A 13-Year Old Boy Beats “Tetris” On NES For The First Time In History

People would have been thinking that Tetris is unbeatable. In the game’s history of nearly 40 years, people assumed that it was designed to continue indefinitely until the player loses the game. However, that’s not the case. A 13-year old Professional Tetris player Willis “Blue Scuti” Gibson has proved it wrong and became the first person to “beat” Tetris. He accomplished this goal three decades after its original release. He played the game’s most extreme levels until it crashed and made this outstanding record.

Professional Tetris Player Becomes First Person To Beat Tetris On NES

At just 13 years old, Willis Gibson became the first human player to make the record and trigger the “True Killscreen” late last month. He scored a single line on level 157, which has a high chance of causing a crash. You can have a look at an insightful documentary by aGameScout shared down below. It reveals how the Tetris community long thought beating level 29 was impossible. When blocks fell faster than an NES controller’s movement it was considered the first “Killscreen.” However, Thor Ackerland’s innovative “hyper tapping” technique, involving rapid finger vibrations, allowed him to be the first one to reach level 30 back in 2011.

After that, pro gamers slowly climbed to higher levels until Christopher “CheeZ” Martinez invented the “rolling” play style in 2020. It involved bouncing the controller up and down in the player’s hand and strumming it like a guitar. The point worth mentioning here is that Tetri’s speed no longer increases after level 29. That’s why rolling allowed the community to reach beyond level 100 in the last few years. However, the game soon started showing its true limits. After level 138, NES Tetris’ color scheme started to deteriorate.

These stages played an important role in leading players to conditions that could crash the game. A programmer Greg Cannon discovered this possibility back in 2021 using Tetris-playing AI. Professional player and researcher Max “HydrantDude” Roy also described all potential crash points.