After obsessing over generations of gamers for 40 years, the video game Tetris has finally been defeated by an American teenager, a feat that could previously only be achieved by artificial intelligence.
At the age of 13, Willis Gibson became the first human to reach the end of this iconic Nintendo classic, in which the player must juggle blocks that fall at increasing speed, to form complete lines and make them disappear.
This highly addictive puzzle game, developed by a Soviet engineer, really has no ending: when the machine can't keep up, the screen suddenly freezes.
This is what happened to the teenager nicknamed “Blue Scotty” when he reached level 157 after 38 minutes of effort.
“Oh my God,” the young man exclaims when the game stops, in a video of his game posted on YouTube. “I can't feel my fingers anymore,” he breathes, overcome with emotion.
“This has never been done by a human before,” Vince Clemente, head of the Tetris World Championship, told the New York Times. “It's something everyone thought was impossible until a few years ago.”
For a long time, level 29 was considered the limit for Tetris, when the game becomes so fast that humans can no longer react quickly enough.
But in recent years, a new generation of gamers has pushed the limits of what's possible by adopting “rolling” technology, which reinvents the way you use the controller on the NES console: it allows you to use all your fingers instead of just one or two and greatly increases the tempo. Pressures.
Originally from Oklahoma, Willis Gibson used this process to create his record, a few months before the game's 40th anniversary, which was released in June 1984.
An achievement that has been widely praised within the gaming community.
Tetris General Manager, Maya Rogers, also congratulated the young player.
She commented in a press release sent to popsci.com, saying: “Congratulations to “Blue Scuti” for this exceptional work that challenges all preconceived boundaries of this legendary game.”
