Hello Tetris Grandmasters,

I recently have been working on a project to find some of the very older speedruns that were recorded in Japan.

Of them I knew Tetris was popular. I also discovered that a place that had recorded and verified was a magazine called Arcadia, and luckily I was able to obtain all issues. Because this is a time before videos and played in arcade. Submissions were done differently to the magazine but still if not more rigorous. Early issues of Arcadia have a number of these runs because the game was at the height of its play in 2000 so I wanted to submit them for historical purposes but I will explain submissions.

When a player got a run back in the day, this would have to be done at the arcade. Two staff would have to see the screen and verify, and the gamer would also have to go home and get his inkan, or signature stamp (we dont use signing of our names in japan) then the staff would also stamp with the stores inkan. These were then sent to arcadia who would record and verify with the user and the staff again. Cheating was not accepted because other players would call out if it happened and it could cause severe penalties for the store. A first place entry would entry would receive a free issue of the magazine but monetary rewards were not used. I think that should explain the process but writing this out helps anyway since this is not the only game with time attacks.

I can answer more questions if needed. ultimately its up to the tetris community to accept or not accept the runs, but I think it would be a shame not to preserve the work of others. Some may not have the information of modes, so I will post things I am unsure of here, the rest I will start submitting.

Fellow speedrunner and tetris admirer, DBcade

Hi, that's great that you have every issue! Very rich history in those I believe.

As you know, before Arcadia there was Gamest, and there are some records for TGM1 in there as it would've been out for a few years before Arcadia became a thing.

JHA is the continuation of Arcadia, and there are TGM2 and TGM3 records approved by them, I don't think any TGM1 records. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l6dEdsqxjDOSoyvnz0Zt6LgjthXKT7ag6AInjPx_b3w/edit#gid=1229472662

JHA also has some Arcadia magazines already archived here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RtvA8svNGSizx9EqAu4E3lW-gt5_DNDWE_yYLRaCluM/edit#gid=831803497

It's not complete, so your collection is of great value to the community! I'd love to help in any way I can.

Thanks!

I have every single Gamest as well. However Its taking a while to sort through everything.

JHA is good but not all the records were moved over, and some were not recorded. These is also an older site that has different high scores and time attacks. All of them trying to continue the time attack/ high score legacy started in gamest.

I will post things that I don't understand. Sometimes information seems to be lacking from one to the other, so its up to the community to decide whats best. Some of these times impact communities and leaderboards I run as well, however it seemed tetris was the most clear and easy to understand so I thought it best to start here. By the way if there is a clearer way to type what I explain in the first post better, it would be helpful to have an edit of that since that post will be copied to other leaderboards on this site.

Thank you for the links to archived pages, this may save me some time, especially if its the later issues. Feel free to talk about it with me live on twitch or twitter anytime as well.