BLOXEED: History of Highest Records

• National record progression
• Author's personal best
• On autofire systems

National record progression

Here is the complete list of the progression of Bloxeed's verified national records for most lines in one credit. (Sorted by the ascending order of the year and month when the verified score was published in the media.)

The competition of Bloxeed had a category for most scores, but SDI-BOSTON maxed out the score (with 154 lines, Level 56, in High-Tech Land Sega Fujiidera, Fujiidera City, Osaka) in April 1990, just a month after the first score was registered in March 1990 (On Gamest: 638,380pts. by SDI-BOSTON, in High-Tech Land Sega Fujiidera, Fujiidera City, Osaka. / On Micom BASIC Magazine: 712,076pts. by AEX-ででーん!, in Kashiwa Gulliver, Kashiwa City, Chiba.).

Author's personal best

The personal best of the author is listed below.

On autofire systems

It was widely regarded that Bloxeed caused the popularization of customized autofire devices; once the Arcadia magazine (June 2000 issue, pp. 62-63) featured the history of autofire device of the video arcade game. A "synchronized autofire," which receives VSYNC from the game board and switches on and off of a button with timings synchronized to the VSYNC, was a groundbreaking innovation because it enabled players to press a button at the theoretically highest possible speed of 30 times per second. Moreover, players discovered the method of alternating two sync autofire buttons (starting the first button pressed and the second button released results alternately switching a button input 1-2-1-2-...). The alternate sync autofire literally doubled the output of the Flicky power block and it could milk lots of lines effortlessly. The most notable person attributed to the Bloxeed competition might be the circuit inventor Higashi-rensha-do(ひがし連射道), who was also the coiner of the term "synchronized autofire," acknowledged by the former record holder RAN at the GAMEST magazine, and he himself cowrote the article in Arcadia magazine previously mentioned. (As he refrected in the article, Higashi-renshado well often played games at an arcade venue Tecmo Land Musashino and many arcade game players like RAN were gathering at there.)

It was already known that it is possible to exceed 500 lines in Bloxeed with other autofire system (It was said the player ISP. hit 521 lines but did not use sync autofire), and decades later the author achieved the feat without using any autofire device, only mashing three in-built buttons, on 9th April 2024. The ultimate speed of rapid-fire helped boosting line counts before reaching Level 15, however the author finds that it is also effective when a player activates Satellite because its shots can eliminate most of the stack even if the gravity is 2G and you are on the brink of topping out. Those reasons are why the author concludes how overpowered the autofire circuit is.

We can purchase a variety of circuit boards enabling sync autofire nowadays, but the author is using NRS-1 autofire PCB produced by Nautilus, Ltd. and recommends it because it is easy to use without the knowledge of soldering and circuit construction. Here is the introduction to how to configure the NRS-1 board setting that suits to play Bloxeed. If you can read Japanese, the online manual of NRS-1 is available(http://www.ntls.jp/manual/NRS1_Manual.pdf).

• The board can save up to four configurations. So toggle the SW2 on the NRS-1 and choose which set to use.
• Press the button at the input section, and confirm that autofire is disabled for buttons A and B. (When INPUT display shows "A" or "B", the "NONE" lamp at the speed section is lit.)
• Confirm that autofire is set to 30 for button C. (When INPUT display shows "C", the "30" lamp at the speed section is lit.)
• Confirm that autofire is set to 30 for button D and the INVERT option is turned on. (When INPUT display shows "D", both of the "30" and "INVERT(URA)" lamps at the speed section are lit.)
• Confirm that output for button D is assigned to either A, B, or C. ^*3
• Press input buttons until the INPUT displays no alphabet, meaning the configuration is over and saved.

Having two single-fire buttons besides regular/inverted autofire buttons makes the rotation very comfortable at Level 50 and over. (To execute 270-degree spin, input the button ABA quickly.) It is possible thanks to that NRS-1 can assign a button to different button input(s). Of course, setting C inverted and D regular is okay, or you can assign A and C for single fire and B and D for autofire (when you want to avoid confusion with other Tetris variants in which button B rotation is opposite to buttons A&C.)

[*1] （幸） was printed as a circled kanji "幸".
[*2] （ま） was printed as a circled hiragana "ma".
[*3] Bloxeed only has three buttons, so a button assigned to D (as well as button E or F) results in disabling it. That is why you must switch the output of button D to either A, B, or C.

• https://sites.google.com/view/jha-arcade/(accessed on 14/08/2021) | JHA, Japan High Score Association(Official website, in Japanese)
• https://www.high-scorer.net/entry/2022/12/16/135159(accessed on 16/12/2022) | ブロクシード（ライン数）(Bloxeed: Most Lines Category NR Coverage, blog article by ZBL-rajiame (16/12/2022), in Japanese)
• http://www.ntls.jp/manual/NRS1_Manual.pdf(accessed on 14/08/2021) | NRS-1 User's Manual (PDF, in Japanese)
• http://rapidturbo2000.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-173.html(accessed on 14/08/2021) | シンクロ連射とハイスコア ("Rensha-do" blog article, by Rapid Turbo, in Japanese)
• https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm30296235(accessed on 14/08/2021) | 【連射道】ブロクシードの連射比較：フリッキー編 (Flicky's shot speed demonstration, by Rapid Turbo) (Nicovideo, 25/12/2016)
• https://www.youtube.com/embed/tJ_dmdnmCQU(accessed on 15/08/2021) | Configuring NRS-1 (for Bloxeed) (Movie by the author) (YouTube, 15/08/2021)