4-1-2024 (NEW YORK) 13-year-old Willis Gibson rocked back and forth in disbelief in his bedroom office chair in Stillwater, Oklahoma, after accomplishing a feat once thought impossible on the original 1989 Nintendo version of the classic puzzle game Tetris.
Video uploaded to YouTube on 2 January shows Willis yelling “Oh my God!” in a high pitch and collapsing back into his chair, saying “I can’t feel my fingers.” Willis, who plays Tetris competitively under the name Blue Scuti, had just reached the game’s theoretical maximum score of 999,999 points, triggering the “kill screen” freeze at level 157.
Invented by Russian software engineer Alexey Pajitnov, Tetris requires players to strategically rotate and position falling geometric blocks to form solid horizontal lines and prevent the blocks from stacking up. While the blocks fall progressively faster, making the game indefinitely sustainable in theory, level 29 was long considered the practical limit for human players. But a new generation of experts has pushed these boundaries further.
Willis, who started playing Tetris competitively in 2021 after discovering YouTube videos of the game, was attracted by its “simplicity” yet “mastery.” His supportive mother Karin Cox, 39, a high school maths teacher, bought him the original Nintendo “RetroN” console and a cathode-ray tube television to help him pursue his passion, which occupies about 20 hours per week currently. She said permitting this unusual hobby was “harder to find an old CRT TV than it was to say, ‘Yeah, we can do this.'”
Previously, the “kill screen” had only been reached by hacking the game code, making 13-year-old Willis the first player to accomplish this on original Nintendo hardware. Tetris expert Vince Clemente, president of the Classic Tetris World Championship, called it “something that everyone thought was impossible until a couple of years ago.”
While most competitive Tetris focuses on high scoring, Willis took the marathon “survival” approach. Beyond quick reflexes, he had to play cautiously and utilise techniques like the finger-tapping “rolling” method innovated by top modern players. Last October, Willis placed third overall in the world championship, and he now aims to take first place at his next tournament in Waco, Texas later this month.
So far, Tetris tournament winnings have earned Willis around $3,000. But his record-breaking achievement, triggered by clearing just one line of blocks, has expanded ideas of what is possible. Expert player David Macdonald, known as aGameScout, explained there is now a “new phase” focused on sustaining play past the previous limits. While Willis plans on continuing to push the boundaries, however, he prefers retro gaming and expects to stick with older consoles rather than modern platforms like PlayStation 5.
