In the past 5 years the views for the Classic Tetris World Championship exploded on Youtube. As a result, a lot of players began to play NES Tetris which can also be seen in the demographics (the younger generation was taking over). Unofficial clients can also profit from the hype of an official game. For example, Jstris had usually less than 10 players in its default room, then Tetris 99 came out introducing the Battle Royale format, and boom Jstris suddenly got above 50 players in its default room. From the unofficial online clients, Cultris II resembles NES Tetris the most: no hold, 1 preview, a very similar randomizer. Still, even Tetrio profited more from the NES Tetris hype. Here are some reasons why:

1. Cultris II can't be played in the browser. New players can try out browser games more easily. Thus the hurdle to join is much lower in browser games. I guess this can't be changed in Cultris II.

2. Cultris II uses a different rotation system. If you are accustomed to one Tetris version, any change will throw you off ("Tetlag"). A NES player will know how many sidewards movements (and rotations) are needed to make a certain placement in NES Tetris. But that same amount of sidewards movements will usually result in a misdrop in Cultris II, forcing the player to slow down by a lot. Cultris II allows players to customize piece colors and spawning orientations which is quite nice. However, more is needed to make Cultris II more NES-like: In NES Tetris, the 3-wide pieces will spawn one column more towards the right (righthanded vs lefthanded spawnings) and S, Z and I pieces will have only one vertical (and horizontal) state.

So, I would prefer to see the following customizability in the Block Options menu: a checkmark to switch between lefthanded and righthanded piece spawnings (L,J,T,S,Z spawn one column more towards the right), a button representing the vertical state configuration of I,S,Z pieces: 2 vertical states, only left vertical state, only right vertical state. Each of the 3 pieces should have its own vertical state configuration (for example in TGM/Sega Tetris the S piece uses only the left state whereas the Z piece uses only the right state). Note: Using righthanded is neither an advantage nor a disadvantage; using only one vertical state is a disadvantage because it weakens kicks and results in worse finesse (keys per piece average increases). Most NES players will not be able to configure the spawning system to their liking but maybe players will begin to make guides.

3. Cultris II lacks a Marathon-like mode. Such a mode would be useful both in singleplayer as well as multiplayer whereas in multiplayer no lines are sent between the players (they just play side by side and the player with the higher score wins; in Tetris Effect Connected a player has 2 minutes to close the score gap after the opponent tops out). Marathon-like mode could work like this: the room owner can choose the starting level but it has to be an odd number; level n is reached after clearing 10*(n-1) - 5*(m-1) lines whereas m represents the starting level; higher level means higher gravity but also higher score multiplier; on first level a Single | Double | Triple | Quadruple is worth 1 | 3 | 6 | 12 points.

Some words regarding the lock delay in Cultris II: As far as I understand, the locking of a piece is delayed a little but this delay isn't reset when the piece falls down a row ("step-reset") or moved/rotated ("move-reset"). Nothing wrong with that behaviour in my opinion. I just wanted to point out that this lock delay makes it too easy to play infinitely. Thus the lock delay must also decrease in the later levels (e.g. in the first 10 levels only the gravity increases, and afterwards the lock delay will decrease as well). PS: I would prefer Cultris II to have a little longer lock delay (not much, just 50 ms or 100 ms).

4. Cultris II rewards speed & Singles. In versus multiplayer speed is the key. And Cultris II rewards speed overproportionally because of 2 mechanics: time-based combo system (higher combos will have a better efficiency regarding sent lines per cleared line); combos sending more and more lines once you have sent 100+ lines in total (I guess it's there to reward aggressive play). Let's say two players make the same placement decisions but one player is 30 % faster than the other player. Then the faster player will not just send 30 % more lines. Nope, it will be rather 50 % more lines thanks to higher combos (due to time-based combo system). And if those 2 players play in a FFA room, it will be rather 60 % more lines (sending 100+ lines due to longer rounds). From my experience, it's always the same people winning in FFA rooms (all players receiving the same piece & garbage sequence is another factor). And players with a speed below 100 BPM top out early and are not competitive enough to continue playing (usually you won't see anybody playing online with less than 100 BPM although those players should exist). Now towards Singles: In NES Tetris, the goal is to clear multiple lines at once whereas 4 at once is the ideal case. On the other hand, in Cultris II the most valuable clear is the Single. A Quadruple is just not worth the risk. This will feel weird to NES Tetris players (or players who played Versus mode on GameBoy or SNES).

How to overcome those 2 problems: Make a second Versus mode that doesn't use the time-based combo system. Players will send the most lines via clearing Doubles, Triples and Quadruples. Clearing lines with consecutive pieces (combos in other Tetris games) can still be supported but the main focus should lay on clearing multiple lines at once with one piece. Some years ago, I have explained such a mode in more detail in the beta testing forum.

5. Cultris II is too fast for most NES players. Yeah, there are players who can play on level 29 speed in NES Tetris but usually the pace is much higher in Cultris II because Cultris II has harddrop and super fast autoshifts. Newer players can't make up their mind quickly enough and thus have a tremendous speed disadvantage. The only protection for those players is to set up a speed limit / join Rookie's Playground. I think there should be a way to slow down the gameplay. Personally, I am no fan of input-ignoring delays (spawn delay, line clear delay) though. I think the best way is just to slow down the autoshifts.

I would like to see a room option that automatically lowers the "repeat speed" (autoshift repeat rate) to 5.0. Note: This option wouldn't touch the autoshift "delay" (DAS), and it will influence the time-based combo system. Another thing I would like to see is a room option that replaces harddrop with an autolocking softdrop (i.e. the piece will need some time to reach the surface of the stack but then it will lock immediately). The autolocking softdrop could be implemented like this: the player presses the hard drop button. Then an input-ignoring animation will happen no matter if the player released the harddrop key or not: The piece will fall towards the ground, it can't be rotated or moved sidewards anymore, and once it reaches the ground it will lock, and the next piece will spawn. Note: Autolocking softdrop isn't suited well for a time-based combo mode but it would still be a good option for a Versus mode as described under point 4.

Regarding browser version: Yeah, it was once possible but IIRC the whole game had to be downloaded (~30 MB) each time you started the browser version. But the even bigger problem is that users have to overcome security hurdles to run Java applications in a browser. AFAIK developers have to pay Oracle to verify the Java applications to make them work in browsers. Downloadable Tetris-like games also have a problem with visibility because The Tetris Company can take them down from platforms like Steam (see Tetra Online), Microsoft Store and Google Play (see Falling Lightblocks). So, browser games are the way to go nowadays. AFAIK The Tetris Company didn't even try to get rid of Jstris and Tetrio (the devs come from Czech Rep & Denmark).

Regarding Jstris & Tetrio: I think you wanted to say they didn't become famous because of Tetris 99. That's true for Tetrio. However, the user base of Jstris tripled when Tetris 99 came out, and Jstris was already a few years old at that point. People wanted to play in big rooms because of the Tetris 99 hype and Jstris made that possible on PC / smartphone. I follow the Tetris Reddit and each year after the CTWC videos get uploaded to Youtube people ask where they can play "classic Tetris". Most people asking that question don't even know that they are referring to NES Tetris but this proves that a multiplayer browser version of NES Tetris would get a lot of players.

Regarding lock delay: I prefer entry-reset (the current system) over step-reset or move-reset. I just tried to point out that the lock delay has to decrease in later levels to make it tough enough. Currently, the gravity maxes out after ~6 minutes but I have no problems to play for ~20 minutes (if there aren't any opponents).

Regarding a "classic" Versus mode: I think it's similar enough to not split the community. Players will prefer one Versus mode over the other but they will still play the other mode from time to time. I think adding a room option for hold feature or bag randomizer would be a bad idea because this would make two very different communities clash against each other. And personally I prefer to play with 2 previews but I think this (as a room option) would be no good idea as well because it would increase the speed gap.

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I want to emphasize my points regarding skill gap / speed gap. I've followed the Tetris community for over a decade and I have made the following observation: A skilled community scares away new players. I would say 90 % of the people, who play Cultris II online, have done so for many years. So, Cultris II managed to hold its player base but it never managed to attract a lot of new players. I am a top 50 player but I barely manage to win games in FFA because there's almost always at least one top 20 player around. And I wonder how <100 BPM players feel in the FFA room. If they don't play with friends, there is no room for them to go, except Cheese room maybe. My point is that some of the skill gap is artificial. Cultris II rewards speed overproportionally because of the time-based combo system. And faster players will be the first ones to reach 100+ send lines in which case even small combos will begin to send a lot of lines (from my experience I tend to win only the shorter rounds when I am up against a faster opponent in a FFA 1vs1). To clarify, I think time-based combo is a nice system to make combos work in Tetris games without hold feature. But it has its drawback. Another observation I've made: A skilled community is always against changes, especially when it's about slowing down a game. For example, Jstris would attract much more players, if it had an option to limit infinite fast autoshift repeat speed, but the community strongly opposes such a change nonetheless.

The best option to protect new players in a super-fast client is zoning. For example, Tetris Friends divided players into 4 classes (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum) depending on their rank; players were only allowed to play a room matching their current class or one class below. And there are a lot of games that use zoning via 1vs1 ladders (e.g. Puyo Puyo Tetris, Tetris Effect Connected, Tetrio): Instead of joining a specific room, players click a "join league" button and the game will automatically choose the next opponent, depending on ranking (and last opponent) whereas the range of opponents is increased the longer you wait. However, those zoning mechanics only work well, if the user base is big enough. So I think, currently the best thing Cultris II could do is reducing the skill gap via room options, either slowing the game down (because this will result in less percentual speed difference) or decreasing the effect of speed (or making the outcome of a round more RNG based).

Maybe we can try allowing the 60BPM room to be ranked? It's the easiest way to provide some kind of zoning. which I agree is a big hurdle for new players.  It's not even a matter of not be able to win rounds for them. They literally are NOT PLAYING because they die in a few seconds and then have to wait a few minutes for another round.

I think NES tetris and Cultris 2 are quite different games. It's like saying Marathon or Ultra is like guideline multiplayer.  It seems many NES Tetris players are not interested in Multiplayer tetris and vice versa.

From what I understand the influence of C1's player base really enjoyed the combo aspect of the game and is probably the most defining thing about cultris,  not that it's one preview /no hold / non bag randomizer which it shares with NES tetris.

There are a bunch of old tetris like games whos playerbase c2 did have success capturing:
Tetrinet, blockbox, quadra, blockles, Leila and bigfish came from some swedish tetris game, and recently there was a group of players from cyberjeugos (a mexican tetris game).

In general, I'm not too in favor of adding more options to the game:

1. More modes tend to split the player base, we want everyone to be playing the same game and some of the change suggestions like changing the combo timer to something else, makes it a very different game.

2. Some of these options cause balance issues, and not new player friendly (eg the I piece spawning vertical vs horizontal).  Tbh more and more players just stick with SRS, with very few exceptions the other rotations and orientations are only there for the legacy players.

tweaking the combo table / timer can probably lower the advantage of playing purely for speed vs good decision making.
For example: reducing the amount of combo time loss overtime and increasing the amount of combo time loss for dropping a block puts more emphasis on decision making while still keeping the game relatively the same.

The userbase for mobile gaming far exceeds desktop browser / client and should be something to consider.

The only other NES player I am aware of is JakeGames2 (with just 260 games played online). What's your take on SNES Tetris multiplayer? What do you like and dislike about it compared to Cultris 2? And if let's say Tetris Effect Connected had "Classic Versus Battle", would you play it as much as "Classic Score Attack"?