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Tetrisphere
Release information
Developer(s)	H2O Interactive
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Platform(s)	Nintendo 64
Release date(s)	Aug 11, 1997
Gameplay information
Next pieces	Three
Playfield dimensions	32x32x8
Rotation system(s)	No rotation
Hold piece	✗
Hard drop	✗
Has 180° rotation	N/A
Adjustable tuning	N/A
Websites

Released exclusively on the Nintendo 64, this game is almost entirely different from the standardTetris formula. It started out as an Atari Jaguar game titledPhear, on display at CES '95. Nintendo bought the rights to the game from its developer, and released it two years later as Tetrisphere.

Gameplay

Instead of starting with an empty playfield and placing pieces, each level consists of a bottom core layer surrounded by layers of pieces. Although the game's playfield appears to be a sphere, it is actually a stack of eight 32x32 grids, with the north/south and east/west sides wrapped. No matter which direction the player moves around the field, the pieces remain in the same orientation.

The objective in most game modes is to clear pieces from the bottom layer of the game field, exposing some amount of the core. This is accomplished by dropping pieces to form a group of three or more of the same type (adjacent horizontally or directly overtop each other vertically), to clear those and any other identical pieces touching the first group in a chain. The cursor shows where the current piece will be placed, and will glow white to indicate a valid move. Pieces are placed by pressing the A or Z buttons. Pieces of the same type as the current held piece can be held and dragged across and down layers with the B button. A piece preview on the lower left corner of the screen shows the piece currently held, as well as the next two pieces.

A timer called the Speed Meter in the lower right hand side of the screen shows the time left to drop a piece. There are three phases of the timer: blue, yellow and red. Once the Speed Meter ticks down to yellow, the camera begins zooming into the playing field. When it turns red, the speed of the zoom increases. If the camera makes contact with the sphere, the currently held piece is automatically placed. Time is restored to the Speed Meter by clearing power pieces; additionally, performing a fuse or gravity combo will restore a larger amount of time, and increase the time restored by power pieces in that combo.

The player has three lives to complete each level. Any invalid move (placing a piece that does not start a combo, or attempting to place a piece on layer eight) removes a life, resets the current X-Count, destroys a held magic, and resets the timer.

For each game mode, the player can select one of seven robots to play as. Each robot has a Power and Speed stat; these stats determine DAS while and without holding a piece, respectively.

Pieces

There are six types of pieces in total: three triominoes (yellow bar, green "I", and purple "L") and three tetrominoes (red "T", blue "O", and upright pale "Z"). Additionally, there is a morphing Wild Card Piece that takes the form of a piece that will combo when placed; this piece can be used to drag any piece on the board.

All gaps between pieces on the field are initially filled with 1x1 crystal pieces and, rarely, orange glowing magic pieces. These pieces break whenever any piece is moved into them, or clears adjacent or diagonally to them.

Power Pieces and X-Count

Every time nineteen or less pieces are cleared in a combo from the sphere, an equivalent number of sparks rain onto the screen. Where these sparks hit a normal piece or dark piece, that piece turns into a power piece. The sphere in view can be moved about to generally guide where the sparks will land. A Power piece can be obtained without having to clear pieces by moving the cursor over a like-shaped formation of crystal pieces, and pressing B. With a wild card piece, holding a piece with B and rapidly moving away results in dragging the piece's shadow. Moving this shadow over a suitable area of crystal pieces also forms a power piece.

Power pieces return a time bonus to the Speed Meter when they are cleared. They can also be dragged up layers, one layer at a time. A chain started with a power piece clears more slowly than a normal chain, and each piece individually checks if there are like pieces beside or beneath it to clear after a short delay.

Pieces about to be cleared in a power piece chain can be grabbed with the B button. Doing this turns the piece into a "fuse." Fuses are special normal pieces that, if released where a dropped piece would start a combo, will clear those pieces in a fuse combo.

If a piece drops onto a group of two or more like pieces, these pieces clear in a cascade mechanic called a gravity combo. If a gravity combo is triggered due to a power combo, the resulting gravity combo will also clear as a power combo. The piece that drops to trigger the gravity combo can be quickly grabbed as a fuse. If released in place, by a swift tap of the B button, the fuse combo can double-dip on the gravity combo, resulting in a hybrid combo. Power pieces cleared by fuse or gravity combos restore triple their time bonus to the Speed Meter.

Fuse and gravity combos can increment the X-Count, up to ten times each; the X-Count goes up to a maximum of 20x (nine of one type and ten of the other type is needed to max the X-Count.)

Combos and Scoring

The upper-right portion of the screen displays the Combo Counter, the score (yellow number), the X-Count, and the base score of the pieces in the current combo (white number). A combo consists of all pieces cleared after a chain begins. If a new chain is started before the previous chain finishes, that is considered part of the same combo. Once there are no pieces waiting to be cleared, a combo ends.

The base value of an ordinary piece is 100 points, and of a power piece 1,000 points. When a chain is begun with a power piece, the combo X-Count is shown and incremented. This number starts at 1x for the first power piece, and increases for each power piece in the combo cleared during a power combo, up to 10x. The combo X-Count multiplies the value of all pieces cleared in the combo thereafter, capping at 10,000 points for a power piece and 900 points for a normal piece. The speed at which power piece resolve also decreases in turn, which enables further extending the combo. Once there are no more pieces to be cleared in any combo on the sphere, the combo ends, and the base white score is multiplied by the current X-Count to apply the final score to the running total.

Besides combos, there are several other mechanims to score:

• Forming a power piece out of crystal pieces scores 1000 points (unaffected by X-Count)
• Exposing pieces of the core (a 2x2 pattern on the first layer) scores 1000 points
• Exposing pieces of the core in Time Trial (a 3x3 pattern on the first layer) scores 3000 points
• Exposing a picture in Hide and Seek scores 1,000 points

Magic

Magic can be obtained one of three ways: by clearing glowing magic pieces, by clearing a combo of 20 or more, or by filling the Magic Meter above the Speed Meter to the fourteenth bar (single player) or ninth bar (multiplayer). The Magic Meter increments by one bar with every combo of six or more, and by three bars with each fuse or gravity combo. Obtaining a magic while already holding a magic instead upgrades it to the next possible level. There are six levels of magic:

1. Firecracker (clears all uncovered pieces in a small radius)
2. Bundle O' Dynamite (clears all uncovered pieces in five very small radii spread equidistant around cursor)
3. Electro Magnet (continually clears pieces under cursor)
4. Atom (clears all uncovered pieces on sphere)
5. Bomb (clears all uncovered pieces in massive radius, and then again all uncovered pieces in Firecracker-sized radius)
6. Ray Gun (continually clears pieces in small area under cursor in seven pulses)

Game Modes

Rescue is the main game mode, in which the player clears levels by exposing the core of each one to free the robots trapped inside them.

Hide and Seek is similar to Rescue, but each stage can have one of eight objectives assigned to it, all of which involve some variation of clearing pieces from a suitable area of the core.

In Time Trial mode, the player is given five minutes to score as many points as possible.

In Puzzle mode, each level has a configuration of pieces, and the player must clear them all, using a given number of slides and drops. There is no time limit (although time taken is tracked for the entire mode) and every piece is a wild card piece. The camera can also be zoomed in and out by pressing L and R, to aid in determining the layout of pieces. A puzzle can be restarted with C-Up.

In Lines mode (enabled for single player and multiplayer by entering LINES as your name), pieces cannot be dropped, and the player has a permanent wild card piece in hand. Chains are started by releasing a held piece by or on top of two or more of the same type of piece. Going into Lines mode and then exiting to enter Practice mode allows you to practice with Lines mode rules. This code must be reentered every game session.

In Vs. CPU, a series of AI opponents are battled using multiplayer rules.

In Vs. Mode, two players can compete against each other, trying to uncover a predetermined amount of the core first.

Multiplayer Mechanics

In the multiplayer modes, garbage can be sent to an opponent in the form of dark pieces. Dark pieces cannot be used to start combos in of themselves and do not directly contribute to the combo number, thus impeding the player. These dark pieces replace existing ordinary and power pieces for minor attacks, and drop onto the playing field during larger attacks. Dark pieces are earned in a combo using the following formulas:

• Each non-dark piece past the third in a combo earns a dark piece
• Each dark piece cleared earns two dark pieces
• The current X-Count minus one is earned as a flat amount of dark pieces (a minimum of four pieces must be cleared)
• Each fuse and gravity combo earns the current X-Count minus one as dark pieces

Dark pieces earned are represented in the middle of the screen by dots and squares, blue for player one and purple for player two, with the larger denominations of dark pieces on the bottom.

• One dot is a single earned dark piece
• One small square is eight combined dots, and drops 5-8 dark pieces
• One medium square is two small squares and six dots combined, and drops around 18-21 dark pieces
• One large square is three medium squares combined, and drops (likely) around 38 dark pieces

Dark pieces earned by an opposing combo cancel out dark pieces earned by one's own combo. Dark pieces earned after a combo finishes but before dark pieces are sent constitute a "remainder." One's own remainder can be added as a bonus to the next combo, but will vanish if an opponent starts earning dark pieces. An opponent's remainder is sent as dark pieces as an immediate counterattack after one's own dark pieces are sent.

Gallery

References

• ^[1]

• Non-tetromino games
• Nintendo 64 games
• Nintendo