2024-01-14 02:20:22
It’s a bit hard to believe, but in the world of PlayStation and an endless selection of games, it was precisely the nostalgic Tetris game that grabbed the headlines in recent weeks. This happened after on December 21, Willis Gibson, a 13-year-old boy from Oklahoma, became the first person in history to reach level 157, crashing the system and effectively ending the game of Tetris.
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In a video he uploaded to YouTube last week, Gibson, who has been playing Tetris competitively since 2021 under the name Blue Scuti, can be seen nearly collapsing in his chair after realizing what he’s done. “Oh my God, I can’t feel my fingers,” he said. How big is this achievement and is there room to move forward from here? To understand this, you have to go back a little to the history of Tetris.
520 million units
The Tetris game was developed in 1984 by the Soviet software engineer Alexey Pezhitanov. The first console version, in which Gibson played, was distributed by Nintendo in 1989. In the 90s, almost every child had the game in their pocket, and since its invention more than 520 million units have been sold worldwide. But it’s not just a thing of the past – in the last year the game managed to interest tens of thousands of people who watched it on Twitch, Amazon’s live broadcast platform that focuses on video games, in a cumulative time of about 400 thousand hours.
In fact, the Tetris is actually an advanced puzzle – during the game, floating shapes descend on the screen and the player must arrange them in such a way that they complete rows on the ground. Every complete line that accumulates disappears, and every ten lines that disappear go up a step. In the advanced stages the speed is increasing.
3 things you didn’t know about Tetris
1. Tetris was the first video game to reach space. It happened in 1993 thanks to the Russian cosmonaut Alexander Sarbarov.
2. “Tetris effect” is a medical term coined by the game. According to him, when people look up from the screen they continue to see shapes.
3. The name Tetris also comes from a love for tennis. Pezhitnov combined the word tetra, which comes from ancient Greek, referring to shapes that consist of four cubes, with the suffix of the word tennis.
For years stage 29 was considered the end of the game. Not because there are no stages after it, but because the forms in it fall very quickly, and no one has been able to overcome that. But in the last decade the gaming people developed new pressing techniques and started breaking records at a dizzying pace until they reached level 138.
At this stage, another bug appeared that made it difficult to break more records – the colors started to go wrong and it was difficult to distinguish between colors. This glitch was at stage 138 from the first day that Tetris was released, but it seems that no one really thought that one day it would be relevant and someone would reach such a stage.
After the humans got stuck, in 2021 the artificial intelligence joined the party and tried to push the game beyond human ability. Thus, programmer Greg Cannon created a bot that reached level 237 – where the game crashes for good. But in fact, to finish the game you don’t have to go all the way there: in 2022, after a series of experiments, researchers came to the realization that if everything in the game goes as usual without anomalies, the system can crash for the first time already at stage 155. They even mapped all the chances and additional exit points.
This research meant that the Tetris world finally understood how to beat the game. In contrast to the darkness that prevailed in the field, suddenly it was possible to see the light.
The battle of the titans has reached its climax
And that light began to appear on three tense days on Christmas Eve. It started on December 19th when a user named fractal161 announced that he was concentrating his efforts and making as many attempts as possible to beat Tetris. But even Gibson, the boy from Oklahoma, heard it and was not left behind: on the same day he broke the world record for points in a game (6.6 million), but was unable to finish it.
This run continued the next day, on December 20th, when fractal161 also broke the world record, reaching stage 146, putting his total points at 6.7 million. If that’s not enough, on the same day another player, Gerald Freeman, joined the race and managed to break the record and reach stage 150. Of course, Gibson also participated in the attempts that day but was unable to reach the goal.
This three-player battle of the titans culminated on Thursday, December 21st: Gibson reached level 155, the first level at which the game can crash. The 13-year-old boy was already sure that he was reaching the desired achievement, but at the very last moment he dropped three lines instead of two, which in retrospect meant that the system would not crash and the game would continue.
The disappointed Gibson knew he missed the opportunity, but he was already ready for the next crash point: stage 157. And there, as mentioned, nothing went wrong anymore. He reached his destination, the system crashed and he became the first in history to successfully crash the Tetris screen. His excitement was hard to miss: he grabbed the face, moved non-stop in his chair and looked like someone who had achieved the greatest wish of his life. The battle of the titans has been decided. At least for now.
This fight, in addition to being a record breaker, also caused a jump in the popularity of the game this month. If in the last year he was ranked 1425th in the most watched games on Twitch, the broken record jumped him to 965th place. Gibson, by the way, is ranked only 11th in the list of the most watched players in Tetris. The current record will probably increase his stock, but it is doubtful that he will be able to overtake his nemesis, fractal161, who is in first place by a wide margin from the rest.
“digital klonks”
And after all, one has to ask how in 2024, in an age where there are such advanced games, Tetris is still considered a popular game. Dr. Elhanan Gazit, a lecturer, researcher and consultant in gaming, metaverse and digital innovation, is sure that simplicity is the secret. So on the one hand it is very simple, and on the other hand to reach the high levels you have to be really good and develop creativity.
Dr. Elhanan Gazit, gaming lecturer and researcher / photo: juloot
“You don’t have to be a top gamer to play Tetris. You can just open it on the train and start playing. It both passes the time and has very strong effects on mental health.”
Gazit explains that according to research, Tetris can actually be used as a “digital Klonx” and reduce anxiety and stress. “The game causes a significant distraction. But apart from that there is a phenomenon called the ‘Tetris effect’ – people are so focused on the game and its forms that they really burn and appear in their imaginations even after they finish playing. It may calm down. So let’s say now during the war, you can bring children David Broza will play for them in the shelter, but you can also bring them Tetris.”
There is still room to move forward
The Tetris can be obtained today easily and cheaply almost everywhere. how easy is it Back in 1993, Tetris was the first video game to reach space with Russian astronaut Alexander Serebrov. But coming back to reality, before you bring him to the shelter to reassure the children, you should pay attention to what happened to the Gibson boy.
Although he reached the world championship and the prizes with a profit of about 3,000 dollars, but on average he sat on the computer for about three to five hours a day. Not time a reasonable parent can afford their children. “This prodigy just completely took over the professional Tetris scene,” David MacDonald, a video game content creator and Tetris player himself, told the New York Times this month.
And although Gibson broke records and smashed the game, it should be noted that there is still room to aspire in the world of Tetris. As mentioned, the game crashed at stage 157, but it can also continue until stage 257. In fact, to progress now, players will have to get down to the roots of the algorithm and figure out how to keep the game from crashing as long as possible. If until a few years ago the game beat the player, and last month the player beat the game – now the two will try to join forces to move forward.
“In the last year we discovered that the crash was possible so people started competing to be the first to do it,” McDonald explained. “Now, instead of reaching the crash, the challenge will be to extend as much time as possible until the crash.”
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