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This video by John Harris of the PC4 freeware game "Pac-Pac" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcRdPUXWPyk came up in my feed; I got to looking it up https://plus4world.powweb.com/software/Pac-Pac and then looking up other games made by its developers (code: Skoro), gfx: KiCHY, music: Csabo ) which led me to this game here, https://plus4world.powweb.com/software/Tetris_2K21, coded by Csabo, with graphics by KiCHY.
That plus4world page has Csabo's notes on Tetris 2K21, explaining the origin and rules and stuff; it's a greatly enhanced re-write of the 1990 CP4 game Tetris https://plus4world.powweb.com/software/Tetris (code: TCFS, WIT, gfx: CSM).
And thanks to Kekule1025 for this comment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcRdPUXWPyk&lc=UgxGSPGI7RbTUDLgLm54AaABAg on that Pac-Pac video, commemorating the game's author, Skoro, who passed away recently, and recommending two emulators for CP4: YAPE and plus4emu.
I tried YAPE but couldn't figure out how to get an unfiltered fullscreen mode. Also tried the CP4 flavor of popular C64 emulator VICE, since I already had that installed, but the sound seemed harsh. So I went with plus4emu: https://github.com/istvan-v/plus4emu , specifically the latest release: 1.2.11-beta_20190320.
I have no experience with the Commodore Plus/4 aside from running this game and Pac-Pac just now via emulation, but it's an interesting machine to read about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Plus/4
My video capture didn't capture the emulator's menus so I'm talking like you can see them when you can't, now that's just silly of me.
Oh and yes there was a retail Tetris released for the C64: https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Tetris . It "probably has the longest tune ever written for a video game (25:50 without looping)." which "uses all 4 channels of SID chip": http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=Tetris_(C64) .
Uh oh and there were at least three other retail C64 Tetris game releases:
https://www.lemon64.com/game/tetris-576-kbyte
https://www.lemon64.com/game/tetris-80
https://www.lemon64.com/game/tetrisack
and two public domain ones:
https://www.lemon64.com/game/ata-all-tetris-arcades
https://www.lemon64.com/game/tetris
Uh heck and others:
http://gamebase64.com/search.php?f=0&t=2&s=tetris&b=Go%21&d=18&a=0 |
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| | | Csabo's notes on CP4 World say he patterned the rules after NES Tetris. By level 8 it's moving quite fast; at level 9 I'm pretty much toast.
You can do a silly trick with the blue/purple L block: as soon as it appears, move it all the way right while rotating so that the hooked end is up--if you do it in time, the hook seems to go over the top edge of the well's right-hand wall, leaving two squares of the L dangling down from the top right corner!
Play continues, and when you next complete a line, just the lower square drops down a line--the other square vanishes. The suspended square will continue dropping as you complete more lines; you can also pile more blocks on top of it. It can be cleared as normal. |
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| | | Download added: 01_blocks.png (85237 bytes)
"Good block colors--they don't change."
The block colors don't change. There are no sound effects--but a really driving music track; there's a grinding part of it (this was harsh in the emulator VICE--see entry 1651) that I didn't like much at first, but it kind of grew on me, and in better emulators, with emulation of the newer SID (famed C64 sound chip; third-party, I think, add-on for Plus/4) chip enabled, you can hear little harmonies in that passage, which makes it more listenable.
Csabo said in a YouTube comment on another T2K21 video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl3oMTk3a44&lc=UgzqD1HNzyC_KzySM1V4AaABAg that he launched the re-write because a sound bug in the original https://plus4world.powweb.com/software/Tetris was "playing the digi-bass incorrectly."
The description for the 1990 CP4 original says the gameplay music track is from the Jonathan Gunn music in the 1989 C64 game "Run the Gauntlet" (https://www.lemon64.com/game/run-the-gauntlet): https://lemon.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/c64/music/hvsc/mp3/MUSICIANS/D/Dunn_Jonathan/Run_the_Gauntlet-01.mp3 |
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| | | | The CP4 I guess, like the C64, had only one fire button on its joystick; so you can only rotate blocks in one direction here--which is probably just as well for me since that's pretty much all I usually manage. : P |
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| | | | Oh yeah that blue L trick probably only works at the starting speed level. And I couldn't manage to hook the other L (yellow/orange) over the left side; I think I couldn't quite get it moved/rotated fast enough. |
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| | | Info from author Csabo in a reply on the video : ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQVeo7nVBT0&lc=UgwagLzgFiej59VyYeh4AaABAg :
'Nice find. The same bug existed for the orange L piece and the left side (although you had to be insanely quick to make it happen). I fixed it, V1.2 is up on my site (Plus/4 World).
(Couple of other things you mentioned: the original SID tune has 3 channels + 1 digi, the TED version does not use one of the 3 - the running arpeggio note - it's too annoying, and the original 1990 conversion of this tune did the same. The first two letters in my name "cs" is the same as "ch" in English. I was born in Hungary, but moved to Canada, KiCHY and most of the other guys still live in Hungary.' |
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