I reviewed 40 handcams from top players. Here's what I learned.

News flash: it's 2024, and kids can play Tetris at 10 pieces per second.

Thankfully, that's in short bursts of about 10 pieces; top players only average about 7 pieces per second. Much more reasonable.

Back in summer 2021, I rounded up a bunch of speedy kids and asked for handcams. Lots of them delivered, and I proceeded to do absolutely nothing with the footage. Blame university. My conscience finally cracked like the camel's spine in 2024 when I decided I absolutely had to watch westl play on his Mac. Yes, the fastest Tetris player in 2024 plays on an Apple Magic Keyboard. I wish I was kidding.

With that in mind, I sent out another announcement to every sub 20 player in my server. For those who don't know: to finish a 40L sprint in under 20 seconds, you must average at least 5 pieces per second. These nicely round numbers are probably why sub 20 has remained a speed benchmark for years, and why my server has a special role for those who achieve it.

As the replays rolled in, I realized westl's handcam wasn't the strangest; not even close. I decided to run a showcase stream, and managed to drag Wylie out of bed early (thanks man) to come and review the recordings with me. 

Just for fun, we ranked everyone based on two factors:

1. How optimal we felt their movement was. Was every input assigned a unique finger? Were they playing efficiently, were their inputs controlled?

2. How calm the handcam felt. Were their hands effortlessly gliding over the keys, or flailing like electrocuted spiders, bouncing the camera around?

The short answer was yes.

From a gameplay perspective? Move however you want. No two handcams felt the same, looked the same, and clearly everyone figured out something that worked for them. From an ergonomic standpoint, however, there's some cause for debate.

Let's start with the top right. Right above westl's washing machine, Kelvin and his Waluigi pfp won our unofficial best handcam award with a graceful sub 18 run. Thanks to his customized Wooting 60HE, his hands barely seemed to move and the run felt effortless. The same could be said for westl and his Magic Keyboard, but his hands felt just a bit more strained, and we decided to give Kelvin the edge.
In my opinion, sensitivity might be a double edged sword; these players were the most efficient with their movement, but their mistakes historically lead to catastrophic misdrops.

Next to our top 2, we can see former sprint WR holders Reset_, VinceHD and fortissim2. QL4707 and Tatoes were also highly rated, and given their multiplayer movement's consistency, I wasn't surprised at all to see them there. Tatoes did submit an invisible sub 22 though, which I rolled my eyes and accepted.

Now, I should explain the eye peeking out of the bottom. It belongs to Cascalian, aka Lordtime. While his right hand remained still, his left hand whipped left and right across the keyboard throughout his 19.8s run. It looked like he was trying to be a DJ, and Wylie aptly asked what he was remixing.

Also worth mentioning is swng, the green gradient blob, who submitted a 1KF (one-key finesse) ZT stacking run. While his left hand looked normal, as if he was typing an essay, his right fingers stretched out straight across the keyboard, gradually ascending, only plummeting with earth-shattering thuds onto his laptop whenever he needed an input. Put simply, it looked like a piano teacher's worst nightmare.

In the same vein is SophieTwilight, who nearly swept the left hand jank competition by stickbugging everyone. More precisely, his left hand danced across the keyboard, fingers flying left and right while fully extended, like a daddy longlegs learning how to break dance. It was incredible.

Now, let's talk about mat1jaczyyy, the creator of Zetris. He's the white triangle, blue background pfp right in the middle, but the handcam was anything but normal. He's there because Wylie and I decided to compromise. 

See, the absolute madlad happily proclaimed "I think I win this" as he submitted his Guitar Hero sub 20. Clutching his keyboard over his chest, mat bursted over 6pps with ease, and upon achieving his second best ever 40L time, let out an empathetic wheeze. Wylie was not impressed.

He's Australian, so props to him for holding back this much.
I figured mat's setup looked pretty comfortable and rated him pretty highly. In his utter disgust, Wylie voted for the opposite, placing mat squarely in the center.

In the bottom left for both hands was Lemmy the Koopa, aka rtxile. While his Blitz prowess is easily the best in the world, his ergonomics are clearly anything but. Boasting a slightly broken laptop, rtxile unrelentingly smashes his unresponsive keys with unbridled impunity, shaking his camera like a magnitude 7 earthquake. If there's anyone who deserves an extra keyboard, I nominate him to be first in line. 

There's a sad story about the green rock in the left hand bottom left. According to Wikipedia, diopside is a monoclinic pyroxene mineral with composition MgCaSi2O6. What Wikipedia doesn't mention is that Diopside was one of the fastest improving players ever, subbing 17 in under 1 year of playing Jstris. His handcam shows easily the wildest left hand movement of every player we reviewed. Unfortunately, the grinding took its toll shortly after Diopside achieved the TETR.IO 40L world record with a 15.55s run. Citing repetitive strain injuries (RSI), he retired quietly in 2021.

Finally, a shoutout to Promo's left pinky, which single-fingeredly demoted his placement by attempting to swim away from his hand as he achieved a sub 17 live on stream. It's definitely not on purpose, but Promo should not be miming drinking tea while playing Tetris.

Now, what did I learn? 

Honestly, I'm not sure. I just know this project was great fun to host, and in my opinion, a rare showcase of talent and hard work outside of tournaments. Not everything needs to have a meaning if it's cool, and if there's something everyone can agree on, I think it's that this handcam showcase was awesome!

If you appreciate my efforts to support the modern Tetris community and want to see more, consider joining MMC, where I hosted this project.