A 13-year-old from Oklahoma in the US has become what is thought to be the first human to beat the classic video game Tetris.
Willis Gibson managed to get to the Nintendo game’s ‘kill screen’ on level 157, which caused the game to crash and no more blocks to fall. He posted the moment he reached the kill screen on his YouTube channel – he goes under the name of Blue Scuti – shouting “I’m going to pass out, I can’t feel my fingers!”
Willis’ epic achievement took just 38 minutes. He also claims that during this game he broke the world record Tetris score too.
While Tetris has been fascinating and frustrating games since it was launched on Nintendo’s Gameboy and Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) back in 1989, up until the past few years, it was thought that level 29 was the highest level of the game. It was only in 2010 when professional gamer Thor Aackerlund reached level 30, having developed the hypertapping technique to move the controller faster than the in-game speed, that it was found there were more levels. However, until Willis’ achievement, only AI had reached Tetris’ kill screen.
Willis has played Tetris since he was 11 and has previously competed in Tetris tournaments, but even he was surprised to reach the kill screen.
Of course, this has led to a rash of other gamers attempting to beat Willis’ new records – you can find their efforts on YouTube.
