Sega's arcade Tetris is one of the most popular versions of the game in Japan. It introduced a number of gameplay rules that still survive in some form to this day and influenced other Tetris games including Tetris Plus and Tetris: The Grand Master. A Mega Drive port was planned to release in 1989 but went unreleased until 2006 when it was included in Sega Ages 2500 Series Vol. 28 for the PlayStation 2.
This page covers the System 16 version. The game was also released for the System E.
Unused Music#
Sound code 91 is a short arrangement of La Cinquantaine which is never heard during normal gameplay. Purpose unknown, although its length might fit with some form of continue screen.
The fadeout is actually part of the track; it does not loop in-game; it is featured on the SEGA SYSTEM 16 COMPLETE SOUNDTRACK Vol.2 soundtrack compilation, as EXTRA (La cinquantaine).
ROM Revision#
Four different System 16 ROM sets are available in MAME; for the most part, the only known difference between these is that set 3 and 4 run on the earlier System 16A (suggesting that these are the earlier versions of the game), whereas set 1 and 2 run on the more powerful System 16B, but are otherwise the same.
Alongside these, there are also versions of the game running on Taito hardware as conversion kits. There are two versions running on the Taito B System and one on the H System. The reason for this is that three of Taito's games (Master of Weapon, Nastar Warrior, and Recordbreaker) weren't successful enough. After seeing the massive popularity of Tetris in Japan, Taito collaborated with Sega to convert these three games into Tetris. The (probably) sole difference between the two B System versions is the Yamaha soundchip: one uses the YM2203 (Master of Weapon) and the other uses the YM2610 (Nastar Warrior).
However, more interestingly, sets 3 and 4 are identical except for exactly one difference - set 3 intentionally re-initializes the machine's backup RAM every time it is powered on. This erases all bookkeeping information, but also allows you to see the well-known power-on pattern after every boot without having to manually erase the backup RAM each time.
(Source: Original TCRF research)