Gaming Chromatic Tetris new GBC game has been dumped

[iball]

I have lots of Nintendo handhelds, and I love each one of them. I also know that hardware isn't being made any more. Those custom CPUs that Nintendo designed in partnership with chip makers aren't rolling off the lines. However many of them in the world there are right now is the highest number of them that will ever be going forward.

It's not just the old console CPUs that aren't being made anymore but also the chips in the cartridges themselves.
Those MBC1/MBC3/MBC5 chips used in GB/GBC carts aren't being made anymore so some flashcart manufacturers have developed work-arounds that use tiny FPGAs in new carts to emulate the MBC chips themselves, i.e. BennVenn & Modretro.
Others are scavenging them from junk carts like Mary-Kate and Ashley's Daily Planner which has an MBC-3 in it.
HDR and InsideGadgets are re-using MBC-3 chips for their GBC carts w/RTC.
Then there's the cheap reflashable junkcarts you can find on Ali with the notorious black "blob" on the PCB instead of a real chip. Those can be finicky at times and I stopped using them after a while.

But even with a FPGA-based cartridge one can run into issues with the firmware used on the cart itself.
Case in point, I have three BennVenn v4 flashcarts. Two are on the newest firmware and work in everything - FPGBC, Chromatic, GBC, Analogue Pocket, & GBA/SP. One is a v4 on older firmware that crashes after you move Pokemon to/from PC storage but only on FPGBC & Analogue Pocket. Works just fine in real GBC/GBA hardware *and* for some odd reason also works just fine on the Chromatic itself.
I've got Pokemon Ambrosia flashed to it now and only using it with my GBC & Chromatic. So far so good on the Chromatic.

 

[VmprHntrD]

I rarely post anymore, but ugh this is why I wish this place like AtariAge would ban politics discussion, it just starts fights, causes annoyance, allows the misinformed to derail subjects like it was like 2 posts in and then no one wins.

I was glad to be tipped off someone dumped this earlier today and it wasn't hard to come by. I've wanted to try this, and it annoys the shit out of me they refuse to sell the game on its own using it as some retro cudgel to sell the handheld in some weird throwback nod to what Nintendo did with the DMG in 1989. If Palmer wants to play victim and have a hissy fit, tough, given the market he's pushing it on that alone makes it tempting bait, but to then make it the only game he refuses to sell on the side for those just wanting a modern Tetris ruleset to go on Gameboy was begging for it to get permanently borrowed.

I like the setup, the music is solid especially track As variation of the original theme, good use of color, control is on point. If it went up for sale I'd buy it, but hey he created the void, and well copier devices are like $50 and under these days so ...oops. Your bad.

 

[iball]

I rarely post anymore, but ugh this is why I wish this place like AtariAge would ban politics discussion, it just starts fights, causes annoyance, allows the misinformed to derail subjects like it was like 2 posts in and then no one wins.

I was glad to be tipped off someone dumped this earlier today and it wasn't hard to come by. I've wanted to try this, and it annoys the shit out of me they refuse to sell the game on its own using it as some retro cudgel to sell the handheld in some weird throwback nod to what Nintendo did with the DMG in 1989. If Palmer wants to play victim and have a hissy fit, tough, given the market he's pushing it on that alone makes it tempting bait, but to then make it the only game he refuses to sell on the side for those just wanting a modern Tetris ruleset to go on Gameboy was begging for it to get permanently borrowed.

I like the setup, the music is solid especially track As variation of the original theme, good use of color, control is on point. If it went up for sale I'd buy it, but hey he created the void, and well copier devices are like $50 and under these days so ...oops. Your bad.

You do know that Alexey Pajitnov - the creator of Tetris - licensed it out to Modretro and thus gets a cut, right?
Remember that while you're being all happy depriving Modretro of a sale you're also depriving Alexey of his cut too.

 

[CeeDee]

I'm sure poor indie developer Alexey Pajitnov, creator of Tetris, a game that has sold hundreds of millions of copies, will be fine.

 

[iball]

I'm sure poor indie developer Alexey Pajitnov, creator of Tetris, a game that has sold hundreds of millions of copies, will be fine.

Actually, he wasn't for the longest time due to being trapped in the Soviet Union.
He got no royalties until *after* the Soviet Union collapsed and he moved out of Russia.
But hey, whatever you feel you have to tell yourself to sleep at night.

 

[CeeDee]

Actually, he wasn't for the longest time due to being trapped in the Soviet Union.
He got no royalties until *after* the Soviet Union collapsed and he moved out of Russia.
But hey, whatever you feel you have to tell yourself to sleep at night.

Pajitnov regained the rights in 1996. EA's Tetris mobile game released in 2006 and sold 100 million copies by 2010, not even counting all other releases of the game before and since. I don't think he's starving.

And hey, for what it's worth, I just bought the $35 Tetris Forever collection on launch. It's really good!! I'm not against showing my support to the Tetris IP by buying new releases. But also like, fuck Palmer Luckey lmao

 

[BETA215]

I just wish the music on the game wasn't as barebones. You got three tracks that can run throughout the whole playthrough in menus, in-game, records screen, title screen, moments where you're about to lose.

Like, put on the effort to make a few more tracks! As it is right now, the music feels completely independent from the game altogether, no button presses ever even restart it. When the music gets old it's better to just use a music player than to keep the console sound on lol

 

[iball]

I just wish the music on the game wasn't as barebones. You got three tracks that can run throughout the whole playthrough in menus, in-game, records screen, title screen, moments where you're about to lose.

Like, put on the effort to make a few more tracks! As it is right now, the music feels completely independent from the game altogether, no button presses ever even restart it. When the music gets old it's better to just use a music player than to keep the console sound on lol

You've got a point there. I like the way Apotris did the music in their version of Tetris. Snappier even if it's not as recognizable.
I think Modretro was going for that heavy nostalgia feel.

 

[Jayro]

You've got a point there. I like the way Apotris did the music in their version of Tetris. Snappier even if it's not as recognizable.
I think Modretro was going for that heavy nostalgia feel.

Apotris also let's you add your own tracker music.

 

[VmprHntrD]

You do know that Alexey Pajitnov - the creator of Tetris - licensed it out to Modretro and thus gets a cut, right?
Remember that while you're being all happy depriving Modretro of a sale you're also depriving Alexey of his cut too.

I'm ok with that, when it's being gate kept away from people who don't need the handheld but would like to play the modern iteration of what is Tetris on the Gameboy Color, which basically is what this thing is, a $200 gameboy color.

I be clear, not a fan of piracy, but backed into the corner of an utterly useless handheld to enjoy that, or grabbing what was put out there already, I'll take what is out there. But, that said, if they decide to do the right thing, and put the game out there down the road in 2025 to just buy, I'll be glad to hand them the $35-45 charge it looks like the games range in value at being sold as it is already. I'm not against paying for the game, I am against buying a handheld of zero value.

I already have a stock GBC, a modded GBC with a high end IPS panel inside, same can be said on the GBA side of things, and also have the Analogue Pocket I just keep seated in the dock for TV play. Less than relevant, but, a deeply modded original style GBA too and a few SPs (001 and 101) on top of that, and for the old era only stuff an equally heavily modded DMG too. All of them have comparable quality screens to the Chromatic, all use stock batteries other than the SP with its OEM option. Chromatic gives me nothing but a metal shell so it's just wasteful spending.

So when Palmer decides to stop thumb sucking and pouting and puts the game out there to buy, I'll grab it the day it hits.


And If someone wants to throw the Nintendo did it argument, doesn't work. Nintendo employees took a handheld the CEO hated and killed and shadow finished it and got it to market and they had no faith and got Tetris to bundle in to push the hardware, but shortly after they sold Tetris on the side for those who bought bare systems, wanted a 2P option with the cable, lost the game, etc. Modretro isn't even giving the choice of a 2P game now without buying $400 in handhelds which is lousy.

 

[anotherthing]

Chromatic gives me nothing but a metal shell so it's just wasteful spending.

We could go on and on talking about our handheld collections, but I think it's unfair to say that the Modretro GBC just offers a metal shell. It is a very premium product.

Modretro isn't even giving the choice of a 2P game now without buying $400 in handhelds which is lousy.

So, like the Switch, then? The problem with dismissing the "Nintendo did it" argument is that the DS and 3DS existed. Download Play was a thing. So, Nintendo did offer the ability to play with your friends with one cartridge, and then they took that away with their next generation. It's one thing to never offer something, as seems to be the standard with everything except that line. It's another to offer it and then take it away in the next generation.

 

[VmprHntrD]

@anotherthing Oh come on now, the Switch gives 2 controllers out of the box, a little limited perhaps sure, but what other console or handheld out there has effectively 2 working controllers these days with the system? It feels like you're trying to reach to start some combative argument which I'm not going to outright engage in as it's a known. So what if one system could in some instances share a game card and others did not? Even then on the DS what was shared for most games was fairly limited, same could be said before that too with GBA as well. Given the gains and losses of them going from a dedicated handheld and a dedicated console to just a largely dedicated handheld that can dock as a hybrid console I'd call more of a benefit than a loss.

Taking it away would be like promising something then pulling the rug out, the old concept of indian giver. They didn't start Switch with hey you get this and took it away, it wasn't even on the table. That's like middle fingering Nintendo because they didn't keep using carts and went to cards from GBA to DS or putting the notch on 3DS over DS games making you buy some hardware that isn't fair which is nonsense.

 

[anotherthing]

Oh come on now, the Switch gives 2 controllers out of the box, a little limited perhaps sure, but what other console or handheld out there has effectively 2 working controllers these days with the system?

Are you joking with this? What percentage of Switch games can be played with what amounts to two wireless SNES controllers? It's more like one controller cut in half.

 

[VmprHntrD]

Hardly and quite a few can be done. Is it ideal? No, not in some of the cases, but many games can be run with a 2P mode using the joycons detached. And you're right, it does amount to that, so if the games don't require dual analogs to play they can support that if the developers care to do it.

 

[Jokippo]

This is a pretty good version of Tetris for the GBC, and while the game does work on the original DMG, the sprites are difficult to see. The game supposedly has a mode to make the game more playable on an unlit GBC display when you press select+start on startup, but I couldn't get it to work on my Gameboy Light.

I made a patch that changes the sprites and scores to have more contrast. The countdown when unpausing has also been removed. Some of the menu's graphics are still corrupted due to the game using specific GBC hardware features but you can get through them pretty easily.

This patch is meant for grayscale Gameboy's only.

 

[previous_member]

I have acquired a copy of Chromatic Tetris. I wonder if the game took some inspiration from Apotris. I actually prefer Apotris over this new Tetris.. but it's Tetris and I have many versions of Tetris and love them all. I even won a Slurpee Tetris handheld from the 7-Eleven contest. Haven't played it yet. Cool though.

 

[celebi23]

Might someone be able to share the ROM hashes? I've found 2 different dump versions that seem to differ a tiny bit when looked at in a hex editor. Wanted to make sure I found a correct dump. Thanks so much!

 

[SylverReZ]

Might someone be able to share the ROM hashes? I've found 2 different dump versions that seem to differ a tiny bit when looked at in a hex editor. Wanted to make sure I found a correct dump. Thanks so much!

Here are the MD5 hashes for each ROM.

6564aad1fe5b3162e399f3acdccde71f Tetris (World) (ModRetro Chromatic) (Aftermarket) (Unl).gbc
580765755d7b7b59fbf1c607131a9151 Tetris (World) (v1.1) (ModRetro Chromatic) (Aftermarket) (Unl).gbc

CORRECTION: It has come to my attention that I had posted the wrong checksum for v1.1, I have updated this post to include the correct one from No-Intro. At the time of when this post was made, nobody knew at the time that this was just a minor fix, so the next release was referred to as v1.1 and not v1.01. I apologize for the confusion.

 

[celebi23]

Here are the MD5 hashes for each ROM.

6564aad1fe5b3162e399f3acdccde71f ModRetro Chromatic - Tetris (World).gbc
8fe80d5c7fa585dcef058855b3f84325 ModRetro Chromatic - Tetris (World) (v1.1).gbc

Sweet! Hypothetically, where would one find the v1.1 version with the Sprint Mode timer fix?

 

[SylverReZ]

Sweet! Hypothetically, where would one find the v1.1 version with the Sprint Mode timer fix?

Here's the patch. You will need to use ROM Patcher JS to make changes to the original ROM.