This was originally a minimal personal project for a very niche use case (see the tate version down below), but as it went along and especially as I realized the well also fit in standard landscape resolution, I eventually hit the "well if I'm going 8 yards I might as well go 9" point and decided to make it a whole thing. TGMA is a remake of Tetris The Grandmaster 1 and 2 for Game Boy Advance. I made this with Butano so a big thanks goes out to GValiente for making the library and also to Cinemint on youtube for his Butano setup guides that helped me get off the ground. I also want to thank the devs of Cambridge as digging through its source code helped me decode a lot of how the TGM engine does things.
TGMA has TGM1 (which only had one mode) and the Master and T.A. Death modes from TGM2+. I didn't bother with Normal and Plus modes from 2 because they're very rarely played and they have a couple of their own wacky one-off mechanics that would have been a pain to implement for something so rarely used. Holding L while selecting a mode is the equivalent of the 20g code from the arcade versions, and the C button (alternate CCW rotation button) is mapped to R. The only thing I'd possibly like to add in the future is the music if I can make that work, but otherwise any updates will probably just be bug fixes.
I've gone by frame by frame and confirmed the timing and speed curve values from the Tetris wiki give the same frame count results in my engine as they do in the arcade versions, so I'm pretty confident with both that and the rotation system mechanics however I'm not 100% sure the rank requirements and scoring math are completely spot on yet. I really just made this as a novelty, but I'd still like to make it as accurate as possible.
On that subject, please note that the arcade version of TAP actually runs at 61.680 frames per second and there's kind of nothing I can do to match that on GBA hardware, so TAP and T.A. Death runs technically won't be perfectly arcade accurate. MAME also had this framerate incorrect for quite some time and I believe the official Switch port of TAP also actually just runs at 60, so depending on context this may not be a huge issue but it is something to be aware of.
I also made a tate (vertical) version of the rom, this is actually what I originally made the game for. I have an arcade cabinet with the monitor always in tate because I pretty much exclusively use it for shmups via a mistercade, but TGM is my other big arcade game and I had been hunting for a way to get it to run in some playable form on a vertical monitor. Nothing really came up for that, so I ended up checking which other systems the mistercade supports were both easy to homebrew for and fit the TGM board horizontally and GBA ticked all the boxes. It was originally going to just be a super minimal practice tool for myself to use but I was having fun making it and it grew into this. The HUD is flipped because I have my P1 side's stick set to 8 way and P2 side's set to 4 way so I can play both genres, and having the play field nudged over to the right makes it a little more comfortable sitting on P2 side. I doubt anyone else in the world will have this particular use case but just in case I'm uploading this tate version as well.
Thanks for checking out my project! Please let me know if you run into any bugs or issues.
Changelog:
1.0.1:
- Fixed the last timer digit's number progress to match arcade
- Added the applause sound effect on clearing a tetris
- Updated Butano to [hopefully] fix an audio assert that only seemed to occur running on MiSTer FPGA
1.0.2:
- Fixed sound effects interrupting each other
- Removed the pause counter
https://cuteboys.biz/files/TGMA 1.0.2.gba
https://cuteboys.biz/files/TGMA Tate 1.0.2.gba
TGMA has TGM1 (which only had one mode) and the Master and T.A. Death modes from TGM2+. I didn't bother with Normal and Plus modes from 2 because they're very rarely played and they have a couple of their own wacky one-off mechanics that would have been a pain to implement for something so rarely used. Holding L while selecting a mode is the equivalent of the 20g code from the arcade versions, and the C button (alternate CCW rotation button) is mapped to R. The only thing I'd possibly like to add in the future is the music if I can make that work, but otherwise any updates will probably just be bug fixes.
I've gone by frame by frame and confirmed the timing and speed curve values from the Tetris wiki give the same frame count results in my engine as they do in the arcade versions, so I'm pretty confident with both that and the rotation system mechanics however I'm not 100% sure the rank requirements and scoring math are completely spot on yet. I really just made this as a novelty, but I'd still like to make it as accurate as possible.
On that subject, please note that the arcade version of TAP actually runs at 61.680 frames per second and there's kind of nothing I can do to match that on GBA hardware, so TAP and T.A. Death runs technically won't be perfectly arcade accurate. MAME also had this framerate incorrect for quite some time and I believe the official Switch port of TAP also actually just runs at 60, so depending on context this may not be a huge issue but it is something to be aware of.
I also made a tate (vertical) version of the rom, this is actually what I originally made the game for. I have an arcade cabinet with the monitor always in tate because I pretty much exclusively use it for shmups via a mistercade, but TGM is my other big arcade game and I had been hunting for a way to get it to run in some playable form on a vertical monitor. Nothing really came up for that, so I ended up checking which other systems the mistercade supports were both easy to homebrew for and fit the TGM board horizontally and GBA ticked all the boxes. It was originally going to just be a super minimal practice tool for myself to use but I was having fun making it and it grew into this. The HUD is flipped because I have my P1 side's stick set to 8 way and P2 side's set to 4 way so I can play both genres, and having the play field nudged over to the right makes it a little more comfortable sitting on P2 side. I doubt anyone else in the world will have this particular use case but just in case I'm uploading this tate version as well.
Thanks for checking out my project! Please let me know if you run into any bugs or issues.
Changelog:
1.0.1:
- Fixed the last timer digit's number progress to match arcade
- Added the applause sound effect on clearing a tetris
- Updated Butano to [hopefully] fix an audio assert that only seemed to occur running on MiSTer FPGA
1.0.2:
- Fixed sound effects interrupting each other
- Removed the pause counter
https://cuteboys.biz/files/TGMA 1.0.2.gba
https://cuteboys.biz/files/TGMA Tate 1.0.2.gba
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Last edited by Yakkers,
Nice job, look forward to trying it out
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I'm currently playing through Twisted again!
The missing Tetris applause was the one thing that was actually making it feel a bit "off", so thank you for adding it!
