13-year-old does the 'impossible', becomes the first person ever to beat Tetris

In December 2023, Oklahoma teenager Willis Gibson sat in front of his game console, gasping in surprise, and repeatedly exclaiming “Oh!” He covered his mouth with his palms, and rocked back and forth, unable to believe that he had accomplished an incredible gaming feat. The screen displayed the record-breaking score “999999.” The 13-year-old boy was the first person in history to beat the vintage puzzle game Tetris. He posted a video of his game on YouTube, where he goes by Blue Scuti (@bluescuti). The video instantly went viral in the gaming world garnering over 2.7 million views in just a few months.

Previously only AI or bot programs have been able to bring this game to reach its freeze point, but according to the Classic Tetris World Championship, Gibson became the first person ever to crack this code.

Tetris is a puzzle game that provides both mental stimulation and fun. It features a large panel in the middle where colorful block structures of various shapes drop from the top creating a matrix. The aim is to keep the blocks from piling up as they zip through the window plummeting downwards. This might sound simple, but as the speed of the falling blocks increases, it becomes difficult to keep the game from freezing.

The game was created by a Soviet software engineer, Alexey Pajitnov, in 1984 and popularized on the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy consoles in 1989. The main thought behind the game was “creating order out of chaos” by enabling the gamers to create an organized matrix from irregular-shaped blocks, a.k.a. thoughts.

Over 200 official variants of Tetris have been developed for at least 70 unique systems, which according to Guinness World Records is a world record. It is also the third best-selling video game of all time, per Hewlett Packard report. Pajitnov himself told CNN, in 2019, that he was instantly hooked after creating the game. “I couldn’t stop myself from playing this prototype version, because it was very addictive to put the shapes together.”

In the video Gibson shared, he played for around 38 minutes until level 157, as the blocks kept cascading downwards at high speed. “When I started playing this game I never expected to ever crash the game, or beat it,” Gibson wrote in the video’s description. After 38 minutes, he suddenly blurted out, “Oh I missed it,” believing he lost his chance after a misplaced brick disrupted the pattern of the organization matrix below. Soon, the screen displayed that the game was frozen. Gibson was overwhelmed with excitement. “Oh my god, I’m going to pass out, I can’t feel my hands,” he said.

Vince Clemente, the president of the Classic Tetris World Championship, told the New York Times that this kind of feat has “never been done by a human before. It’s basically something that everyone thought was impossible until a couple of years ago,”

Gibson’s technique is to employ the “rolling” controller method, a new way of holding and using the NES controller that was popularized in 2021, per 404 Media. It is a method where players roll their fingers on the bottom of an NES controller and use that pressure to push the controller into their other hand, which presses the D-pad to move the blocks. “With rolling players could theoretically play forever…or as long as the game can handle it,” the Classic Tetris explained in a YouTube video.

Gibson finished third in the 2023 world championships and dedicated the game to his dad, Adam Gibson, who died in December. He said the game’s “simplicity” was what attracted him the most to play it. True enough, the game’s “simple yet difficult” appeal is what makes it one of the most popular games in the world. “Sometimes simpler is better, and the greatest games really do stand the test of time,” video game expert and consultant Scott Steinberg told CNN.