13-Year-Old Becomes First Person Ever to ‘Beat’ Tetris by Reaching End-Game Glitch

A 13-year-old accomplished a historic gaming feat by becoming the first person to reach the technical limits of the classic puzzle game Tetris.

Willis Gibson, also known as Blue Scuti, reached Tetris's elusive "kill screen" while live-streaming on Dec. 21, according to PopSci.

Gibson encountered the glitch on level 157 of the Nintendo Entertainment System version of the game when he caused the game to crash.

As the YouTube channel aGameScout explains, Level 29 of Tetris was traditionally believed to be its highest achievable level in the years since it was designed by Soviet engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984.

At that point, the game's iconic blocks fall at a speed that doesn't allow the player to move them to the sides of the screen. The blocks will stack up to the top in seconds and end the game.

However, a "kill screen" is considered the point when someone progresses so far in a game that it ends when it crashes due to a glitch in its code. Reaching Level 29 of Tetris did not fall under that definition.

Professional gamer Thor Aackerlund ignited a race to reach Tetris' kill screen when he discovered a way to reach Level 30 of the game by vibrating his hands using a technique called "hypertapping" in 2010.

Players would continue to refine different techniques, leading some to reach Level 148 by November 2023 (which aGameScout covered in his video about Gibson's achievement).

An AI called StackRabbit eventually found that a modified version of the game crashed at Level 237 after more than 3,100 lines had been completed.

After much research, it was discovered that the kill screen could be triggered on the unmodified version of the game at Level 155.

But during Gibson's attempt at reaching the kill screen in December, he missed a significant move that would have triggered the glitch but kept playing anyway, reaching Level 156, then 157.

During his play-through of Level 157, he triggered the glitch after completing 1,511 lines of the game.

"This was the first time ever where instead of the game beating the player, the player had beaten the game," aGameScout said.

The channel says that players will likely see who can reach the glitch faster — or see how far someone can get without triggering the glitch.