Internet Cheers As Teen Becomes First Person To Literally Beat 'Tetris'

Many can say they've played Tetris, and many can say they're very good at Tetris, but only one person can say they've actually "beaten" Tetris: Willis Gibson, aka blue scuti, a 13-year-old who is the only person who has actually "beaten" the 34-year-old game.

The reason "beaten" is in scare quotes is because technically, as everyone who's played the classic video game knows, you can't beat Tetris.

Tetris is seemingly endless, getting progressively harder until level 29, and then seemingly continuing infinitely until a player loses. However, the game's player base has known for some time that if a player progresses far enough in Tetris, the game itself will literally be unable to continue, and they will then encounter a crash state called a "Kill Screen," which, in the case of Gibson, amounted to a victory screen.

Gibson's achievement is the result of a community's worth of research into Tetris. As documented by YouTuber aGameScout in a very Summoning Salt-like video, Tetris has a long history of players attempting to "defeat" the game.

At first, players thought the game was impossible past level 29 when blocks began falling at max speed, faster than the human thumbs could move.

However, Tetris players invented the "rolling" technique, in which they use a hand to push the controller into their fingertips as they do cascading presses with all their fingertips, allowing for much quicker gameplay. Once this technique was discovered, the theoretical sky was the limit for how far Tetris players could go.

Despite the Kill / Victory Screen being theoretically possible, players have never been able to "beat" Tetris until now due to a variety of challenges that come with trying to literally beat the game to death.

In the NES version of the game, the game's pieces come out in colors. At around level 138, the game starts to show the stress of being worked for so long and the colors start changing, with some pieces being nearly pitch black. Two levels at this stage of the run have been nicknamed "Dusk" and "Charcoal" by the community for their infamy.

Furthermore, to get the kill screen, a player must clear a single line of blocks at level 155 at the earliest.

During his run, Scuti missed this chance at level 155 and cleared several lines instead of just one. His next chance would be two levels later, and even then, he only had a 70 percent chance to get the kill screen. Gibson was able to clear one line and the game crashed, marking the first time in human history a player had beaten the NES version of Tetris.

The run led to immediate cheers from the Tetris community and soon made national news, as his achievement earned him a segment on The Today Show and headlines from around the world.

Gibson also scored an interview with The New York Times for his achievement, during which he was reported to be doing chores and telling the publication that he will continue to play older games rather than more recent titles.