There were consoles thrown on the floor, numb fingers, hours of gaming watching the colorful blocks go by trying to get the best possible result… And finally, after 40 years of gaming, the video game Tetris became had possessed, “beaten”. ” by an American teenager, a feat previously only possible with artificial intelligence.
At the age of 13, Willis Gibson was the first person to complete this game, in which the player must match blocks falling at increasing speeds to form complete lines and make them disappear. Understand: He managed to crash the game because he was too strong. This addictive puzzle game, created by Soviet engineer Alexey Pajitnov, has no real ending: when the machine can no longer keep up due to the limitations of its coding, the screen suddenly freezes, which players call a “kill screen.”
This happened on December 21st to the teenager, also known as “Blue Scuti,” when he reached level 157 after 38 minutes of effort. “Oh dear God”, the young man exclaims as the game ends, showing the score “999999” in a video of his game posted on YouTube. “I can’t feel my fingers anymore” he breathes, overwhelmed with emotion.
This performance “has never been made by a human”, emphasized to New York Times Tetris World Championship President Vince Clemente. “This is something that until a few years ago everyone thought was impossible.” For a long time, level 29 was considered the limit of Tetris, when the game becomes so fast that people can no longer react quickly enough.
New “roll” technology
But in recent years, a new generation of gamers have pushed the boundaries of what’s possible by adopting the “rolling” technique, which reinvents the way the NES console controller is used: it allows the use of all fingers and not just one or two, increasing the printing frequency dramatically – up to twenty per second. Willis Gibson used this process to set his record, a few months before the game’s 40th anniversary, released in June 1984.
This feat, widely praised by the gaming community, was accomplished in the SNES version of the game after his mother, a high school math teacher, Ms. Cox, purchased the Nintendo RetroN console and a Nintendo Switch at a pawn shop to watch TV to start it. HAS Note that on the Game Boy, a true “ending” to the game is achieved by completing the various levels or achieving a high enough score, with the backing of an orchestra and the launch of a rocket.
The general director of Tetris, Maya Rogers, wanted to personally greet the young player. “Congratulations to Blue Scuti for this extraordinary achievement that breaks all preconceived boundaries of this legendary game.” she commented in a press release sent to the Popsci website.
According to the American daily, Willis Gibson, who has been taking part in the competition since 2021 and says he plays around twenty hours a week, has already won several regional tournaments. The teenager is now aiming for a win at the Classic Tetris World Championship, where he finished third overall in October. The prodigy, a fan of retro gaming, was drawn to this classic because of its appeal “Simplicity”. Before you recognize the challenge: “It’s easy to start, but it’s really difficult to master.”
