This has been a really big year so far for Tetris on the NES. Players have found ways to provide controller inputs at speeds the programmers of the game didn’t anticipate. A technique called “rolling” has allowed players to move pieces at such fast speeds that they can progress beyond level 150! Unfortunately, this might crash the processor of the NES.
Or perhaps the word is “fortunately,” if the player wants to crash the system!
This video does a deep dive into the scoring logic that is responsible for leading to a game crash. The further you get in the game, the longer it takes to calculate your score. Oh sure, the score maxes out at 999,999 on the screen… but it still keeps adding numbers over and over beyond that until… well, you’ll see.
Hope you enjoy this latest episode of Behind the Code: Leveled Up!
