Damn, tetris is truly amazing.

Until about a week ago I'd never played a single game of tetris in my life. When I decided to binge Digital Foundry's DF Retro though, I watched its retrospective on Tetris and decided to finally give it a shot, leading me to Nullpomino because I'm a cheap bastard and giving it a shot.

I got addicted instantly. I barely knew anything about Tetris besides knowing that I should generally try to build flat stacks and then get tetrises for the biggest score. The Marathon mode of Nullpomino was my mainstay, and I found myself constantly loading it up and trying it again and again. I'd tell myself that I'd play one game for shits and giggles and then an hour later I was obsessively retrying it. I didn't look for any guides or really research anything, I just kept playing and playing. I got stuck around 70-80 lines cleared before it just got too fast (I think this is around level 10?)

I started playing the line race more and more because that felt more achievable. Slowly I grinded my times down obsessively. I got better and better through sheer repetition. Those moments when I beat my own time were truly addicting

Today I decided to play Marathon again. I just aimed on a simple game. But I kept playing and playing, and I got to my old stumbling block of 80 lines cleared or so...

...and I got past it. I kept going. It kept getting faster and faster and I was certain I'd meet my match, but I would always manage a clear. Situations that led me to screw up before didn't trouble me anymore. I had this intuition of where I should place the blocks, something burnt into my head just from metaphorically bashing it against the game with zero outside help. I could see gaps in my stack and just knew where to place the blocks. It was getting so ludicrously fast I was unable to even think of anything else. I was scanning the upcoming block list and then my gaps to see where I could place each block, because it was so fast that I literally didn't have any time to place them as they appeared on the playfield.

Then it suddenly ended. I had no idea why until I realized I had cleared the 150 line count for Nullpomino's default Marathon settings. I was so immersed in this damn game about falling blocks I didn't even know I had beaten the mode. Games with hundred-million dollar budgets hadn't immersed me this hard.

I know that's not impressive at all, but it really blew my mind. I had gotten so much better from nothing but my own skill and honing it over and over again, not even intending to, just playing the damn game for hours until I just...got better in a way very few modern games really cater to.

I'm absolutely 100% a fan of tetris now. I can't believe I missed this for 25 years!