A 13-year-old makes video game history: Willis “blue scuti” Gibson is the first person to play through Classic Tetris on the NES
When Tetris displays level 157 on the screen and freezes, it is immediately clear: 13-year-old American Willis Gibson has made it to the highest “kill screen” in Tetris history.
He opens his eyes, sobs and hyperventilates: “Oh my God. That’s it.” He realizes: It’s a historic moment in the history of video games. What had happened?
Willis Gibson, known under the pseudonym blue scuti, sets a world record at this moment on December 21, 2023: He is the first person to play through Tetris (NES), so to speak. He achieved the record in the semi-finals of the Classic Tetris World Championship 2023.
Here you can see his complete video recording of the historic Tetris run:
- Why is this special? Tetris, or Classic Tetris, appeared 34 years ago and was previously considered impossible to complete. Only an AI specially developed for this purpose has managed to get past the “kill screen” – with a few programming tricks.
- How did he do it? Gibson used a combination of two speedrunning techniques known as hypertapping and rolling. This involves vibrating your fingers over the buttons so that the controls can keep up with the immense in-game speed on high levels.
- What was the record so far? Before blue scuti came on the scene, the record was level 148. New methods such as hypertapping have enabled new milestones to be reached time and again since around 2010. Until then, the almost legendary level 29 was considered an insurmountable limit.
- What is level 29 all about? Level 29 is a myth in classic Tetris. At this point, the falling blocks become so fast that you can hardly follow them, let alone control them effectively with the controller. Level 29 was therefore long regarded as the final “kill screen”.
Can you do even more?
In the press and the speedrunner scene, the success of Willis “blue scuti” Gibson is celebrated as a milestone. Popular Science even headlines (from the “13-year-old wunderkind) “
In fact, level 157 was previously considered unattainable – only with a lot of discipline, rigorous training and his advanced controller technology was Gibson able to crack this goal after all.
His success is already inspiring others: Speedrunners have announced that they want to achieve even higher high scores by bypassing the “kill screen” and playing even longer than Gibson. Can this work?
