Entertainment

US teenager claims to be first to beat video game

January 4, 2024 2:38 pm

[Source: BBC]

An Oklahoma teenager is believed to have become the first human player to beat Nintendo’s classic video game Tetris, 34 years after its release.

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.”

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It only took him 38 minutes to beat the game.

Remarkably, until a few years ago, players believed it was only possible to play up to level 29.

The popular video game – which sees players arrange falling blocks into perfect horizontal lines at increasing speeds – was originally created 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.

Today, the game can be played across a range of consoles and platforms, including mobile phones.

In 2010, professional competitive gamer Thor Aackerlund managed to reach level 30 by using a technique called hypertapping, where a player vibrates their fingers in a way which moves the controller faster than the in-game speed.

This led to other gamers adopting hypertapping and other techniques to see how far they could go – but as of last month, only AI had been able to reach the game’s true kill screen.

A kill screen happens when a player reaches a level which causes the game to crash.