Last updated on March 21st, 2024 at 07:34 am

Before Willis Gibson, only bots and AI reached Tetris’ ‘kill screen,’ but he froze the game with a score of 999999

A 13-year-old from Oklahoma is thought to be the first person ever to defeat Tetris since the game’s debut over three decades ago. Prior to this achievement, only bots using artificial intelligence had reached the game’s “kill screen,” a point where its iconic blocks descend so rapidly that the game becomes unplayable. Tetris gained popularity through the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Game Boy consoles.

In a video shared on Tuesday documenting his achievement, the teenager from Oklahoma, known online as Blue Scuti and by his legal name, Willis Gibson, plays for about 38 minutes. He reaches level 157 but expresses disappointment, believing a misplaced block ruined his attempt.

However, he quickly recovers. As the blocks speed downward, he murmurs, “Please crash,” and successfully completes another line of blocks, which earns him points in Tetris. The game freezes, signaling his victory. Overjoyed, he exclaims, “Oh my God! Yes! I’m going to pass out. I can’t feel my hands.” His score reads “999999.”

Vince Clemente, president of the Classic Tetris World Championship, told The New York Times, “It’s never been done by a human before. It’s basically something that everyone thought was impossible until a couple of years ago.” The game was originally released in the mid-1980s. According to the Times, Willis practices on a cathode-ray tube television for about 20 hours a week.

Willis dedicated his victory to his late father, Adam, who passed away last month. Since starting to play just two years ago, Willis has become one of the country’s top competitive Tetris players, utilizing a newly popular technique called “rolling” to manipulate the NES controller. He first discovered the game on YouTube, where he also posted the video of his triumph, as he told the Times.

This article was revised on January 4 and 29, 2024. A previous version incorrectly stated that Tetris was “first released in 1989”; while the Nintendo version was launched in 1989, the game originally debuted in the mid-1980s for the Electronika 60, a Soviet computer system. Sources indicate that the game was created in either 1984 or 1985.