A Deeper Dive into the New Rolling Technique in NES Tetris (with Tips from Rob Scallon!) 

Originally filmed this 2 weeks ago, a few days after Rob Scallon's response went up...and then, over the past 2 weeks, a lot of people have started to get good at rolling very quickly! A lot of additional stuff got added. Be sure to check out the links in the description for some of the significant rolling-related videos in the community. If you want to learn rolling, check out the pinned messages in the #rolling-realm channel on the Classic Tetris Monthly discord server for a collection of a bunch of how-to vids and tutorials, and don't be afraid to ask questions! Direct link to the channel: discord.gg/2DBQhmuwbP

NES players then: they see me hypertapping NES players now: they see me rollin

Rob Scallon giving legit NES Tetris advice through his bass guitar skills, I have now seen it all

As an old man who has been playing DAS Tetris for years, I tried rolling after your last video came out. I was terrible at it but I can see the potential of it. After several months/years of practice, it might be a viable alternative for me to finally get a max out

I developed my rolling speed on bass before Track and Field existed.

My only regret about all this is that Chez didn't keep it a secret, busted Rolling out during the Tetris World Championship, and then play with a pair of sunglasses on as people gawk in awe and horror at him sweeping the field.

This is so surreal to me. Rob's vid with Jonas is how I found out about ctwc and now it's changing how the game is played

Pure class leaving in Rob's RIP for Jonas at the end. This channel has quickly become my favorite on RU-vid. Thanks for all your hard work aGameScout.

NES commentators then: He do be hypertapping NEW comentators now: *He do be rollin*

These last two rolling videos have SO many layers. Past, present, future. Jonas from the grave STILL making an impact, Rob Scallon and his infinite brilliance, Chez showing off his versatility and drive to constantly learn more about this 30 year old game, and Scout's giddy enthusiasm to uncover new nuggets for the community. What a time to be a player and a fan!

No disrespect, Jonas would've been a monster with rolling as he arguably has the best stacking ability even today and definitely among the old gens, at least top 5.

Man, CTWC is gonna be something else this year. We're gonna need to rename the killscreen to 'second transition' soon!

"Practice Tetris with a metronome" isn´t something i ever expected Rob to say. Rob really knows how to bring in some fun to Tetris.

Just a quick thought: those missing vieo responses from the good old YT days are actually what made TikTok such a big success :D

I love how even 30 years after the game was released people are still discovering new and exciting ways to play. I look forward to seeing where the next 30 years takes us!

I just bought an NES and Tetris yesterday due in part to your videos. Thank you for inspiring me.

This new clicking method is basically like finding a shortcut in speedrunning that is very optimized

I thought it was a joke at 0:09 when it said 1.2M views but it’s legitimately blown up wtf it’s got more views than the world championships 2021😂

I wish to see Jonas’ reaction on the rolling method... I truly do. Hope he’s doing well in the other world.

I love the NES Tetris community and you are a really big part of that! Love the videos!

Hopefully this blows up like the last video! A great update on rolling this is, Scout.

rick astley's favorite technique

I've been grinding rolling and watching abunch, its been a big help post ks so I've finally gotten a 800k ✌

Yooooooo I'm in another scout video 😲

4:20 me, with tiny hands: "I don’t know where I’m going on this path. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life."

I wouldn't consider rolling to be the equivalent to butterfly clicking in Minecraft. I think a more ample comparison is drag clicking, where a person is able to create an immense amount of friction with the mouse to make one click motion turn into many clicks. It's similar with rolling since here, it's essentially one rolling motion that generates at most 5 taps in incredibly quick succession. Oh yeah, and both are game breaking lol

I don't know how I came across this specific video but that's a heartwarming community, everyone coming together and showing their own technique, very neat

There's actually a similar technique in cubing called "finger trick" where if you want to do two or more turnes on the cube, you can roll your two fingers to get faster turnes. Great video by the way!!!😁❤

making the controller flipped isn't impossible for the people who wants to use goofyfoot grip. Personally it didn't take much time for me to learn the grip so it probably is to other people as well :)

these videos make me feel so excited to see what people think of next and the improvements that can be made on this

Rob Scallon's tip for using your fingers in a "claw" shape applies to other instruments too, such as the French Horn, which I play. Pressing the valve switches in that form is more efficient.

Hey it’s me in that video 1:20

Oh dang, I never saw the response vid, that's awesome! And also very awesome to see the community come together on that

Joseph: I'm a hypertapper! Rob: Hold my guitar pick

Man I didn't realize Rob did the pogobat intro for Dan Brown. That's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

Rob scallion was the last RU-vidr I was expecting to see related to tetris

it's amazing that Rob has actually added some GOOD advice here! Jonas would be proud!

Classic Tetris players gonna start watching Billy Sheehan tutorials. And possibly going to become sick bassists.

Greatvideo as always Scout!

Here because of summoning salts video. This is like a piece of history. You documented it. Called it. You said it was gonna be huge and it was crazier than anyone could ever imagine.

12:03 Nice! I was actually trying this grip not even knowing he did it too after you mentioned the one-handed grip!

lets go cheez!

I miss Jonas, I think he has a part in this revolution too by bringing tetris to a broader audience and his kind listening to outside ideas. What would he say? Would he attempt to learn it?

Just watched Cheez get a level 40. Absolutely insane

I'm new to watching the nes tetris stuff but I've been a fan of robs for years and didn't expect to see him. So awesome to see him here.

Great work!

0:07 Last week is when that video came out? Haha, nope.

It's always a good day for a scout video on tetris 👌

this technique looks a lot like 'plinking' in fighting games to get 1 frame links consistently. And a liitle bit of 'piano-ing' as well for multiple shots at a frame sensitive input.

2:43 Him: Cheers for getting a line also him: MISSES A PERFECT CLEAR

Idk why im so interested in these videos. I played Tetris effect for like 30 hs and that's it. But i love watching people play it.

Now Rob is going to practice real hard with the technique he's satisfied with :) Jonas would be proud

Great vid as always mr Scout

Didn't understand a thing, but I know two things: It works, and this community is awesome

I think CTWC should have a two thumbs tournament where you can only use your thumbs to press buttons.

I made a post about this in a clicker game, Adventure Capitalist for when you need to spam clicks on 2x timed modifiers etc. You hold the mouse with one hand and use 2-3 fingers on the other hands and roll them / split the work onto the left mouse button. Players in Streetfighter also call this 'Pianoing' where when you need to get a move out with the right frame timing, you piano roll the same button with multiple fingers, or if it can be any punch strength for example, a quick succesion of LP,MP,HP on an arcade stick.

As a guitarist with limited knowledge of classic Tetris-- I wonder if it's possible to use a technique similar to rasgueado for rolling. Rasgueado is a flamenco guitar technique for rapid strumming that is more like a rapid series of flicks with the fingernail, as opposed to Cheez's technique, tapping with the fingertips more like bass. It's totally possible to get a 5-input roll with something similar to rasgueado, as I bet it's possible to incorporate the thumb in the finger-flick motion if you incorporate your wrist; that would unfortunately leave your thumb unable to do anything else, so you'd have to brace the controller and perform all the other inputs with one hand. I also suspect that most rollers will roll faster if the hand doing the tapping is the non-dominant hand; the dominant arm generally has more muscle mass in the forearm that slightly slows down rapid finger movement due to more friction on the tendons, or at least it feels that way to me and many others I know. Best of luck to all those learning rolling.

Fun fact: the goofy foot term comes from surfing and skateboarding. Riding with your right foot forward is called goofy footed, opposite of left foot forward being called regular foot

Thanks for the video. Always make the day better!

Saw how somebody connected this to butterfly clicking from Minecraft although I would say it seems like a fusion of butterfly and drag clicking because of the positioning of the thumb.

The rolling technique is really similar to a DJ scratch technique on the crossfader called 'the crab'

This is actually the second revolution of tetris.

On the face of it rolling sounds like a shortcut technique too good to be true but the masters of it really do make it work. Revolutionary.

This is really freaking cool and weird cause I remember thinking while watching these videos that using plucking techniques that'd you use on bass tremolo parts to hyper trap and now that exact idea is coming to fruition

Might be a thing for other Speedruns that use a lot of mashing. Mashing in early levels is big like in Contra NES , you want o mash extremely fast and in a rhythm over the entire game to get the spread-shot-pattern. Could be really big.

this definitely reminds me of flamenco rasgueados (spanish guitrar strumming technique). even the discussion on which fingers to use and the order reminds me of reading discussions in method books

We used to do something very similar to the two finger technique when we we were playing _Track & Field II_ back in the day. Had a little round plastic bit that we swiped across the A or B button at high speed.

In the 2023 worlds, everyone in the top 16 uses rolling. The entire landscape has changed in two years. Insane.

Such a cool colab lol 🤣 my favorite things thank you

i love how big this has gotten,, i know so much about Tetris now KEBWJW

The clone hero rake tap reference makes sense. HOW DID I NOT SEE THAT AS A CLONE HERO PLAYER! also along with rake tapping, I feel like slide tapping is similar in clone hero terms of the motion of your hand.

Rob Scallon should hold his head up high for being involved in my favourite album: Nostalgia Critic's The Wall.

Steve de Luca is going to have to assemble a lot of goofy foots (is it actually goofy feet? :-D) after this video.

Nes tetris players then: **insert any fast song** Nes tetris players now: watch him rolin' watch him roll

11:46 that's some next level pipa technique

0:10 A sequel to that seems cool

If you can roll it slowly, you can roll it quickly.

i wish jonas was here to explore this with us

As always, excellent work.

When I saw hypertapping I was like "isn't that just jitterclicking on a smaller scale"

Isn't it more likely to register a button press if you roll harder and just hold your thumb on the button? The flicking of the side probably also shortens the time the button is pressed making it possible to hit quicker. I don't know how hard you have to press the button though because i don't own a controller myself.

This actually might help with so many other games when speedrunning

What I learned: Musicians can Coach Tetris players

Funny enough, back as a kid in music school they taught me to play piano just like Rob described playing guitar, your hand should make a shape like you're holding a ball or an apple.

For minecraft, there is an interesting cicking technique that is way faster than butterfly clicking, similar to the gap between hyper and rolling. It is called drag clicking. I think some people have even managed to improve on this technique but the grips are unusable in practice.

Attach (tape/glue?) something to the bottom of your controller that extends it out, on the dpad side, you’ll need less force per tap to trigger an input. Just like how tapping closer to the center requires more force.

Goofy controller is good but, is it admitted in ctwc or other strict competitions? Isn't it sort of "modified" controller?

Man I wish Jonas could see this

Has anyone tried flipping the controller upside down and rolling their left fingers downwards? You’d use your right pinky to anchor the dpad and your right thumb would anchor the other side in the middle.

Funny to see the last Method. Its the same method used for "Hovering" in Zelda: A Link to the past Speedrunning for many years. I bet if gaming communities combine their knowledge everything would improove :D

If you can roll a wrench, you can roll a ball. -Patches O'Houlihan probably

i need to learn this

Cool how old games still get new strategies.

I posted this on the original video, this is basically something DJs call a "crab scratch". It's cool to see how a bass player would accomplish this, but if you treat the controller like a DJ's crossfader on a mixer, you'll nail amazing speeds. Like Qbert is showing in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-R_6fVOEitTE.html This is really exciting. Focusing on tripping your fingers over the rear side edge is the key... just like a crab scratch.

You read my comment about rake tapping in clone hero lmao. Rolling in the NES tetris community is a lot like how rake tapping was in clone hero. It changed clone hero, and allowed things considered impossible before to become possible. Look up the recent FC of soulless 6 for example. It was a chart made on aprils fools a long time ago, and at the time any top guitar hero player would've told you that even passing it was impossible. Now it's been 100% FC'd. Although on a side note, the release of clone hero helped with this because its engine is more lenient. The way rolling has shattered records on level 29 play reminds me of what went down in the clone hero community.

The way Rob mentions it it’s like how I played as a trumpet player, make a C but kinda upside down so maybe try to talk to some trumpet players and see if that helps?(unsure as i said it’s basically upside down) or maybe woodwind players since they go around a tube

I can't wait for Rob Scallon to become the next best CTWC player.

Meanwhile somewhere in an alternate universe: *DRAG CLICK ON CONTROLLER*

So cool nobody could have possibly guessed the technique and skill that could be developed when first designing these games it makes me wonder about the skill caps of other games down the road since 2 people just crashed tetris it makes u wonder whether the fromsoft godruns will just be standard for soulsborne streamers and they would have moved on to min level ,no cheese, no damage, max ng godruns instead

So I'm not a tetris player, but was thinking that a 4 finger run along an edge of the controller could work, would give you speed and maybe remove the wasted movement of the fingers. So line your fingers (or knuckles?) up so the tips are parrallel and run it sideways across the bottom edge of the controller. You could even maybe paintbrush the controller across them...I mean if the trick is move the controller not the fingers, then why not "move" the controller. It's something I did on the PSX as a kid when I hand my hand in a cast with just the tips sticking out and barely able to move them. I had the controler in one hand and ran it across the finger tips or the finger tips across the controller to get it to push up rather than pushing the button. I was more "flicking" the edge with the finger down onto the next, but immediately thought about it when seeing this as it seems so similar and removes all the finger movement and the issue with space which might help for big hands.