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My quest to see all of Tetris

The author recounts their lifelong obsession with Tetris and describes their quest to see every possible state of the game, using Antithesis software to explore its deterministic gameplay and uncover the game's full combinatorial depth.

Background

- Tetris has been released in hundreds of versions across every platform imaginable. They all share the same basic idea but differ drastically in physics, controls, and visual feel — quirks like "wall kicks" (how blocks rotate near walls) and "lock delay" (how long a block sits before locking) vary from port to port. - This post recounts one person's quest to play every commercially released Tetris, discovering how differently each one plays. - The blog is from Antithesis, a company that makes automated software testing tools. The Tetris fragmentation serves as a metaphor: small, undocumented differences between supposedly "identical" systems can cause surprises in testing. - Competitive Tetris recently went viral: in 2024, a 13-year-old known as "Blue Scuti" became the first person to crash the original NES Tetris at level 157, effectively "beating" it.

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