Almost 35 years after the game was released on NES, Tetris has been “beaten” by a human for the first time with footage to prove it. Also, that human is a 13-year-old boy. YouTuber Blue Scuti posted the video below of his feat, which he accomplished at the 38:30 mark.
Of course, there is no actual endgame screen programmed into Tetris to let you know you beat it. Instead, what a lot of speedrunners and high-score chasers have been aiming for is a point where the game actually freezes, making any more progress impossible. To this point, only AI has been able to play at the level to reach this point.
This is the biggest accomplishment in a recent line of breakthroughs speedrunners have been making in NES Tetris recently. For a long time, even the most skilled of Tetris players could “only” get to about level 38 before blocks disappeared and various issues started popping up making the game unbeatable at the time. However, in 2021, the Tetris community found a new technique that let them break through those roadblocks. Blue Scuti was on level 157 when the game crashed.
Hopefully, the footage uploaded by Blue Scuti is legitimate. By no means do we want to call into question his accomplishments or how good he is at Tetris. Let’s be honest; we get tired of looking at falling blocks at around the ten-minute mark, so we will never come close to this dedication. This is the internet though, and it would not be the first time someone fabricated footage of them doing something amazing.
Regardless, we doubt that this will be the last milestone for NES Tetris. The old-fashioned game has quite a hurdle for players to get over, and maybe another breakthrough can be found so players can get to level 200 before too long.
