Classic Tetris World Championship 2022 - 1 - The Grand Finals of 2018

October 2018

In 2018, I discovered the Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC) through a post on the Resetera forums. I was familiar with live tournaments for fighting games like Street Fighter but had never heard of anything similar for Tetris. Imagine my shock when I clicked through to the live stream and I heard James Chen, one of the most well known old-school fighting game community (FGC) commentators, excitedly yelling into the mic, “Boom! Tetris for Joseph!"

Having followed the FGC since Street Fighter 4, I am no stranger to the grassroots communities and tournaments that pop up around beloved fighting games (seriously, check out the Super Nintendo Sailor Moon or Ranma 1/2 fighting game communities). However, this didn't feel like a grassroots event at all. It was professional . . . seemingly on the cusp of graduating into e-sports.

Peering at the screen, my notions of "Tetris" were being reshaped in front of my eyes with the depth, intricacy and quite honestly, the elegance and diversity of play being displayed. As the stack loomed taller one row at a time, you could feel the tension through the camera as the players waited for the one long piece to score that Tetris . . .

And then the immediate sigh of relief when that long piece appeared and was slammed into the well, clearing four lines from the playing field.

“Boom! Tetris for Joseph!"

The excitement was real and only increased as the Tetris pieces descended faster and faster, as the Level counter ticked upwards from the starting speed of Level 18.

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Through all of this stood Joseph Saelee, a 16 year old who had travelled with his older sister to compete in CTWC. Despite only entering the competitive Classic Tetris scene in February 2018, Joseph had amassed an impressive record in the online monthly tournaments organized by Classic Tetris Monthly (CTM) and posted world record runs on YouTube utilizing a little-used technique called hypertapping. Even with these impressive credentials, no one could be sure whether he would be truly competitive in a live tournament setting. But from the moment he achieved a max-out (i.e. a point score of 999,999 as the scoreboard only had 6 digits) during his qualification run at CTWC, he established himself as the dark horse of the tournament in a field of 40 competitors.

Gripping his NES controller so that he could flex his muscles and use the tremors to tap at high speeds, Joseph's hypertapping technique differed wildly from the conventional Delayed Auto Shift (DAS) technique, which focused on strategically holding and releasing the directional buttons on the controller with precise timing to reduce the delay when moving the Tetris piece side to side (for a quick video explanation of DAS, check out this video: https://youtu.be/Cx4RlkzPuys?t=212). With the increased number of controller inputs from hypertapping, Joseph could position his pieces faster and recover from situations normally considered impossible for DAS players. This was especially advantageous past Level 29, otherwise known as the kill screen.

The kill screen got its name because pieces fall at a speed of 1 row per frame, which is too fast for DAS players to move pieces to the right-hand side, which is the optimal place to score Tetrises. With hypertapping though, this barrier was effectively lessened. Indeed, a couple of weeks before CTWC 2018, Joseph Saelee astonished observers when he managed to get to Level 31 on video.

With increasing incredulity from the crowd, Joseph defeated established veterans and eventually secured his spot in the Grand Finals against Jonas Neubauer, the most storied veteran of them all. Jonas had won the inaugural CTWC in 2010 and then another 6 times since then, with his only loss being to Harry Hong in 2014. He was a major pillar of Classic Tetris and it was acknowledged across the community that to win, you had to defeat Jonas and his DAS technique. But despite this, there was no ego. He was a generous champion, gracious in victory and sharing his knowledge with all to grow the community. He was one of, if not the face of Classic Tetris.

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"Let's count them in! They're ready to go!

Count it down with me!

5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

TETRIS!"

Jonas' playstyle defies consistent description. In a Vice.com article written in 2018, Jonas himself described his playstyle as akin to a jazz pianist: chaotic, unpredictable, and always improvising without much of a plan. From an earlier interview with Tetris.com in 2017, Jonas stated that "Playing slowly and balancing survival and aggression to consistently score well became my signature style."

But throughout the match with Joseph, observers familiar with Jonas's playstyle noticed that Jonas was playing differently, tossing caution to the wind and using risky moves in an effort to stem the tide that was Joseph. Honestly, I am not going to describe it more than that because I lack the proper vocabulary. I implore you to watch it if only to see what Tetris players were capable of in 2018.

Joseph would beat Jonas 3-0 in a clean sweep.

A new era in competitive Classic Tetris was upon us . . .