An American teen becomes the first human to beat Tetris

An American teen becomes the first human to beat the classic computer game TetrisForced him into a failure that ended the game, a feat so far only achieved by artificial intelligence.

Willis Gibson, a 13-year-old gamer known as “Blue Scotty”, managed to reach the “death screen” of the Nintendo version of the famous “puzzle” while other players followed his progress online.

“Oh God!” Willis screamed repeatedly at the end of a more than 40-minute video posted on YouTube this week.

“I can’t feel my fingers,” he said pantingly.

That excitement was a sharp contrast to the previous 35 minutes of play, in which the Oklahoma teen remained almost motionless as he rapidly moved his fingers on a controller.

According to The New York Times, Vince Clemente, chairman of the Classic Tetris World Championship, said, “This has never been done before by a human being.” “This is basically something that everyone thought was impossible until a few years ago.”

addictive game

The brainchild of a Soviet software engineer, Tetris is a simple but highly addictive game that requires players to rotate and manipulate falling blocks of different sizes to fit together and form solid lines inside a box.

Once a row (or two, three or four) is formed, it disappears, leaving more space – and time – to match the next blocks.

As the player progresses through the levels, the pieces fall faster, until reaching level 29, which was long considered the end of the game and the point where the figures move too fast for humans to react. .

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For some time, gamers have known that there is a point where the code fails and the game closes, but only another computer is able to access it.

Until December 21, when Willis was at level 157 and placed a piece in a position that caused a row of blocks to disappear and the game was halted.

Tetris CEO Maya Rogers attended the ceremony and told the specialized portal Popsci.com that it is a fitting achievement ahead of the video game’s 40th anniversary in 2024.

“Congratulations to ‘Blue Scotty’ for achieving this extraordinary feat, one that breaks all preconceived boundaries of this great sport,” he said in a statement.

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