See the moment a 13-year-old beats Tetris for the first time in history | Mashable.
See the moment a 13-year-old seemingly beats Tetris for the first time in history
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| Willis Gibson reacts to freezing Tetris at level 157. Credit: Blue Scuti |
In a video uploaded to YouTube on Jan. 1, Willis Gibson plays the video game Tetris until the game freezes. In that moment, the 13-year-old from Oklahoma is thought to have been the first human player to advance so far into the original Nintendo version of the game.
The remarkable moment happens around 38 minutes and 29 seconds into the video, after which the teen is overcome by the shock of his own achievement. We've timestamped the moment for you in the video below.
Tetris is a puzzle video game created by Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1985. A portmanteau of "tetra" (meaning "four") and "tennis," Tetris is played by maneuvering falling block pieces into solid horizontal lines, at which point the lines disappear and make room for more lines. Players lose when the build up of blocks breaches the upper limit of the playing screen. The game becomes more difficult at upper levels as the blocks fall at faster and faster speeds.
In the past, enthusiasts have developed artificial intelligence to play the game at levels thought too advanced for living, breathing players. Gibson's performance, during which he reached Level 157, was practically superhuman. "It’s never been done by a human before," Vince Clemente, the president of the Classic Tetris World Championship, told the New York Times. "It’s basically something that everyone thought was impossible until a couple of years ago."
In October, Gibson placed third at the Classic Tetris World Championship, after joining the competition as a relative unknown. He has only been playing Tetris for around two years, and has made about $3,000 in Tetris tournaments so far, according to the Times. Gibson posted the recording of his feat to his YouTube channel, where he regularly shares mesmerizing footage of him playing puzzle game under the name Blue Scuti.
Topics Gaming
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Due to his age comments on the video are closed. So I’ll say it here.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations dude!
Level 157?!? Level 9 on the Game Boy was difficult enough when I was that age.
ReplyDeleteThese competitive players had to develop techniques just to hit the d-pad fast enough to keep going as the speed increases. A few years ago the "kill screen" of Tetris was just hitting something like level 34 since it was thought physically impossible to input moves at the speed required to keep playing past that. Remember when Takahashi Meijin's 16 button presses per second made him a celebrity? These players have to hit 20+ inputs per second.
DeleteThat's not the usual kind of video with that kind of audio.
ReplyDeleteSeriously - great work!
Poor choice of words by the presenter for sure, going for the "Haha gamers are losers" angle about twenty years too late.
ReplyDeleteAs a MoThEr I hope she doesn't really talk to her kids like that.
As a news caster her personal bias is clearly on display to the point it could be claimed as ridicule; I'm sure if people dig deep enough there's something sh'es broken in their own guidelines
DeleteWait until she finds out people on twitch and YouTube make 100x her salary for playing video games all day.
DeleteFresh air silliness aside, I think EG's writers need to step away from trawling Twitter for takes to shoehorn into articles.
ReplyDeleteCould've just been a feel-good story but they had to spin it into more mock-outrage nonsense. It gets tiresome.
DeleteAnd yet here we are, debating the controversy over the controversy in the comments section. Engagement numbers up and mission successful, unfortunately
DeleteI left before because of stuff like this. Only came back because all the other sites are equally awful. I can't speak for others, but I'll probably split once and for all soon if this is all there is to look forward to. I just don't need the mindless pettiness in my life. Others might have a differing opinion, I guess. That's life.
DeleteFor me this was probably the first time I've actively had it in the front of my mind that this was entirely needless controversy injected into their article, especially considering the news outlet's comment was seemingly the exception in a sea of positive reception & hardly representative of a wider trend in the media (and hence hardly worth the amount of screen real-estate given to it).
DeleteI'd prefer it if the news section of this website stuck to straight reporting and the occasional light-hearted stuff, like highlighting fangames or mods or the like. Or at least not making me feel like I got bait-and-switched.
I think the Sky News comment might've been justified to mention but it should've just been a proverbial footnote, rather than taking up about half the article. It just overly detracts from the celebrating of such an impressive feat.
DeleteLike it really brings down the mood of the article.
I came here to say much the same. It's a lovely story that has conflict inexplicably slapped on to it. Kid did a crazy cool thing that no one even knew was possible. Leave it there.
DeleteI'd normally agree, but in this case, the sources quoted were the head of communications at UKIE, a community programme manager at Rare and a campaign manager from a gaming publicist. Those are perfectly fair sources to quote from for an article like this, even if the quotes are taken from twitter. They're not random members of the public.
DeleteEspecially so as they've failed entirely to add any sort of gaming context, you might even say journalism, to this article.
DeleteI immediately wanted to know which version/system, techniques used etc. Absolutely nothing.
Absolute legend
ReplyDeleteI've read about how these players manage this and the rolling technique they developed, it's pretty incredible and takes a lot of skill and practice, something that obviously should be praised not sneered at.
ReplyDeleteJust for context, the level of Tetris play in this video looks absolutely pedestrian to people that are more used to seeing high level Tetris the Grandmasters gameplay. However to get past a game crashing bug the player basically has to make ultra fast inputs on the controller past this point to avoid this lock and must continually do this while playing. It's so insane that it was thought impossible by a human until this kid achieved it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, importantly, the TGM games have different physics (Advanced Rotation System) that are designed to remain playable at maximum speed. Stuff like blocks not locking immediately upon touching down, rapid repeat movement and input combos that let you move a block to the edges before it even spawns. NES Tetris is so nasty because it has none of those features so your only choice is to hit the d-pad at an insane rate.
Delete"Beating Tetris is not a life goal," she seemed to mock.
ReplyDeleteWell then, good thing he did it at 13. He has plenty of time to do other shit now.
He will be a brain surgeon making more money in a year than the Sky New presenter made in 10 years.
DeleteAnd good on him for trying.
The even more impressive part of this already impressive feat is that he supposedly made a mistake that would have resulted in him hitting the kill screen even sooner, so he not only was able to mentally overcome that mistake but keep holding and playing until the next possible kill screen.
ReplyDeleteI quite like how these newcomers to Tetris have essentially ended up redefining the way they game is played. They're not just playing Tetris better than anyone had in the past but have actually innovated in the way the game is physically played too. Fun stuff.
Really don't understand the fuss over this. I completed it 30 years ago.
ReplyDeleteHe didn't even see the rocket taking off ffs
Now, cue an entertaining King of Kong style documentary where a maverick Billy Mitchell like figure appears and claims that he, as a matter of fact, holds the record, but declines to provide any proof of it.
ReplyDeleteWas going to post something similar about Billy Mitchell coming out of the woodwork with another dodgy video claiming he's actually the record holder!
Delete"It's me! Billy Mitchell! I actually beat Tetris 30 years ago. I have it on VHS as proof. I've just been holding onto it until now"
DeleteHow are they the first? I got over 200 regularly i forget at what point you get the rocket taking off that gets bigger and better. I was around 13/14 so 1996 i was smashing this.
ReplyDeleteHave i missed something?
Was this the Nintendo version? My understanding is that's the main version that competitive players use. It seems like relevant information (as the killscreen may well differ between versions, since it's an artifact of the way it's coded), and I'm kind of surprised it wasn't mentioned in the article on a video game site.
ReplyDeleteIt definitely looks like the NES game. Other Tetris games have different physics and a modern remake trying to match the physics of the old game 1:1 probably wouldn't crash at all.
DeleteEdit: Eric ICX's video about this confirms that it's the unmodified NES Tetris.
Just curious, if he was the first how did he know it was going to crash? Shown by emulators before I suppose?
ReplyDeleteI imagine some people could have used emulation or cheats as a proof of concept?
DeleteAccording to a breakdown I watched, the kill screens were first discovered by a guy that trained a Tetris-playing AI. By now the conditions are well known. The kid targeted the earliest possible kill screen, missed that one and kept playing, hoping he would trigger one of the later ones eventually.
DeleteKudos. Aged 13 my wrist action was pretty finely tuned, but this guy takes it to a whole new level.
ReplyDeleteI think I got to 19 on the gameboy back in the day and thought I was hot shit. Obviously I’ve met my betters.
ReplyDeleteMassive hats off to the kid! Major achievement holy moly. Making history in the gaming space at his age. wow.
ReplyDeleteThis achievement is better than some speedruns. Well done! You are a legend.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair there has even been recent allegations that darts isn't a real sport either in regards to Luke Litter's achievements. It's not just gaming that gets this kind of coverage.
ReplyDeleteWhat a lad.
ReplyDeleteRather a few years ago I went through a Tetris phase because it was the only decent game I could get on my brick phone. Played it so much one day that I got the fabled 'Tetris Effect' when I went to bed that night, not knowing what it was. Imagine my surprise when I found out I had experienced the phenomenon through the thing it was named after... I bet many people first encounter it through other things.
Still, after playing it that much and having a game that lasted on and off for months, I could never hope to even get close to what that lad can do. Mental.
Level 1 must be painful for him, like Tiger Woods playing putt putt golf
ReplyDeleteA moment to remember forever and tell his grandchildren about. Good for him!
ReplyDeleteWhy would Tetris "crash"? It evidently was a problem in the program. It can always increase to a higher speed: it's a computer, there are no speed limits.
ReplyDeleteExcept for data type conversion error in which a player like Gibson reaches a score so high that the computer cannot store the value in the allotted space.
DeleteFor example, the Long data type stores numbers for in 64-bit two's complement integer. This represents a range from -2^63 to 2^63 (or -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647).
So if you were playing a game with the score stored in Long data type and reached a score of 2,147,483,648, the computer would think that was an impossible score and potential crash (if it didn't have proper error handling).
Most "kill" screens are a result of this because developers thought there was no possible way to reach this limit, and given that this was true for decades, they were somewhat right.
Oh, he lost Tetris too. Everybody does because it keeps speeding up until you drop out. Try it sometime, and you'll see there are NO winners and never will be. The game is a composite of life: all die. There are just those who don't believe they will, but they do too.
DeleteThe makers of Tetris agree. “Congratulations to ‘blue scuti’ for achieving this extraordinary accomplishment, a feat that defies all preconceived limits of this legendary game,” Tetris CEO Maya Rogers said in a statement.
DeleteTetris and Burgertime. If only I could have those hours back!
ReplyDeleteI looked it up and there are indeed millions to be made in "professional gaming" but the number of people that "make it" is vanishingly small, not unlike professional sports. Those that don't make it (over 99%) may have limited their future employment options, depending of the time they spent pursuing that dream. There is a societial trend in that 60ish% of men under 30 not only don't have a romantic relationship, they aren't interested in pursuing one.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/08/for-valentines-day-5-facts-about-single-americans/
Could this be a by-product of spending hours a day since early childhood playing video games? Are people cool with their kids spending 2-3 hours a day playing video games starting in elementary school? If you feel that is a realistic career path, you're probably on the wrong side of fairly long odds.
The skills acquired are absolutely transferable to a successful career path. Both of my sons spent hours playing video games as a youth. One owns a successful digital marketing company in NYC, and the other has climbed to a top director of surgical supply chain at the corporate headquarters of a major hospital health system. The analytical skills acquired by playing video games are grossly underrated. And they still play as adults.
DeleteBut the question remains, does he have a real girlfriend?
ReplyDeleteYes! She lives in Canada.
DeleteInstead of giving dumb football jocks a ‘free ride’ at American universities, the ‘free ride’ scholarships should be reserved for kids like this kid.
ReplyDeleteWatchu talkin about Willis?
ReplyDeleteNow what?
ReplyDeleteMy advice - turn the device off, count to 10, and then try turning it back on. That should fix it! 😊
ReplyDeleteSeriously, I know nothing about this world but you made the news - and with no dead bodies other than some tetras. Congratulations on your victory!
This isn't about video games; that is the conclusion of a failed imagination. This is about passion. The kid "followed his bliss" until he stood at the peak like Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay 70 years ago.
ReplyDelete"If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you.
I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.”
― Joseph Campbell, mythologist, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces*
*Campbell uncovered this monomyth throughout history and across all cultures: someone must go forward and face all of our fears, into a region of supernatural wonder where a great victory is won. The hero comes back to share the benefit with his fellow man. Such has it always been. The story structure is the same, but the heroes and heroines vary in their gifts, the bliss they follow.
What a feat!
ReplyDeleteAnd Willis said his win was in honor of his Dad who had died a few weeks earlier.
RIP Jonas Neubauer. The Tetris scene has gotten insane in the last 5 years. For those criticizing the hobby---do yourself a solid and check out CTWC on Youtube, this is a very high skill game and what Scuti accomplished here is pretty amazing.
ReplyDeleteGet this kid into stenography courses!
ReplyDeleteStenography...funny
DeleteWatcha talkin about Willis!
ReplyDeleteCongrats indeed! Now, try and focus that energy on something more creative.
ReplyDeleteWould you say that to Usain Bolt?
DeleteI dunno. About 30 years ago I started play a popular computer game. After a considerable number of hours just to get to the next levels, I asked myself, "Why am I wasting my time with this?" I devoted my time to writing computer code and learning a musical instrument instead.
DeleteWhen does your album come out?
DeleteWell, it ended OK for me. I retired at 52 after mastering that computer code thing, but am still working on the guitar solos though. Maybe one day...
DeleteIf you want to spend your time mastering computer games, knock yourself out. One thing in life you can never get more of is time.
You "mastered" computer code???? Um, sure.
DeleteYou may have been successful, but honestly, your early retirement notwithstanding, this kid at 13 will be far more successful with the earning from egame tourneys. Look it up. BIG money. REALLY big. I think you will be shocked and pick up the controller again, except you already said you were not that good at it. Like you said, you don't get more time - enjoy what you have left. Seriously.
"The top-earning Esports player as of December 2023 is Johan Sundstein (popularly known as "N0tail"). He's made a total of $7.18 million to date. Currently, 10 Esport players have won totals exceeding $5 million. And a total of 166 have exceeded the $1 million mark."
In the article it says he plays clarinet and does many other activities. I doubt you were quite at his level of success and professionalism.
ReplyDeletePeople can do whatever they want as long as they're not hurting anyone.
ReplyDeleteWhy rain on his parade?
✨️J E A L O U S Y ✨️
Deletenice job young man
ReplyDeleteCorrection there are 7 different pieces not 6
ReplyDeleteI have managed to get several desktop pc’s, a couple of laptops, and a few phones to freeze up.
ReplyDeleteGood job!
DeleteGood for him. Reminds me of the show Future Man.
ReplyDeleteloved that show but the main guy was pretty gross as the show starts, wasn't he? Not a great comparison to this young man!
DeleteAny computer nerds in here that can explain how you "beat" a game like Tetris? I'm guessing some built-in memory buffer hit its limit, but details appreciated.
ReplyDeleteI would guess it is just as far as they programmed it - there is nothing random about the blocks falling, just like there are not "deals" in computer solitaire. All programmed.
DeleteRandomness is not something computers can do - they have to be told what to do.
Computers are often required to produce random numbers as they're useful for a host of tasks, from taking random samples of data to simulating the formation of galaxies. But computers produce these numbers using mathematical formulas, which means they aren't truly random.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/can-a-computer-generate-a-truly-random-number
You are correct, but that is an oversimplification. Yes, you cannot ask a computer to simply give a random number with no additional processing.
DeleteBut what you can do is make the RNG grab a seed from something that is random, like the frame number or time elapsed.
To that end, the pieces falling are psuedo random, meaning if you know the seed you can calculate the predetermined sequence. The thing is though, as the player, you do not know the seed, or have the rules of the RNG, so to the player, it essentially behaves as random.
Cool! Thanks for that!
DeleteNo problem. Just realized I got so into the random number stuff I never answered OP either.
DeleteThey were right-ish that it's a memory buffer filling up. It's not exactly a memory buffer, just one or more variable reaching its max value, as every variable has to be defined with how big of a number it is (how many bits). If you try to exceed that max value, spooky stuff starts to happen depending on how the developer decided to handle that eventuality.
A lot have the value roll over to zero and start over, some just end processing, others choose a nnumber of bits so large you can have more values than seconds elapsed since the start of the universe, others still choose what they need and don't even bother to handle the issue (those are the programs that crash).
The Singularity is at hand…repent.
ReplyDeleteThe game was created by the CIA to identify highly capable people. Source: my imagination.
ReplyDeleteIt was created in the Soviet Union.
DeleteEven worse!
DeleteWay to go, Willis! Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteI'd rather my son was beating Tetris than beating a path to the trenches in Europe. This is what freedom looks like.
ReplyDeleteCaptain Obvious strikes again.
DeleteYes, his name is John Downing
DeleteHis parents must be so proud and thought he'd never amount to anything spending all his time playing a game that came out in 1984.
ReplyDeleteAs the kid is just 13, he has plenty of time to achieve more lofty goals.
DeleteImagine if the kid had nothing better to do than troll people on the Internet. That would be sad.
Delete"David Macdonald, a professional “Tetris” player"
ReplyDeleteThis is a joke, right?
BIG money in e-games. VERY BIG.
DeleteThese tournaments are high-tech big money events comparable to the Superbowl in exposure and viewers, but they happen multiple times a year, world-wide.
Kudis to Willis! So touching that he deducated this to his recently deceased dad... I'm sure he would have been so proud.
ReplyDeleteLoved playing Tetris as a kid and still enjoyed playing as an adult a couple of times. I'm convinced it help me develop great spatial skills. 🙂
Cool story, bro.
ReplyDeleteCongrats to Willis! Tetris drove me crazy forever.
ReplyDeleteJet Set Willis!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations Willis! What a great story. Made me smile.
ReplyDeleteSo how much money do Tetris players make?
ReplyDeleteBut can he beat Skynet?
ReplyDeleteA lot of sour grapes in here from boring grown-ups whose butts this kid would whip at Tetris.
ReplyDeleteGrownups who don't care about Tetris and are engaged in more important things, as are their kids.
DeleteIs a "This Dude" the male equivalent of a "Karen"? Asking for a friend.
DeleteOh be quiet.
DeleteNo, that's a more of you Dude
DeleteExactly how does one become a "professional" Tetris player? Lifelong residency in mom's basement?
ReplyDeleteHmmm... jealous maybe?
DeleteSure, you got me. 🙄
DeleteHe's 13 years old for crying out loud. He's not supposed to be paying rent or living on his own.
DeleteYou compete in tournaments with cash prizes and win them or place highly. Money is awarded to you that you use to pay rent and bills. It's not a complicated concept and is explained in the article.
DeleteWell done, young man. Back around 1990, I held the worldwide top score on Omega Race. Was completely addicted. I bought the sit-down version from an arcade in Tracy, CA. Set it for free play, and I burned the thing out. Twice. lol
ReplyDeleteWhy is this considered to be news worthy? Omgod...
ReplyDeleteSad
It’s called a good news story - lighten up
DeleteYa think???!?!!! Sheesh!!!
DeleteWhy not simply write “ No one had ever beaten Tetris” ?
ReplyDeleteSad.
ReplyDeleteHe beat you to it?
DeleteCongrats to the impressive young man.
ReplyDeleteOdd no mention of his father who passed away very recently and who he dedicated the achievement to.
A future patient for a hand surgeon.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe the fastest surgeon on Earth🙃
DeleteMore likely the nimblest-handed 7-11 clerk on the planet.
DeleteI did this when I was 13, some 35 years ago.
ReplyDeleteYou beat Tetris at 13 too, 35 years ago? Or simply played it?
DeleteBeat it. Thought the NES failed.
DeleteI thought I was tripping out for a minute, because I too remember beating the original Gameboy version back some 20 years... got the rocket launch "cutscene" and everything...
DeleteBut that was playing B type, not A type. Really annoyed the article made no mention of the different modes.
For those confused, B type is a mode where you have a set number of lines to clear. You can set the hardest settings and beat it. I imagine that's what William remembers.
This kid was the first to max out the counters in the A type, which is basically just Endless mode, see how many lines you can clear before ya dead.
I recall playing Tetris on my Nintendo back in the late 80s and seeing the blocks fall when I closed my eyes to go to bed. Not very healthy but fun times.
ReplyDeleteSame, except I saw Frogger and Pac-Man when I closed my eyes.
DeleteLucky you. I saw Frogger and Pac-Man when I opened my eyes!
DeleteLet’s not forget the granddaddy of them all: Pong…
DeleteDreaming in a game is the best
DeleteThe GOP needs this young man.
ReplyDeleteAnd fast.
...and I thought Tetris were fish...but congratulations to the young man
ReplyDeleteThat would be tetras.
DeleteAnd he did this using his very Own Brain!
ReplyDeleteNews stories reported the young man dedicated his feat to his dad, recently deceased, and was congratulated by the game's parent company's president/CEO for nicely marking the game's 40th anniversary. Nice story all around.
ReplyDeleteWhile giving a big salute to this young man for this achievement, one that required dogged determination as well as a quick mind, I have long thought that Tetris was a Soviet effort to lull the entirety of the West into a video-game stupor.
ReplyDeleteYour confusing Tetris with FoxNews.
DeleteHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
DeleteWinner winner chicken dinner!!!!!
DeleteOn the contrary, Tetris is the delightful product of an engineer embedded deep in the belly of a repressive government stumbling across the invention of one of the most timelessly fun videogames of all time, and almost unquestionably the most seismically influential to what was then a burgeoning new medium of artistic expression. It's the embodiment of human curiosity and invention at its purest and most joyful.
DeleteAmazing achievement! Congrats!!
ReplyDeleteWell that just shows where my heads at. I thought that Tetris was dead and long gone in the trash heap of game history. Amazing that in all these years no one had ever beaten it...much less that people make money playing it. And good on this guy for pulling off the first victory!
ReplyDeleteTetris is an OG
ReplyDeleteReal Gamers honor and cherish it, for without it, gaming would not be what it is today
what on earth is a 'real' gamer.... sorry, had to ask
DeleteSomeone who games, but also understands that gaming is an innate part of human culture and that its moving to electronic formats does not void that.
DeleteSomeone who understands that games provide the same escapism that books, shows and movies do, while building skills through interaction that those other passive forms of escapism do not.
Someone who recognizes the contributions to the industry made by any given game, rather than evaluating on what year a game came out and how complex it is.
Someone who understands that games are important, no matter the format.
Impressive eye hand coordination at 13. The rate the pieces drop get incredibly fast at that level.
ReplyDeleteOnly Nixon could go to China.
DeleteMilitary recruiters are salivating at the opportunity to get at him. Poor kid.
DeleteCure story. Good for him.
ReplyDeleteSpend two to three hours a day doing anything abs you just might be pretty darn good at it. Kid could be the next Benny Goodman.
Valid point. If he applies his dexterity to the clarinet he might have a great future ahead of him
Deleteaww, man. "Moonlight Serenade" just lit up my mind. Yeah, that's Glen Miller, but still.
DeleteGreat story.
ReplyDeleteThis kid is the Edmund Hillary of Tetris.
Maybe there's hope for the flesh and blood brain after all!
ReplyDeleteAre we certain that nobody had ever done this before? It's not like we all took pictures of our ending screens in the Game Boy era.
ReplyDeleteKilljoy
DeleteKey thing to note that the article left out was this was maxing the counters in A type, not beating all stages of B type, which plenty of people have done, myself included
DeleteStolen from https://twitter.com/DJSnM/status/1742710986673418466
ReplyDelete"The recent 'Beating Tetris' story isn't strictly true, firstly, to be clear the players pushing up to these levels are amazingly good, for years people dismissed the notion that humans could manipulate controllers fast enough to beat the original kill screen, never mind thinking and making decisions to keep playing. My mind is blown. However, it's not a traditional killscreen because it turns out that you can indeed avoid triggering the bug by avoiding certain scoring moves. The way this works is the scoring routine runs in a loop, adding the base score multiple times, the higher the level the more loops it has to execute. And if it takes too long then the interrupt triggers the screen refresh, which makes assumptions about the state of the CPU registers. If the CPU is in the wrong state when the screen refresh happens it'll crash the game. If the scoring update takes about 29670-29700 cycles then the game can crash. Paradoxically, clearing a single line, with the lowest score, takes more time than clearing 2 or more rows since it updates the lowest digits on the score. The earliest crash happens transitioning into level 155, because the level transition takes a few more instructions. But a couple of levels later you can just complete any single line and trigger the crash. Or, if you want to go higher, you need to avoid clearing single lines until level 159, after than doubles, triples and tetris can hit the magic execution time. So it's not a guaranteed kill screen, and I expect other players will get past it to higher scores, higher levels and other goals. I know all this because dedicated players analyzed the code and built this document with all the details in one place. I love this kind of stuff."
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1zAQIo_mnkk0c9e4-hpeDvVxrl9r_HvLSx8V4h4ttmrs/htmlview?pli=1#
thats pretty wild that its never been beaten before now. i always just assumed so. anyways im sure this kid got the sponsorship money flowing now.
ReplyDeleteThis is amazing. He should be hired by Nintendo to create add a better less annoying tune and upgrade the graphics! Can he consistently and repeatedly beat Tetris? I am not minimizing his feat; just checking if he found a bug in the way things progressed. We will probably never know. In general, an original 8-bit version cannot be that good in generating truly random sequences. You will eventually see patterns.
ReplyDeleteThe original Tetris was most assuredly not a 8-bit game. And a 16 bit random generator is more than adequate for this game. Way more.
DeleteSeriously?
DeleteThe Tetris theme is a staple of gaming music, one of the most iconic in the world, up there with Mario and Halo for most recognizable music.
And as for graphics, what are you even talking about. The tetriminoes are just made of square blocks, there is not much to improve, my guy