If you're brave enough to play Tetris like that, look up NullpoMino, one of a number of Tetris the Grand Master clones produced over the years. I've been going at it for five years and I still can't get past rank S4 on Classic Rule.

Kind of related; it's my best play on NullpoMino's Extreme mode, recorded on February 1. I've since improved considerably, but this is the latest video I have.

Someone call Not Sure.

As of 2007, there are at least three people who have gotten the GM ranking in Terror-Instinct. There's probably a few more, but I haven't seen their documentation.

Douche McCallister wrote:

Aside from the color recognition, I don't see how this guy responds so quickly to make all those tetris'i. I wonder what he does for a living, or could be doing for a living.

You can't hear it very well, but this version of Tetris sound-codes the pieces as well. When the pieces come that quickly, it's all you have, especially in Shirase level 1000-1300 when they turn black and white.

atomjacked wrote:

Tetris is a lot easier when you can hold pieces. I would like to see someone play like that on the NES version.

Above level 18 in the NES version, it's literally impossible to get very far because the pieces lock down before they can reach the edges of the matrix. If it had lock delay (a brief gap between when a piece touches either the floor or another piece and when it actually locks into place), it would actually be humanly possible to play that fast. Sega's arcade version did have lock delay, which is why that version was much more popular in Japan than the Game Boy or NES versions. We non-Japanese players didn't know any better thanks to Atari and Nintendo collectively having both the monopoly on Tetris releases overseas (arcade and console/handheld versions respectively) and no concern or knowledge about lock delay, ARE, DAS, or any kind of standardization among versions until the Tetris Company came along and introduced the Tetris Guideline with the release of Tetris Worlds on the N64. And many professional players resent the Guideline for things like infinite rotation, a weird rotation system in SRS, and zero ARE, which is one of the most important factors in making lightning-fast play possible.

My point is that it's not possible to play that fast on the NES version, but another version that we didn't know about and came out around the same time does make it possible. That's why the real Tetris masters are all Japanese.

If the version you play supports holding pieces, chances are it supports hard drop as well. That's the answer to lock delay.