The unthinkable has happened as Tetris on the NES has been beaten for the first time. The feat was achieved by 13-year-old competitive Tetris player Blue Scuti, who has already proven to be one of the best players in the world and a fixture at tournaments and is now the only person who can claim they have beaten Tetris. But how did he do it?
Scuti has managed to push Tetris so far beyond its limits that he triggered what is called a “kill screen.” A kill screen occurs in games when you take things so far beyond intended play that the game simply crashes, unable to handle what the player has thrown at it. For many years level 29 was thought to be the kill screen since the game seemingly moved too quickly to proceed any further, but in 2011 a new technique was shown off called Hypertapping that allowed players to go further, and eventually another technique called Rolling was developed that enabled players to get to even higher levels.
The goal then shifted for competitive Tetris. It had become known thanks to AI tech that Tetris had a true Kill Screen and soon a race was on to see who would achieve it first. While others tried, Scutti is the first human player to accomplish this and captured his achievement via live-stream for the world to see.
You can watch the video below to see how the entire session plays out.
The only goal left is reaching what has been dubbed the Rebirth Screen, which sees the game reset once passed.
Update: This video by aGameScout breaks down the situation well.
He won his playstation 5 after beating the game?