'Impossible Game' Finally Beaten After 34 Years By A 13-Year-Old
The prodigy did what was deemed impossible for the past three decades.
By Syazwan Bahri — 04 Jan 2024, 01:09 PM
Tetris is a fun and challenging game for all age groups
However, beating the original Tetris on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was believed to be impossible, except for the likes of artificial intelligence.
All of that changed when a 13-year-old boy proved the entire world wrong by accomplishing the feat recently.
Willis Gibson, 13, a competitive Tetris player, became the first person to reach the final killscreen
Willis "Blue Scuti" Gibson is recognised as the first person in history to reach level 157 of the game and hitting what fans refer to as the 'final killscreen'.
His accomplishment was witnessed by players worldwide as he streamed his progress online for everyone to see.
A YouTuber tracked the community's progress in beating the game
A recent YouTube video tracks the community's journey towards beating the renowned and challenging version of the game, notable for its absence of modern features such as the ability to store pieces.
You can watch the complete run here:
Even Tetris professionals struggled to beat level 38 before it became impossible to progress further.
However, a game-changing technique called 'rolling', introduced in 2021, transformed the Tetris community and led to numerous new world records.
Once 'rolling' became widely known, players pushed the game's limits to discover how far the game could go
A flurry of records sparked curiosity within the Tetris community about the game's limits. Exploring uncharted territories, players stumbled upon corrupted colours, including shades like 'Charcoal' and 'Dusk', making the blocks nearly indiscernible to the naked eye. Through thorough investigation, players discovered that the game could crash at level 155, resulting in a new killscreen — a term used in classic games to describe a corrupted screen that halts player progress.
The climax occurred in December 2023, featuring a showdown between Blue Scuti, a relatively unknown player, and Justin "Fractal" Yu, the reigning Classic Tetris world champion. The objective was to race to the new killscreen and 'beat' Tetris. Blue Scuti, despite being the first to reach the goal, remarkably missed the initial crash point. This led to a tense few minutes as he attempted to find a new point to achieve a killscreen, ultimately succeeding at level 157.
After 34 years, it was definitely a milestone moment for the Tetris community
While Blue Scuti has set a new benchmark for players all over the globe, the chase to the end is perpetual.
Theoretically, a player can reach the fabled level 255, marked by a pure red colour scheme, provided that the player manages to navigate past the progressively increasing crash points. Beating this level would loop the game back to level 0, signifying that the player has genuinely reached Tetris' ultimate frontier and returned to the starting point.
