A Teenager Just Beat the Entire Game of Tetris for the First Time, Ever

Tetris, a game I can only get to about level three before it gets too much for me, has finally been beaten, almost 40 years since it was first released. Its victor? A 13-year-old kid in Oklahoma.

You know what I was doing at 13? Trying not to kill my Tamogatchi, and failing. Willis Gibson has beaten the unbeatable game via the original Nintendo console version. We clearly had different goals.

First and foremost, you may be wondering how one beats Tetris, a game designed to go on essentially forever. It’s simple (for Gibson, essentially impossible for the rest of us). While marketed as endless, the designers only built the game to a certain level, convinced that no human being could ever work fast enough to reach it. So basically, the coding of the game breaks at level 157. If you reach the level, the game freezes and you can’t get further.

Remember, Tetris gets increasingly harder to play as the levels progress, as the blocks fall quicker, and once the blocks stack up to the top of the screen, you lose. Gibson, however, bested the game in a scant 39 minutes. You can watch him achieve the feat via YouTube, here:

Now, before you saddle up to the game and (wrongly) believe that if a 13-year-old can do it, you can too please understand that Gibson is a competitive Tetris player (yes, they exist) and practices the game about 20 hours a week, for the past few years, to have achieved this feat.

You may be wondering what led to this achievement being unlocked, and well, this sport, like many others, has had advancements over the years. For competitive Tetris players, it’s called the “rolling technique” where you use multiple fingers to play the game instead of one or two. (Remember how clunky the old Nintendo controllers were to hold?) Don’t ask me to elaborate further on it; like I said, I can get to level three before I bone it up and end the game. Good thing for you; a bunch of people on YouTube can demonstrate if you are so inclined:

From the opening image alone, you can see it’s a completely different way to hold the controller. The more traditional way in the ’80s, you’ll recall, is to grasp each side with a different hand, and bonus points if you have a Squeez-it and a plate of pizza rolls at the ready while you play your game.

You may be wondering where the sport of competitive Nintendo Tetris playing goes from here? For some, it’s knowing they too can freeze the game if they work hard enough. For others, it’s going “beyond” the crashscreen. As in, somehow getting the game to keep playing.

As for Gibson, he dedicated his win to his father, who died last month.

(Featured Image: Universal Pictures)