Tetris, the classic puzzle game first released on NES in 1989, has finally been beaten by streamer Blue Scuti over 30 years after release.
Over three decades, many players have reached the game’s various endings, typically by clearing four rows of blocks at once. This is challenging by itself, but someone took the concept of “beating Tetris” to the point of playing the NES version so hard it crashed to the “kill screen.”
Initially reported by 404 Media, a streamer by the name of Blue Scuti, a 13-year-old competitive Tetris player, became the first human to force the “kill screen”, which is the definitive “game over” for the puzzler in which the game freezes and becomes unplayable. This was previously only achieved by AI.
Blue Scuti emerged within the competitive Tetris community back in December 2021, winning first place in a handful of tournaments throughout 2023, and posted a video on YouTube showing their achievement of the historical feat.
After ripping through the myriad levels, with bricks falling faster than the eye can see, Blue Scuti was able to crash the game despite some miscalculations after 38 minutes of continuous play. The screen froze, with the music staying stuck on an endless note.
As pointed out by 404 Media, Blue Scuti utilizes the “rolling” technique, which is a particular method of holding an NES controller to improve success in creating lines. Rather than “hyper tapping”, which used to be the most popular method where the person taps on the D-pad as quickly as possible, “rolling” has players gliding their fingers along the bottom of the controller. The momentum rolls the controller into the other hand and presses the D-pad in the process.
The “rolling” technique improves the ability to press the D-pad up to 20 times per second instead of 12. This allowed Blue Scuti to break a world record for score, total number of lines, and level achieved. Before this human, AI was the first to succeed in breaking Tetris.
In an interview, Blue Scuti was asked about their motivation for playing. They said their greatest struggle was their nerves kicking in about half an hour into play, but their ultimate goal was to remain at the top of the scene while inspiring new players.