The legendary puzzle game Tetris, invented and developed by Soviet programmer Alexei Pajitnov, will turn 40 years old in 2024, but only recently did one determined gamer finally manage to “beat” the game.
Image source: Nintendo
The achievement was achieved by 13-year-old American player Willis Gibson, known under the nickname Blue Scuti. He was recently able to break the NES version of Tetris (released in 1989), something only AI had previously been able to do.
We are talking about reaching the so-called kill screen – a state in classic (old) video games in which they become impassable. In the case of Tetris on the NES console, the gameplay freezes completely.
“My God, Blue Scuti exclaimed several times upon reaching the coveted killer screen in Tetris. — Yes! Now I’ll lose consciousness. I can’t feel my fingers, I can’t feel my hands.”.
The bug overtook Blue Scuti at level 157 (the transition to the next occurs after clearing ten rows) – until 2011, players could not go beyond even rank 29: the speed of falling blocks made progress almost impossible.
Blue Scuti’s success was made possible by the development of unconventional techniques for operating the NES controller. The first breakthrough happened in 2016 and was called hypertapping, and the second (rolling) occurred in 2020.
Blogger aGameScout admitsthat gamers will not stop there: in Tetris, theoretically, you can reach level 255 (if you avoid all the killer screens), after which the game starts again.
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