Real question: How many of you guys can get to or have gotten to level 29?

By that logic wouldn't that actually mean they wanted it to end when you cleared 29?

IF level 30 displayed properly then maybe, but level 30 is glitched itself.  29 is the last level that displays properly and the last level where the speed increases beyond what you can play at without tapping like a coked-up maniac.

Zing!

Not at all.  If they intended for you to get that far the numebrs wouldn't glitch beyond 29.  The last speed increase was absoutlely intended to kill you and end the game.  I can't beleive people are actually trying to dispute this.

All of the guys that can max out are capable of reaching 29 consistently.

Lots of guys that can't quite max out are still able to reach 29.

I don't know of anyone other than Thor that has cleared 29.  I don't think that makes your argument more valid, though, and I don't believe in lowering standards to make more people fit the description arbitrarily.

You are welcome to go on thinking that, but I don't think there is really any evidence that supports your position.

I seriously doubt that any of the original progammers or play testers ever cleared level 19 or 20, tops.

Is the crown in SMB after you get 10+ men a glitch?

You aren't meant to have more than 10 men!  If you have 10 men you beat the game!


I would say, in reality, they just accepted it as a limitation of only showing a single-number life count.
Surely they had play testers that broke into the teens of men (but I doubt they had anybody pull off the koopa shell trick in initial testing to REALLY break the numbering)

The designers definitely intended for 19-28 to be playable, otherwise they wouldn't have an additional speed increase at 29.

I think you incorrect in your speculation about the programmers' intentions (29 being the "last level", that is, obviously they intended 19-28 to be playable, but my point was I doubt they ever really played through them all), and that they (a) simply didn't intend for the game to "end" at a fixed point or they would have explicitly ended the game, (b) never tested anywhere near that high so didn't know about the level number roll over, and (c) had to stop increasing speed at the physical speed limit of one block per frame since that probably at least sounded theoretically playable (versus them having the option to jump speed to multiple blocks per frame or even having the piece hit the bottom immediately and kill you outright)


Look, the reality was in my response above about Tetris beating you, no matter who you are or how good you are.

Nobody wins at Tetris, unless it is in a relative sense against another person's score.

The level numbers do not glitch after 29, they go up in order, just not in the standard base 10 number system you are use to.

I can pretty much guarantee you when designing it their thought process went something like:

increase speed by factor x every x levels until player dies
let reserve.. say.. y bits for the level indicator.. That should be enough.

Yup. (though it is curious that the score locks but the level number never does)

My bigger curiosity would be regarding what level and score were the play testers consistently reaching.

Pure speculation with no evidence whatsoever.  No one wants to give the developers any credit and just assumes they are clueless idiots.

Why don't the levels glitch earlier or later than 29?  Random accident that just happens to coincide
with the final speed increase of the game?  That sure is some coincidence.

clueless idiots?  Thats the right way to design it.  If the designers wanted to end it, they wouldn't intentionally add in a small bug to overrun the level indicator.. They would end it.

How are we assuming they are clueless idiots?

They made a game where the bugs have only been encountered by 1 person that we know of.
That's a pretty good success record.

But the fact that the "bug" in the level numbers exists at all tells me that they never tried to see what would happen that late in the game.  And the 10 level plateau at level 19 speed before going to level 29 speed just strikes me as a nice round number before the final jump (since 10 - 18 all have mini-plateaus and don't increment in speed every level, already)

Hmm... Maybe he's onto something, maybe they intentionally reset the level indicator after you finish level 29 since it doesn't get any harder at that point so it's more like a whole other phase of the game to see how long you can play at that speed hehe

Edit:  For the record.  I can't beat level 29

The level counter does reset to 0 at level 30. Then it starts incrementing by 10 instead of 1 for each level, yet it displays the value in hex? At least that's what it looks like to me. The line number, and piece counters all go wacky after 999. The only value that locks is your score.

Here's what the levels start doing:
(Actual Level) (Displayed Level) (Displayed value converted to decimal)
30 00 0
31 0A 10
32 14 20
33 1E 30
34 28 40
35 32 50
...

Ok, but I'm really not sure what about that speaks to you as "the end".. To me it says you are in the amazing super duper levels..
and even if it did say "the end" it doesn't do it until after you beat level 29.

I vote for other, there is no real ending. You can get the best victory screen easily enough but you can drive the score over the top too, and if 29 is a 'kill screen' then I can't see how being on lv30 is a beyond the kill screen as kill means end, death, no more. It's all just subjective.

If you believe the youtube videos (run on an emulator no doubt) then there are 335 levels before the game "loops" back to level zero difficulty on the 336th level. The glitches become more and more extreme as you continue playing, into the 100's the palette starts going wild and the level numbers have no discernible pattern.

As far as I'm concerned any levels after 29 are unintentionally side-effects of the programming, and were never meant to be accesible.

Kill screen. Next question.

I always hated this game, but for beating it, wouldn't it also require to beat Game-B on LVL 9 Height 5?

You can play Game-B on Level 19 Height 5...