Tetris clone for the Sharp X68000 computer known as "Shimizu Tetris".
    • For the more astute Tetris players reading this, the rotation system and piece colors for the TGM series is the same as the one in Sega's 1988 version of Tetris, only with the ability to rotate in more than one direction, and a mechanic that shifts the current piece to the side if you try to rotate it but normally can't due to a wall or piece obstructing it.
    • TGM wasn't the first game with Sega rotation to introduce wall kicks - Tetris Plus 2 had almost the same system a year earlier.
  • Self-Imposed Challenge: Since this game is meant for Challenge Gamers, many players decide to take on extra limitations while playing to further increase the difficulty, such as playing one-handed, or playing the 2-player Doubles mode by themselves.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • Firm drop for some players, which has led to many a misdrop (and is possibly why players in some regions stick to World Rule, which offers standard hard drop).
    • In the original TGM, allowing and refusing VS matches can only be changed through operator settings; if they're disabled, both sides can peacefully play single-player but can't battle, and if they're enabled and another player has the lack of etiquette to put in their coins and press start, the first player's run will be ended and disqualified from rankings (yes, even if you are at level 998 and you are about to get a GM rank). Subsequent games allow the player to refuse VS matches simply by pressing their start button.
    • For many players, Easy mode in Ti. Not for easily-guessable reasons, but because the mechanics behind the hanabi (fireworks) scoring system are needlessly complicatednote  and, from what players can make out, emphasize non-typical stacking strategies to build up combos rather than just making Tetrises all day.
    • The "COOL!!" system in Ti's Master mode is disliked by some players due to consecutive COOL!! requirements being dependent on how fast you went in the previous section; if you have a strong early game the game will expect you to keep it up lest you screw yourself out of good grades and the invisible roll, as opposed to performing decently at the start and improving later on. Thus, this system can encourage players to Do Well, But Not Perfect.
    • "Mihara's conspiracy". Basically, because the wall kicks are done in right-left order, trying to squeeze pieces in will, in very specific cases, result in the piece shifting to an unexpected spot because you were trying to slip it in left and the game did a right-shift first, something that doesn't happen if you horizontally flip the scenario.
    • TGM ACE is by all accounts a fairly adequate game if you don't mind that it's not really a TGM game, but one glaring issue players have is with multiplayer mode, in which the round ends when either player makes 20 lines. To put it in perspective, you only need five Tetrises to win. This gives players hardly any opportunity for intense matches, as rounds are determined by 20 line clears more than by either player being garbaged to death.
    • In TAP's T.A. Death mode, the I piece is unable to kick, so simply setting up a one-cell-wide hole on either the far left or right isn't enough to set up for a Tetris; you also have to set up a slightly wider opening for the piece to slip through. Thankfully, in regards to the other pieces, the game gives you some relief in the form of never giving out an S, Z, or O as the first piece. The I was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap in Ti, where a horizontally-laid I can now kick off of the floor once.
  • Sequel Difficulty Spike: Each succcessive game (except ACE) gets faster and faster, and the GM rank more difficult to get. While the first game is comparatively easy to get a GM grade in, in the 15 years since Terror-Instinct was released, only sixteen people have managed to get a GM grade.
  • Sequelitis: TGM ACE. A good Tetris game, but you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who would regard it as a great game by TGM standards.
  • So Okay, It's Average: ACE, infamous for having so many of the iconic TGM elements stripped out due to Executive Meddling on The Tetris Company's part, is widely seen as this. It's not a horrible game all things considered, it's just that if you want to play a Guideline-compliant Tetris game, there's many others out there, and if you want to play something closer to a proper TGM game, there are clones of the game that do the job better, as well as the Arcade Archives ports of the arcade games.
  • That One Level: Level 300-499 in TGM1 and Master mode in both versions of TGM2, and speed level 300-499 in TGM3. Around this range pieces are falling quite fast but not quite 20G just yet...which is exactly the problem, because it's harder to predict if a piece has enough clearance to cross a particular gap or move far enough from its spawn, as opposed to flat-out 20G where piece placement options are more predictable.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: TGM4's version of the Arika Rotation System would have had, instead of step reset (in which the timer for a piece locking resets only on a piece moving down), use move reset (in which you only need to move the piece). This has not sat well with some fans.
  • They Copied It, So It Sucks!: The sentiment Ichiro Mihara, the lead developer had to the clones of this very game (as detailed in Artist Disillusionment in Trivia section), which led to him stopping development.

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