【Epoch Times October 16, 2024】Tetris, the popular electronic game from Russia, has captivated players worldwide since its release in the 1980s. Countless challengers have tried their skills, but none have been able to “break through,” meaning to play until the end. However, a 16-year-old American teenager has achieved the highest level of reaching level 255 and successfully completing the game, becoming the first person in gaming history to do so.
According to a report by IFLScience, for many years, players believed that level 29 of Tetris was the highest level because the game speed reaches its maximum at this level, unable to increase further.
After trying various methods, people discovered that level 29 was not the end of the game. Upon surpassing level 29, the game starts to encounter various glitches, such as abnormal block colors.
In 2021, a programmer named Greg Cannon developed an AI program called StackRabbit and successfully broke through the game’s glitch level to reach level 237, after which the game stopped. The gaming community concluded that reaching this “kill screen” essentially means completing the game.
Earlier this year in January, a 13-year-old American boy named Willis Gibson publicly showcased on his YouTube channel the process of playing Tetris until the “kill screen” appeared on December 21 last year.
He played for about 38 minutes, reached level 157, and suddenly the screen froze with a score of “999999.” He was considered the first player to achieve the “game over” without using any AI assistance.
However, 16-year-old American Michael Artiaga took it a step further. He decided to challenge Tetris on the glitch-free Nintendo Entertainment System version without level 235 errors. After more than an hour of intense gaming, he surpassed level 255 and completed the game. The game screen then displayed “level 00,” indicating the game restarting.
Under the YouTube account dogplayingtetris, Artiaga shared his successful challenge process with the title “First Ever REBIRTH in NES Tetris.” After this achievement, he kept shouting, “Oh my God!” and excitedly said, “I really did it! It’s finally over!”
(Click here to watch this short video. His successful challenge moment is at 1:21:24 in the video.)
After “beating the game,” Artiaga continued playing until he decided to stop, ultimately achieving a high score of 29.4 million points.
He said, “I’m so happy the game is finally over, man. I don’t want to play this game anymore! I’m going crazy!”
Tetris was designed and programmed by the former Soviet scientist Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov and first released in 1984. Nintendo released the Game Boy version of Tetris in 1989, becoming the best-selling game in Game Boy history.