A 13-year-old is the first human to beat Tetris | Numerous theoretical milestones remain
A 13-year-old is the first human to beat Tetris | Numerous theoretical milestones remain
Professional Tetris player Willis "Blue Scuti" Gibson became the first person to "beat" Tetris some three decades after its original release by playing the game's most extreme...
A 13-year-old is the first human to beat Tetris | Numerous theoretical milestones remain::undefined
The thumbnail and the title made me think of the basketball kid from The Boondocks
Apparently the kid’s dad died last month. Reckon the story makes a whole lot more sense with that in mind.
Wow that’s really cool - so looks like it could actually help with the ol’ trauma there?
How does one beat Tetris?
A lot of old games were intended to be played in an endless cycle--arcade games especially--but in practice there was always some kind of limit due to the hardware and coding practices at the time. Pac-man, for example, hits a level where half the screen is the normal maze and the other half is a random assortment of other sprites. Donkey Kong ends when Mario always dies at a certain level.
The NES Tetris limit hit here is a point where there are certain "random" chances of the game crashing depending on certain states. In his run, Blue Scuti actually missed getting the first possibility of hitting a crash and had to survive a few more levels to get the next one.
This isn't the full ending, though. TAS runs show that it is possible to get up to level 255 and then loop back to level 0. Getting there requires missing every single possibility of a crash, though, and the probabilities of that mount up as you go.
Full breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuJ5UuknsHU
This person did it by playing it until it crashed. There are several points where particular actions will crash the game.
I would argue though that to beat Tetris you would need to beat level 255, at which point the level counter wraps to level 0
I read a post shared on here somewhere the other week about this that might have note info for those curious https://biggieblog.com/celebrating-the-first-nes-tetris-game-crash/
Interesting read!
Here's a really fascinating video that explains the various NES Tetris controller techniques, including rolling, the new technique that's radically changed the way the game is played the last few years.
https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=GuJ5UuknsHU&listen=false someone made a bit of a minidoc on this for people outside of the tetris scene, it brought me all the way up to speed and was well made!
Thanks for sharing! I ended up following it up with the video this creator did on BluScutti and this top comment from BluScutti himself genuinely made me tear up a bit:
"Amazing video scout! Its amazing to be in one of your videos since your videos are what got me into the Tetris scene in the first place."
Just fucking cool
I hope Wozniak sends this kid a congratulatory card or something.
Why Wozniak?
He use to be really good at it afaik.
Wozniak was obsessed with Tetris, and would send his high scores to Nintendo Power Magazine.
Eventually, since nobody was able to touch his scores, Nintendo Power asked him to stop, so he (Steve Wozniak) started submitting them as "Evets Kainzow", and at least one of his scores was printed under that name.
So, yeah, he has a history as a (the?) Top human player of Tetris in an age past.
poor little guy nearly had a heart attack...
I beat it on gameboy in the early 90s. Is that a different Tetris than the one mentioned here?
Had to wait until the day after to share with my friends at school
It's the NES version, all speedruns are made on that version.
It's crazy living in a time when "first human to ______" is a normal headline.