Hyper-tapping

There is a bewildering variety of niches in the world. Competitive Tetris play is one of them.

Reading through an article like this one makes me giddy.

Almost all players at the time maneuvered pieces into place by holding the directional keys down on the retro NES controllers. Instead of opting for this method, Saelee learned to “hypertap” from another player named Koji “Koryan” Nishio. 

… Saelee learned to flex his arm and manually press the directional buttons more quickly than the classic game would automatically shift the pieces, enabling him to react faster at the game’s highest speed …

And … I know we live in the Twitch era and even twenty years ago I came across Starcraft tournaments staged with fanfare, but who buys tickets to sit in a hall and watch two teenagers play Tetris? These guys do:

Martinez told Saelee that he had something in the works. It was a new method of playing classic Tetris that he called “rolling.” Instead of hypertapping, which was rather difficult to learn and punishing on the body, Martinez’s new method of rolling involved drumming his fingers on the back of the NES controller, putting pressure on the buttons on the other side.

I’m telling you, this is an optimistic story right here.

If people can put this much effort into getting super-human at Tetris — Tetris! — there is no limit to human potential.