For 40 years, video game players have had their behinds handed to them by a bunch of falling blocks in Tetris, a game co-developed by Alexey Pajitnov and sadistic Soviet genius Vladimir Pokhilko, who used it for psychological experiments.
Pokhilko murder-suicided his family in 1998 (though there are some theories that they were Epsteined because of his connections to the Russian mob ... there's a whole docuseries about it if you're into those sorts of things).
It's one of those mysteries that may never be solved, just like everyone thought Tetris could never be beat.
But no more! Tetris has been conquered by a 13-year-old named Willis Gibson (known as "Blue Scuti").
Watch the moment he won in this timestamped vid:
The only way to beat Tetris is to keep pushing the game until it reaches what's called "the kill screen," the point where the software goes past its own limits and crashes the game.
In other words, the only way to beat Tetris is to play it until it dies.
What else would you expect from a guy like Pokhilko?
On crashing the game at Level 157, Willis gasped and said,
I can't feel my fingers.
An AI called StackRabbit played the game to level 237 before crashing the game, but that was a modified version of the game. Willis is the first human being to crash an original version, a feat that was largely believed to be impossible.
Tetris CEO Maya Rogers officially acknowledged Willis's accomplishment saying,
"Congratulations to ‘blue scuti' for achieving this extraordinary accomplishment, a feat that defies all preconceived limits of this legendary game." Rogers noted that Tetris will celebrate its 40th anniversary this year and called Willis' victory a "monumental achievement."
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Special thanks to Not the Bee users @wifemomsisterwoman and @gwen42 for the heads up about this story.
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