(Thanks to Shinichi on our Facebook page for the tip!)
Any good restaurant has a signature dish that attracts locals in to enjoy it and in turn they give patronage to that restaurant, usually coming back for more. In arcades, we sort of have the same thing, when it comes to games we offer that are hard to find or others simply don’t have. People come out constantly to play the same game, although what that is exactly often depends upon local tastes.
As we see in this story from RocketNews24.com, a Japanese news website, in March of this year they took a look at a small street arcade at a Taipei night market that has it’s own “signature game” that locals enjoy so much it draws small crowds. And that just so happens to be Tetris by Sega (1988, thanks Sgt. Wafer) The Grandmaster(update: well, make that a TGM clone of some kind from the looks of it). If you are unfamiliar with this version of Tetris, think of it as Tetris for expert players. It’s actually more impressive that everyone is attracted by an older version of Tetris than the newer TGM series. What they have setup at this particular arcade is just a game board inside of a small weathered cabinet that just has a television monitor sitting on top of it, which isn’t much to look at but is good enough to keep people interested. It makes you wonder how they would react to having Sega’s Giant Tetris on hand. Here’s a video below showing the attention this game alone attracts, although they do happen to have some other titles around like The King of Fighters. As Shinichi points out, one great thing about this video is you see people of all ages being attracted to the games.
still don’t understand why that tetris was never released stateside…
Just an FYI — it’s not proper TGM. Rather, it seems to be a free PC TGM clone by the name of Heboris: http://tetris.wikia.com/wiki/Heboris
It’d explain the computer monitor, at least.
In the case of the monitor, you can do that with any JAMMA PCB, as long as you have the right kind of converter board.
but in this case, I watched some videos of Heboris and I’m not so sure that this is what they are using there. The playfield seems different and the way the blocks dissolve. It’s certainly some sort of TGM clone though, you are right.
Actually I’m pretty sure that is “Sega’s Tetris” not “Heboris”.
You’re right, that is the game! I was trying to find the exact playfield as it had a different border design than the pics and videos of TGM I’ve seen but that is definitely Tetris running on either the System16A or 16B hardware. Thanks for the correction
Don’t Mention It.