Thirteen-year-old gamer beat the original Tetris for the Nintendo game console

13-year-old American Willis Gibson became the first player to officially beat the original version of the Tetris game for Nintendo. Technically, Gibson had reached what gamers call a “kill screen,” the level where the Tetris code crashes, causing the game to freeze.

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

Willis Gibson posted a video when he reached level 157 causing the game to crash. It took him just 38 minutes to win the game.

This is very important for Tetris players, who have long been considered invincible. This is partly because the game does not have a scripted ending; those four block shapes just keep falling, no matter how well you stack them into disappearing rows. The best players kept finding ways to extend their winning streaks by staying in the game to reach higher and higher levels, but eventually the game surpassed them all.

This continued until a 13-year-old gamer triggered a kill screen at level 157, which the gaming world perceived as a victory over the game, explaining it as a situation where the software exceeded its limits.

The game’s creators confirmed the players’ theory and congratulated the boy “for achieving this extraordinary feat that defies all preconceived limitations of this legendary game.” Tetris CEO Maya Rogers noted that the game will celebrate its 40th anniversary this year and called Willis’ victory a “monumental achievement.”

The popular video game, in which players arrange falling blocks into perfect horizontal lines at increasing speeds, was originally created in 1984 by Soviet engineer Alexei Pajitnov and gained popularity after its debut on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and the Nintendo Game Boy handheld console in 1989. Tetris was one of the best-selling games for Nintendo’s NES and Game Boy consoles.

“It was a very long journey. In the beginning, people playing Tetris didn’t even know how to get to those higher levels, said game blogger David MacDonald. “They just got stuck in the 20s and 30s because they just didn’t know the techniques to move on.” Level 29 presented a particularly difficult obstacle because the blocks started falling faster than the game controller could react.”

Players eventually found ways to progress: in 2011, it was possible to reach level 30 using a technique called “hypertaping,” in which the player could rhythmically vibrate their fingers to move the game controller faster than the game’s built-in speed. This technique brought players to level 35 by 2018, after which players again encountered an obstacle.

The next big thing came in 2020 when gamers combined the multi-finger technique originally used in arcade video games. This much faster approach helped one player reach level 95 in 2022.

Because the developers of the original Tetris never expected players to push the boundaries of the game so hard, problems began to appear at higher levels. One of these originated with the game’s color palette, which traditionally consisted of 10 easily distinguishable patterns. However, starting at level 138, random color combinations began to appear, some of which made it much more difficult to distinguish blocks against the black background of the game.

Two particularly confusing patterns – one a dull combination of dark blue and green, later dubbed “Twilight”, the other consisting of black, gray and white blocks called “Charcoal” – proved difficult for players to differentiate. Gamers have been turning to the game’s artificial intelligence, dubbed StackRabbit, to overcome this stalemate, helping them identify where exactly players might encounter a glitch that results in a kill screen, and finally win the game.

StackRabbit, who managed to make it all the way to level 237 before the game crashed, was running a modified version of Tetris, so his achievements are not entirely comparable to those of human players. A huge effort, inspired by StackRabbit’s experience, eventually resulted in a large spreadsheet detailing which game levels and which specific conditions were most likely to crash.

“When I started playing this game, I never expected to ever crack or beat it,” Gibson, 13, said on social media.

In addition to winning the game, Willis notes that he also broke the overall score and three other Tetris world records.

Other gamers are now trying to beat the 13-year-old’s record, with many documenting their efforts on social media and video streaming sites.