13-year-old
Willis Gibson
has made history by becoming the first person to beat the
Tetris
game since its release more than three decades ago. While playing the
Nintendo
version of the puzzle game, Willis' screen froze, and he achieved a feat that was previously only credited to artificial intelligence.
A video of his gameplay, uploaded on
YouTube
on Tuesday, shows Willis playing Tetris for about 38 minutes and reaching level 157. Right then, when he thought he had missed a block, he recovered. As the blocks kept falling, he said, "Please crash," and completed another line of blocks to score points. Suddenly, the
game
froze, which meant he won, and he exclaimed, "Oh my God! Yes! I'm going to pass out. I can't feel my hands." His Tetris score displayed the number "999999."
Unbeatable Tetris: A Game That Defies Mastery
Tetris, created by a software engineer named Alexey Pajitnov, was first released on the
Nintendo Entertainment System
in 1989. The game involves falling shapes that the player must position strategically to prevent them from piling up. By rotating and positioning the blocks, the player can form complete lines, which will then be cleared away.
There is no end to the game; it runs indefinitely, and the consensus is that difficulty reaches its peak at Level 29, where the blocks fall so quickly that it becomes nearly impossible for a human player to keep up.
Willis, who is also known as Blue Scuti, has been participating in Tetris competitions since 2021. He managed to reach Level 157, which is the game's "
kill screen
," where the game becomes unplayable due to coding limitations. The game froze, and the screen showed that he had only made it to Level 18, as the code was not designed to advance so high.
For over three decades, gamers have been trying to "beat" Tetris for decades by hacking into the game's software. In 2010,
gamer
Thor Aackerlund reached level 30 using hyper tapping, a finger-vibrating technique. Others tried it, but failed. Only an AI program called StackRabbit managed to reach a kill screen with the NES Tetris in 2021, before this.
English (US) ·