13-Year-Old Becomes the First to Beat Tetris on the NES

Tetris is one of those classics that have survived the time as the younger generation still recognizes the iconic brick game. Of all the years that it has existed, no one managed to "beat" the game, until a 13-year-old kid managed to do it.

A Remarkable Achievement

You might find gamers posting videos of them playing games at the hardest level without taking damage, but it's still not as astonishing as beating a game that no one managed to in three decades. The day has finally come when 13-year-old Blue Scuti has done what no one has.

The player posted his gameplay on YouTube spanning about 38 minutes, and by the end of the video, you can see that the screen has been frozen, meaning that he had finally beaten the NES game by prompting the "kill screen," making the game unplayable.

Since the game is basically endless, you can theoretically play the game continuously. However, there's only so much the NES can process before it crashes. As per Kotaku, the point in the game where it crashes is the de facto "game over" for Tetris.

This was no surprise since Blue Scuti has already been the champion of several Tetris tournaments since 2021. Still, it does not undermine how impressive it is that he managed to do what others can't for the last 30 or so years.

The moment the screen froze, Scuti immediately hyperventilated and freaked out, which is understandable given what he had just accomplished. "I'm gonna pass out. I can't feel my fingers. I can't feel my hands," said the player.

Blue Scuti uses a technique where he glides his fingers along the bottom of the NES controller, allowing him to press the D-pad as well. With this method, a player can press the D-pad 20 times per second, which is more than the previous average of 12 presses.

The only other time that Tetris crashed was because of an AI. If you've played Tetris at least once, then you know that the descent of the blocks increases in speed as you progress. Most would be too frantic to clear lines around 15 minutes in, which makes Scuti's achievement more extraordinary.

Tetris History

The game was created in Moscow back in 1984 by Russian scientist Alexey Pajitnov and was developed on an Electronika 60. It wasn't until the next year that it was ported to the IBM PC and became popular among people in the Soviet Union.

By 1987, Tetris was released on PCs in North America and Europe, officially making it an intonational game. Video game designer and publisher Henk Rogers discovered the game and released it for the Nintendo Famicom in Japan.

Rogers secured the handheld rights to Tetris, and created the Tetris Company by 1997, making it the exclusive source of all licenses to the game. Over the years, the game has been available on various consoles.

Anyone can play it even on the latest consoles like the PlayStation 5. A movie has also been released on Apple TV+ called "Tetris," starring "Kingsman" actor Taron Egerton, which tells the story of how the game became an international hit.