Just before Christmas, 13-year-old Willis Gibson – also known as Blue Scuti – became the first person to "beat" the 1989 NES version of Tetris, one of the most popular variants of the game on the competitive circuit.
Gibson – who dedicated the achievement to his father, who passed away a week before – managed to trigger the game's "kill screen" on level 157, making history in the process (as well as being told to "go outside" by a British news reporter).
Now, two other people have beaten the game – and they've done it within a day of one another.
You see, NES Tetris has more than one kill screen, and Gibson actually missed his original target, level 155. That meant that the goal of reaching the earlier kill screen was still up for grabs – and on January 3rd, fractal161 managed to trigger it.
If you've been following the whole saga, you'll be aware that fractal161 was the player who started this challenge in the first place and was actually streaming his own attempt when Gibson triggered the kill screen on December 21st, 2023.
Amazingly, just a day after fractal161's kill screen, on January 4th, P1xelAndy performed the same feat, triggering the same kill screen at level 155.
Is that it for NES Tetris? Not quite. If you avoid all of these kill screens and make it to level 255, the game will loop back to level 1, so there's still one more challenge lurking within this 34-year-old video game.
[source gamesradar.com]
Comments 12
Nobody will ever run a mile in under 4 minutes.
255?! Lol wow. So is that kill screen kinda random? Is it even doable to get to lv255?
@Ironcore I was surprised nobody had managed that. Though looking at the mile records, it seems like basically only people in the UK or US have the records. Which makes me think there is someone out there who will do it.
Edit: Nvm I was looking at the pre modern records, and of course I was right to be surprised, since it has been done. I was wondering where all the Africans were at.
@MeloMan Yes it’s technically possible to get there, and the kill screen isn’t random - analysis has been done by the Tetris community on where the traps are from Level 155 onwards, which depends on how many lines are cleared and at what levels they’re cleared. So the challenge will be to work with the game to avoid all those crash conditions all the way up to 255. It’ll be done, as these guys have got mad skills!
Imho these people are trying to steal the guys thunder. He was first. End of. Them jumping on the bandwagon…. Na.
Congrats to the main guy that did it first.
@Stocksy they got different kill screens
Ha 255, never thought I see that number again. 255 is also the max number of rupees you could collect in the original Legend of Zelda for NES. The game will stop counting your rupees once you got to 255.
It was cool the first time, now it's old news
@Serpenterror
That's simply because 255 is the largest number that can be stored in an unsigned 8-bit address.
11111111 is binary for 255, or FF in hexadecimal.
Truthfully, 255 is a number that crops up very commonly in 8-bit games using 8-bit addresses to store a number value, even for things intended to store and display a two-digit value like a lives counter.
@Stocksy Such nonsense. They just wanted to see if they could complete the challenge themselves and they did. Like the 13 year old they too have unbelievable skill.
@Stocksy Yeah I agree. If they want to one up him they should go for later kill screens or the rollback after 255 instead of the earlier/easier kill screen.
They'll still never be the first person to get the break screen so the kid's got that.
@Ravenmaster You can't doubt their performance though, it's not easy to reach that high level in Tetris by playing it normally. The highest I had ever reach is level 120 and I'm not even using hypertapping or doing them rolls.
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