On December 21st, 2023, Willis Gibson (Blue Scuti) a 13 year old from Oklahoma beat “Tetris.” After 38 years someone finally beat “Tetris”, a game people a few years earlier called “unbeatable” and “impossible.” 

       “Tetris,” The Russian game with squares and a theme that will play in your mind till the day you die. “Tetris” is an impressive game; despite being from the 80’s, it is the third most sold video game of all time (at least the EA version is). However, one question loomed in “Tetris” players’ minds: Can it be beaten?

       No.

       Well, technically no—bear with me I will explain— it doesn’t have an “official” ending. However, “Tetris”–like I mentioned–is old, and old games have something that new games don’t(sorta): the kill screen. The kill screen is the unofficial ending in older games, primarily arcade games. When the player reaches a certain point, the game runs out of memory, leading to an unbeatable level, or the game just crashes. One of the most famous kill screens is in Pacman, at level 256, half of the screen is replaced with random multi-colored letters and symbols; since it’s removed you cannot beat the level.

       So does “Tetris” have a kill screen?

       Yes. (Nerd stuff incoming—I will be talking solely about the “NES Tetris” from now on)

       In fact, it has several. But there is one small issue: actually getting to it.

       “Tetris” is very simple.  

       The D-pad moves the tetromino’s around while the blocks fall down. The A and B buttons are also used in rotating the piece. The goal of the game is to line up tetrominos, which when you do the row that was lined up disappears and you gain points. The game ends when the blocks stack up and reach the top of the screen leading to a game over.

       Now that sounds pretty simple, however there are two important factors that prevent people from reaching the kill screen: the speed at which the blocks fall, and the color of the tetromino.

       The speed at which tetromino’s fall is affected by what level you are, for example if you are on level zero you have 860 frames till the tetromino hits the bottom(43 frames per tile—there are 20 tiles) and the time you have decreases till you reach level 29 where the speed is now permanently 20 frames till the tetromino hits the bottom—which in terms of speed means that the tetromino goes down a tile every 1/3rd of a second. Level 29 was seen as the “kill screen” even though it’s not officially one but nobody could get even 3 levels past. This is where a new and improved technique called “rolling” was introduced.

       “Rolling” was first invented by Hector (Fly) Rodriguez and he won multiple awards using the technique. Fast forward years later, and players are trying to replicate that same technique on the NES with little success. That’s when Chris Martinez (Cheez_Fish) found a way to replicate “rolling” on the NES controller. This version of “rolling” requires both hands: players’ right hand above the controller and their left hand below. The left hand strums the controller like a guitar, while the right thumb is on the d-pad, and the pinky and ring finger are on the a and b buttons. Combining all this together with another popular technique called “HyperTapping” (Google it) means that players could hit the controller so fast that it could move the tetrominoes left and right before they hit the bottom of the screen. With this new and improved technique, level 29 seemed possible, and in 2019, Joseph Salee beat level 29 and led to a race of players (including Blue Scutti) competing to see who could get the furthest and who would be the first to reach the kill screen. One final obstacle stood in the way of the kill screen: the color glitch.

       Tetromino has colors but at level 138 those colors start getting really weird turning from red and blue to reddish-green and pitch black. The 2 most notable color glitches are “Dusk” which shows up on level 146 and the colors appear almost pitch black and “Charcoal” which shows up on level 148 and the colors are actually pitch black. And after all that we finally get to the main point of this article(Nerd stuff over).

       The point I’m trying to get across here is that it’s really, really hard to beat “Tetris” so the fact someone was able to make it to a kill screen is amazing. “Tetris” came out 35 years ago and it took tons of determination, teamwork from top players, and new ideas to finally beat the game. So as I end this article just remember that you can do anything if you put your mind to it. Blue Scuti and many others put their time and effort into “Tetris” and did the impossible so now it’s your turn. “If you can dream it, you can do it”—Walt Disney