A teenager from the USA has beaten Tetris and set new records in the process. Willis Gibson aka Blue Scutti, is a thirteen year old from Oklahoma and is believed to be the first human player to beat Nintendo's classic video game Tetris, 34 years after its release.  

Willis started playing Tetris when he was 11 years old after watching the game on YouTube. It was originally just a hobby but as he improved he joined the tournament circuit. He played in various tournaments and worked on improving his game play. In 2023 he won his first tournament in Kansas City and was the youngest competitor at the time. He continued to practice and was inspired by fellow competitive Tetris player Justin Yu aka Fractal161. Justin is the current Classic Tetris world champion. The goal was to reach the kill screen and therefore beat the game. The game was previously thought unbeatable.

Tetris, which sees players arrange falling blocks into perfect horizontal lines at increasing speeds, was developed in Russia in 1984 by Soviet engineer, Alexey Pajitnov, and gained popularity after its debut on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Nintendo's Game Boy handheld console in 1989. Tetris is one of the greatest video games ever made.

Quote From Wikipedia

Built on simple rules, Tetris established itself as one of the greatest video games ever made. By December 2011, it had sold 202 million copies—approximately 70 million physical units and 132 million paid mobile game downloads—making it one of the best-selling video game franchises. The Game Boy version is one of the best-selling games of all time, with more than 35 million copies sold. Tetris is available on over 65 platforms, setting a Guinness world record for the most ported video game. Tetris is rooted within popular culture and its popularity extends beyond the sphere of video games; imagery from the game has influenced architecture, music, and cosplay. The game also has been the subject of various research studies that have analyzed its theoretical complexity and have shown its effect on the human brain following a session, in particular the Tetris effect.

The competitive nature of the Tetris tournaments really set the stage for this milestone to be reached, and AI helped showed the way. In tournament play new ways of holding the controller enabled player's to play faster and keep up with the pace of the game.

First hypertapping a style of playing in which the player rapidly taps the controller's D-pad to move pieces. Followed by the current favourite, rolling where the player positions their thumbs over the dpad direction they want to use, and then they roll their fingers on the bottom of the controller like a big button which allows for up to 20 button pushes per second. Rolling allowed Hector "Fly" Rodriguez to set a world record for the highest score on a Level 29 Start with 259,000 points.

AI played its part in beating the game by allowing the players to watch how it did it, and once they could see how it could be done they practiced accordingly.

Willis Gibson posted a video on his YouTube channel of the moment he reached level 157, causing the game to crash. The 13-year-old fell back into his chair - declaring: "I'm going to pass out, I can't feel my fingers." It only took him 38 minutes to beat the game.

Normally causing a game to crash would not be a desirable result but in this case it signifies beating the game.

It has been 34 years since Tetris was released, and it looks like it will continue to be played for many years to come. How far have you gone in Tetris? Have you mastered the art of rolling? Go get that NES out of the closet and drop some blocks!

What's your favourite NES game? Let us know in the comments below.