A 13-year-old boy from Oklahoma is reportedly the first person to ever “beat” the original game of Tetris on a NES console.
Willis Gibson — who goes by the online moniker of Blue Scuti —managed to make it all the way to the “kill screen”, a point in Tetris where the blocks are falling so fast that the game crashes and can’t continue. In doing so, he also broke the world records for the overall score, total number of lines and level achieved in the game.
Tetris was released by Nintendo on NES in 1985 and up until recently, gamers believed that it wasn’t possible to ever beat the game. The only time the kill screen had been seen was when AI bots gave the game a crack.
But after playing for approximately 38 minutes reaching level 157, Willis manages to score 999999 before the game freezes.
In a video posted to his YouTube account, Willis shared the entire gameplay that led to the record-breaking moment.
“Oh my god,” he wheezes as the game stops at the 38-minute mark.
“Yes! I’m going to pass out. I can’t feel my hands.”
Willis started playing Tetris two years ago.
He quickly climbed up the ranks among American players by using a technique called “rolling” on the NES controller. It was originally a finger position used on old-school arcade games but after Tetris enthusiasts gave it a crack on the game in 2020, it allowed them to go further in the game than ever before.
Once users started to go further and further into the game, various glitches began to pop up including increasingly difficult colour palettes making it hard for users to see the blocks as they fell down the screen.
But Willis kept at it, practising the game for a whopping 20 hours a week.
In an interview with streamer ITZsharky1, Willis gave some advice to young players hoping to set their own records.
“If you set your mind to something and you put work into it, most likely you will get it.”
Speaking to the New York Times, the president of the Classic Tetris World Championship Vince Clemente confirmed that the impressive feat had “never been done by a human before.”
“It’s basically something that everyone thought was impossible until a couple of years ago,” he said.
Inspiring gamer king!!!!
