A 13-Year-Old Gamer Has Beaten NES ‘Tetris,’ Becoming The First Human To Finish The Game

In July 2021, programmer Greg Cannon uploaded a showcase of his own AI program ‘StackRabbit’ playing Tetris for the NES until it had crashed the game.

This game-ending kill screen had not been seen until over three decades after the game’s North American release and was previously only brought up through AI playthroughs of the game. On the release of this video, many competitive players of Tetris had expressed interest in becoming the first human to crash the game.

The first player to do so had accomplished this achievement at the start of 2024, at only 13 years old, as shown in a YouTube video uploaded by the Tetris prodigy.

Starting their competitive career in the game in 2021, BlueScuti had quickly grown to being one of the top players in the community winning a few tournaments in the latter half of 2023. On December 19, the young player was 18 lines away from crashing the game after breaking the world record of reaching the 153rd level of the game.

Upon accomplishing this record, BlueScuti aimed to become the first person to crash the game,  stating in an interview with Tetris streamer ITZsharky that they had chased the 2023 World Champion, Fractal, for the title.

Thanks to a new technique called in the community as “rolling,” where players bring the NES’s D-pad to one of their hands by pushing down on the bottom of the controller, the 13-year-old had been able to achieve their rise in the competitive scene. This alternative playstyle to “hypertapping” the keys of the controller has grown in popularity among competitive Tetris players with this technique’s history being well documented by Twin Galaxies.

For weeks after their world-record breaking playthrough, BlueScuti had worked to crash the classic NES game, with them doing so on January 2 to high praise in the game’s community.

Breaking past their nerves the young player had proven that humans can reach the game’s “kill screen.”

When asked by ITZsharky during their interview on Classic Tetris‘s official YouTube Channel on their future goals for the game, BlueScuti had commented that they would just like to keep a hold of their world record.

This historic run of the game had been dedicated to the player’s father, Adam Gibson, who had passed away in December.