Willis Gibson played the game at increasingly frenetic speeds for 40 minutes to beat it
US teenager Willis Gibson, known online as "Blue Scuti", has accomplished a seemingly impossible feat by "beating" the Nintendo Entertainment System version of Tetris, a game first released in 1989. This achievement contradicts the beliefs of the original Tetris designers who deemed it unattainable due to the game's endless design.
Tetris gradually speeds up, making it increasingly challenging, and traditionally, players are left overwhelmed. To overcome the game, one must achieve extraordinarily high scores, causing the game's memory banks to overload and crash. Willis Gibson's victory is noteworthy because it defies the game's inherent design.
How Willis Gibson beat the game:
Willis Gibson achieved the seemingly impossible feat of beating the NES version of Tetris by playing the game at increasingly frenetic speeds for 40 minutes during a livestream on December 21, 2023.
The NES version of Tetris was previously only beaten by AI, which operated with near-instant perception and flawless decision-making, beyond the capabilities of human performance.
The Tetris reality undergoes a transformation at higher levels, with speed doubling at level 29, a threshold rarely reached by humans. Beyond this point, the game presents challenges with changing block colors, from violent pink to nearly invisible dark blocks.
Until last month, only AI had hit Tetris's "kill screen", causing a game crash. Achieving and surpassing this level has become a quest among Tetris fans, showing how gaming strategies keep evolving.
During Gibson's gameplay, he set new world records for a high score, levels played, and lines cleared, ultimately reaching the point where the game crashed, signalling his remarkable achievement.
13-year-old Gibson slumped back into his chair after the win, repeatedly exclaiming, "I'm going to pass out, I can't feel my fingers," the video he uploaded on YouTube showed. He managed to complete the game by completing 157 levels when players could only advance up to level 29 until a few years ago.
Willis Gibson has been playing Tetris since he was 11 and beat the game unexpectedly. "When I started playing this game I never expected to ever crash the game, or beat it. This run was also the Overall Score, Level, Lines, and 19 Score world record," he wrote on YouTube.
In 2010, professional competitive gamer Thor Aackerlund reached level 30 in Tetris using a technique called hypertapping. This involves vibrating the fingers to move the controller faster than the in-game speed. Other gamers followed suit, trying various techniques to push the game's limits, but no one could, until Willis Gibson.