This week's Arcade Archives release is... Tetris The Grand Master (Arika, 1996).
Arika's take on Tetris has a strong reputation behind it, with a grading system that updates as you play through the game and blocks that get pretty fast, although this first release doesn't go in quite as hard as the third game, TERROR INSTINCT. As explained in this interview, the Sega version of Tetris was an influence on this one, which is why it feels a little different from modern Tetris games that adhere to the Tetris Guidelines (this interview also mentions the one true Tetris game, Tetris with Cardcaptor Sakura: Eternal Heart, also by Arika).
This is a big one- until now the only home version of any of these games was Tetris The Grand Master Ace on Xbox 360, and that was a Japan-only release. I'm not a Tetris expert by any means, but as is my understanding Arika have been trying to do something with The Grand Master for quite a while (including a fourth game in the series) and I guess The Tetris Company had the final say on some things, so I'm glad they were willing to let this version come out again.
This game also has some pretty wild secret modes, so via Arcade-History, here they are, entered on the title screen after inserting a coin:
Big Mode (BIG PIECES) : Left(x4), Down, C, B, A
Mono Mode (Play in black and white) : Right(x3), Up, C, B, A
TLS Mode (Pieces will still have shadows beyond lvl100) : A, B, C(x2), B, A(x2), C, B
Uki Mode (Adds a laughtrack) : A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B(x2)
20G Mode (Pieces will drop 20 spaces per frame from the off) : Down(x8), C, B, A
Rev Mode (Play the game upside down as pieces rise instead of fall) : Down, Up(x2), Down, C, B, A
As this is the most recent hardware Hamster's ever dealt with for the Arcade Archives series, there are some unfortunately teething problems- Gosokkyu's got the info on Twitter of reports of freezes and graphics corruption on the Switch version in particular, but Hmaster are looking into it and they get patches done pretty quickly.
