Comparison between NES Tetris and Stunts

[mrdries]

Have you seen how popular NES Tetris has become?

They have monthly competitions and a world championship. First there was an older generation. Now a younger generation has taken over, the level of skill has risen to unseen levels.

Yet it's still that old game. I think there's some charm in it. If they were playing a newer version of Tetris, it may look much more flashy. But perhaps also more generic and sterile. It wouldn't have that same touch. There may be thousand of Tetris versions but there's only one NES Tetris.

There's some comparison between Tetris and Stunts. They're both one player games. Yet in Tetris, they can compete by having two players play simultaneously. I think that's possible in Stunts too by now? I've seen you play multiplayer Stunts.

Of course, Tetris is world famous, Stunts not so much. Though it may not matter that much. I think Trackmania wasn't so famous for several years, yet it has become very famous too.

The question is... how was Trackmania able to break through? Possibly through Twitch and YouTube. And what happens is... young people see this, some may start to play it themselves. Some may start to contribute their vids through Twitch and YouTube. And it may take off after a while. Perhaps it won't become world famous but Stunts may be secured of a long future.

Don't you think so too?

I mean, it's true, the graphics suck. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt if it looked better. But there's only one Stunts. If you'd be able to transfer the physics of Stunts into another program, that may not be bad, but perhaps it would start to look more like an alternative to Trackmania. It may be fun, but it may have lost some of its character. Perhaps I'm wrong... it's just my best guess.

[alanrotoi]

Advertising and streams are escential for bringbmore people to the community, I think.

[mrdries]

Yeah.

I think a World Stunts Championship would be really cool.
I don't think there's ever been held one?

I mean... it gives the opportunity to be crowned Stunts World Champion.
And the format that they use in Tetris, a duel, to get to the next round. Often, it's best of 3 games to get to the next round. Such a format is nice to follow for the viewer.

And if there's some advertising for a World Championship, it may attract some new people.
And if some Youtube Videos were made of the races, it may get some more attention for the year after.

Monthly races are awesome to keep Stunts going. But something like a World Championship is something that stands out for viewers. Something they may long for in advance. I know I've been longing for the Tetris World Championships, like counting down. Even though I could follow the monthly competitions on YouTube.

To be honest, I'd really hope such a thing would get done. I think it's super cool.
I'm always willing to help. It may not be too hard. Seems there's already the set up for multiplayer Stunts.
People can do the races online. That's what they did with NES Tetris too, during Covid.

[Duplode]

Some scattered thoughts...

If we were to try and actively draw an audience for a competition, some kind of live racing event could be a good fit. (Cc @Erik Barros and @alanrotoi , who have been thinking about potential ways to broadcast things.)

The remake question is an interesting one. The Restunts project always had on the horizon to someday reverse enough of the code to allow a port away from DOS, or possibly a faithful enough remake. Either way, I guess people generally agree (not literally everyone, but a large enough share) that Stunts is worth preserving, both as living history and as digital art shaped by a peculiar set of constraints. Incidentally, I was pleasantly surprised to see, just the other day, a piece on The Guardian the other day covering "Why are younger generations embracing the retro game revival?"

I'm now wondering what the TrackMania community and ecosystem is like these days. I remember the game was fairly popular back when I used to play it regularly, but that was around 2008 or 2009 -- at this point, Trackmania itself is approaching retro game status   

[Cas]

By the way, did you know that there was a World Stunts Championship?
https://wiki.stunts.hu/wiki/World_Stunts_Championship

Only it wasn't really a unified worldwide Stunts championship, but a tournament in itself.

And yes, I agree a broadcasted live event could help raise awareness. Or it could be a recorded one, but with commentary and pause between races if more than one, a time during which the commentators add more details about the community, the event, etc.

[mrdries]

Yeah, TrackMania is kind of retro now.
I watched YouTube videos of someone called Wirtual. Great stuff. Some of his vids have more than a million views.

I guess that if you could challenge a TrackMania player to beat some of your times, that may certainly get attention. Not sure where it would go from there...

A live event seems awesome. Could be streamed live of Twitch. Not sure it would get many views but I think it's cool anyhow, I mean, an old DOS game on a modern streaming platform. I like that. It's some else compared to viewing all those modern games. Perhaps then, people could subscribe to the Twitch Stunts Channel and they may get informed about the next live event. That may give some the opportunity to actually join the races.

Btw... could Stunts graphics be improved if there was some kind of software that would have as an input, all the pixels and their color of the Stunts screen while you're driving, it would register those like 24 times per second. And based on that, it would transform this into something that would look better, like the dark grey of asphalt would get a texture that would look more like real asphalt. The texture itself may not be in 3D. But perhaps that's no problem, the grid of the fence in Stunts, that texture always looks the same as well, no matter how far you're from the fence.

[Erik Barros]

(Cc @Erik Barros and @alanrotoi , who have been thinking about potential ways to broadcast things.)

I think it's a good time to revisit this idea.