Saturday, August 23, 2008

Tetris And Motorola W230

I was watching Earthquake's - "One Night Stand", his 2005 HBO special [Stand up Comedy]. This dude, though not hilarious, has own honest material which is pretty funny at times. Anyway, he wasn't moving around a lot or using props, so I started playing Tetris on my mobile, as I was watching the show.


Now … I rarely play Tetris on my mobile. But it’s the only solution in places where music is taboo like in seriously boring lectures, non- fiction libraries, or situations like the one above - watching videos full screen while there is not much moving on the screen.


I had never before finished an entire game on my mobile though. I started playing the game when I was almost 60% through the show, and almost by the end I realized that I was playing pretty decently. I was in level 8 and the screen was empty.


So, with the prospect of making a high score, looming large, I continued. Now, anybody who has any idea about Tetris, knows that the bricks start falling faster as the level increases. And particularly in my mobile – Motorola W230, as you reach the 10th level it gets real hard to play.


So invoking all the experience I had gained while playing Tetris – [follow Logik’s detailed account here], nicknamed Sh00t, in my final year in NITK, I concentrated hard. I started planning the placement of next two bricks, so that I could press the minimum number of keys to rotate them to the required shape and get them to the required spot.


I played for well over 35 minutes - because the screen saver came on, and that doesn’t happen on my computer, until half an hour has passed with no hardware interrupts.


I reached 14th level at last. A level change occurs only after completing a particular number of lines. And that’s 35+ as the level reaches 12 or so. In 14th level, at the beginning I was well off, with only three unfinished lines at the bottom. But in this particular level the bricks come down like rain. I barely had time to recognize the shapes falling. So before long I was totally sunk under a ton of bricks and the game ended.


I was happy though. It was a high score. It could be stored in the phone’s memory forever. :D


The screen read:

Game Over:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Score: 57753

Power: 54

Level: 14

Lines: 239

Efficiency: 38

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Press any Key.


And so I did.


And it gave me three options:

Tetris

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Start

Help

About

DAMN!!!


There is no way to score high scores. Bah!!


The only thing I got to show right now is a dull numbing pain in my left hand for holding the mobile and pressing all those damn buttons to complete 239 lines without a damn pause.


This post is to do justice to my aching hand.


So, this is a heads up for other Motorola W230 users. There’s no point playing Tetris on the mobile if you don’t have your own blog to post your high scores.

5 comments:

Logik said...

Is sakku runnin this as well? Knowin that chap, there is a tiny chance of that... Kudos to your attempts. We could call ourselves the tetris brethren... There is a tetris on linux.gtetris or ktetris i'm not sure.. Supposedly tough... Try it out.

Anonymous said...

Whoa! and how do you remember those numbers?

[ evilsense is sure Sh00t didnt cheat before ]

Unknown said...

@evilsense,
i used notepad, man...

Nithinkrishna Shenoy said...

How do u actually play that game without losing interest man? The only tetris I have played is the brick game thing.

Unknown said...

@kitta
Tetris is, for all practical purposes, the same brick game thing that you are talking about, man..
the change in the rules are minimal..

i can't exaclty point my finger and say 'this' is the reason i don't get bored.. but as a whole there is a sense of slight happiness every time a huge block of lines vanishes at once..
:P