GTR is the dominant multiplayer opener in Puyo, right? it popularly stands for "Great Tanaka's Rensa," like it's the chain of the great player Tanaka. so i wanted to learn more about tanaka, the great man to whom i owe so much and it was definitely not for a one-off gag in a video
the english-language record of course peters out quickly. i think the most popular retelling for the period is this puyo blog on the red bull website, which claims a lot of stuff about 'Tanaka' (please forgive the machine translation:
- people didn't really build chains in the mid-to-late 90s, even champions like Mr. (Ken) Takahashi, Mr. Namiki no Hige Puyoman, Mr. Electric Town Arles, Puyomatsu, and 'Abe Schezo Otoko' (what a name?????).
- then Mr. Tanakacchi of Gifu Prefecture started tearing it up with his new chaining technique
- the document then contains unrelated information about Tanakacchi's video game exploits, such as maining Sasquatch in Darkstalkers 3 and getting a 1:26 on Rainbow Road in Mario Kart for the super famicom.
- then Mr. White Devil of Hokuriku, a friend of Tanakacchi, says that "he was not the godfather of GTR." (referring to himself??
- lastly, GTR is claimed to mean Gifu Tanakacchi Rensa primarily. (other websites claim Gifu and Great are both valid uses).
searching for タナカッチ氏 (Mr. Tanakacchi) doesn't yield much.
this dude discusses which part of the GTR is the GTR, and how the GTR changed. he also claims Tanakacchi "entrusted the GTR to him" and he was like "haha naw" and then other people did it more without him
last thing i found was a youtube video from a Sep 12th 1997 puyo match of GTR vs. Stair Stack. looks modern to me! this might be the earliest footage of a GTR, idk. gonna just embed it below so we can watch together, because it's interesting :3 the search for Tanakacchi of Gifu continues, i would like to say thank you to him.