Tetris stands as one of the all-time favorite and long-lasting video games, available on nearly every console, computer, and gadget. While many versions have story modes and built-in endings, the classic endless mode was deemed unbeatable by humans—until recently.
A 13-year-old kid just pulled off a gaming feat by becoming the first person to ‘beat’ the NES version of Tetris, a whopping 34 years after it first dropped in 1989. This announcement comes straight from YouTuber aGameScout.
The reason we threw ‘beat’ in quotes is because of how he pulled it off. This Oklahoma teen, Willis Gibson, aka Blue Scuti on YouTube, didn’t hit some official ending because there isn’t one. Nope, he basically played the game flawlessly for an insane amount of time, eventually triggering a kill screen that crashed the whole game. These kill screens usually happen when you crank up the game speed so much that the software can’t handle it, leading to an overflow error.
The kid pulled off this epic move after playing for 38 minutes, and he got the whole thing on video. He’s the first human to do it, though, ’cause an AI program called StackRabbit beat us to it in 2021, triggering a kill screen with NES Tetris. Humans: 1, Machines: 0!
He nailed it by using a gaming technique called the rolling technique. Basically, it involves sliding your fingers along the bottom of an NES controller, using that momentum to roll the controller into your other hand.
If you nail it, you can smash the D-pad up to 20 times per second. This technique completely changed the game in competitive Tetris a couple of years ago. Before pulling off this big move, the 13-year-old had already shattered the game’s high score record, the level reached record, and the total lines cleared record, all thanks to the rolling technique.
Gibson, also known as Blue Scudi, shared with another YouTuber that he’s dedicating this achievement to his dad, who sadly passed away in December. He also mentioned that the gaming session was so intense that he couldn’t feel his fingers afterward.
Getting to that legendary kill screen is like a badge of honor in the world of old-school games. If you’ve watched the King of Kong documentary about the Donkey Kong arcade cabinet, you’ll get how fierce the competition is for those bragging rights. Players have hit the kill screen on games like Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Duck Hunt, and a bunch of others too.