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A 13-year-old is the first human to beat Tetris | Numerous theoretical milestones remain

A 13-year-old is the first human to beat Tetris

https://www.techspot.com/news/101383-13-year-old-first-human-beat-tetris.html

Professional Tetris player Willis "Blue Scuti" Gibson became the first person to "beat" Tetris some three decades after its original release by playing the game's most extreme...

A 13-year-old is the first human to beat Tetris | Numerous theoretical milestones remain::undefined

46 comments

Edgarallenpwn

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The thumbnail and the title made me think of the basketball kid from The Boondocks

casmael

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Apparently the kid’s dad died last month. Reckon the story makes a whole lot more sense with that in mind.

Bathtubwalrus

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7828932/#:~:text=Holmes%20and%20colleagues%20have%20shown,1%20and%20real%2Dworld%20settings.

casmael

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Wow that’s really cool - so looks like it could actually help with the ol’ trauma there?

xfc

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I read a post shared on here somewhere the other week about this that might have note info for those curious https://biggieblog.com/celebrating-the-first-nes-tetris-game-crash/

Interesting read!

Ashyr

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Here's a really fascinating video that explains the various NES Tetris controller techniques, including rolling, the new technique that's radically changed the way the game is played the last few years.

https://youtu.be/n-BZ5-Q48lE?si=IuINMW-DVLabOdWh

Chee_Koala

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https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=GuJ5UuknsHU&listen=false someone made a bit of a minidoc on this for people outside of the tetris scene, it brought me all the way up to speed and was well made!

Cheskaz

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Thanks for sharing! I ended up following it up with the video this creator did on BluScutti and this top comment from BluScutti himself genuinely made me tear up a bit:

"Amazing video scout! Its amazing to be in one of your videos since your videos are what got me into the Tetris scene in the first place."

Just fucking cool

modifier

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It's worth checking out the player Fractal, who does stream on YouTube. I would consider him a pioneer in rolling.

prunerye

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He also got the level 155 crash today. Second person to ever beat the game.

phoneymouse

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How does one beat Tetris?

frezik

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A lot of old games were intended to be played in an endless cycle--arcade games especially--but in practice there was always some kind of limit due to the hardware and coding practices at the time. Pac-man, for example, hits a level where half the screen is the normal maze and the other half is a random assortment of other sprites. Donkey Kong ends when Mario always dies at a certain level.

The NES Tetris limit hit here is a point where there are certain "random" chances of the game crashing depending on certain states. In his run, Blue Scuti actually missed getting the first possibility of hitting a crash and had to survive a few more levels to get the next one.

This isn't the full ending, though. TAS runs show that it is possible to get up to level 255 and then loop back to level 0. Getting there requires missing every single possibility of a crash, though, and the probabilities of that mount up as you go.

Full breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuJ5UuknsHU

psud

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This person did it by playing it until it crashed. There are several points where particular actions will crash the game.

I would argue though that to beat Tetris you would need to beat level 255, at which point the level counter wraps to level 0

Kbobabob

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There was a 73% chance at the level it crashed that any single line clear would have caused it and the percentage only goes up from there. That is why there are theoretically more that could be accomplished since there is still a chance it won't crash but is very unlikely.

psud

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I reckon completing level 255 isn't going to happen for human players on the NES. They are pushing the input hardware beyond it's design to play the levels they're at now, and also crashes become more common at higher levels making a clean run to 255 even harder

Daft_ish

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Don't underestimate the gaming community. Once people get more comfortable with reaching higher levels someone will develope a strategy.

Dogsnot

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If you look into it, the only limiting factor are the colour pallets glitching out, after level 29 it does t become any faster, but at a certain point the palates were causing hard points as one level named charcoal was barely visible.

isVeryLoud

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You somehow managed to write palette wrong twice in two different ways. I salute you.

prunerye

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I disagree. I think it's inevitable. They already have the final hundred levels mapped out, and there are long stretches that are completely safe. The challenge will be levels where you can't take singles and also the levels where you have to push down on every piece, but compared to what's already been accomplished, it's only a matter of time.

darkpanda

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There’s also one weird level that takes 800 lines to clear as opposed to the usual 10.

The trick to getting that high regardless will be making sure not to hit the conditions required for the kill screen to occur, like getting a single line on level 155 which didn’t happen here, and somehow making it past all of the potential kill screens to reach 255. I’m not knowledgable in the ways of NES Tetris to know if this is possible but I’m surely interested in finding out. I’ve read various analyses that say it’s theoretically possible and theoretically impossible so it would be nice to see something definitive.

frezik

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It has been done with a TAS, so it's at least theoretically possible. There aren't any technical barriers that would prevent a human from being able to do it; the drop speed no longer goes up after level 29, so no new techniques would be needed to hit buttons faster. Avoiding the kill screen conditions would be incredibly difficult, as would playing through glitched level colors.

All of which is incredibly difficult and will require even a top player to do hundreds of plays to get it to hit once. That's par for the course in these sorts of competitive games, and it should be possible. Question is how many years it will take.

darkpanda

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Any idea how long such a run would take? This kill screen took around 40 minutes I think? I

’m not a Tetris community member but I’m interested in the whole ordeal as a gamer in general and programmer, and these sorts of things are interesting as an intersection of the two. I’ve also been playing Tetris since before it even came out on the NES or GameBoy and still play it in various instalments from time to time. I think I have to consider it to be the perfect video game in concept to this day, and seeing it get so much love after all these years is endearing to those of us who remember its beginnings.

Blum0108

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You play it until it breaks

phoneymouse

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Seems like it would be a bug in the original game then. It can be fixed.

just_another_person

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Many old arcade games have this, and they are called "kill screens". There is no programmed "end" to the game, you just keep playing until it runs out of memory, and then just goes all wonky. Some examples: https://gamerant.com/most-infamous-kill-screens-in-video-games/

KairuByte

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Game rant went ahead and fully blocked access if you’re using an adblocker? Guess I don’t care enough about their articles to unblock, but still annoying.

airman

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I get the sentiment but just in case you wanted to know there is a small grey link at the bottom of that box that says Continue for now or something. It will allow you to read the article.

I noticed that a lot of websites use this particular plugin/service to detect adblockers and they all have this feature which is good for now.

Nommer

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Seemed to work for ublock origin on Firefox mobile.

Blum0108

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But then it wouldn't be the original game anymore

MarioBarisa

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A ture gamer

ElJefe

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Turer words have never been said

Ghostalmedia

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You’re speaking the turth

Thassodar

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Almost like a turthseeker, so turt.

Hadriscus

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Defo turing-complete

Staubsaugernasenmann

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How the turetables

Staubsaugernasenmann

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My, how the turetables

Ghostalmedia

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A ture gamer

ture dat

Windex007

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I hope Wozniak sends this kid a congratulatory card or something.

turkalino

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Why Wozniak?

deweydecibel

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Why not?

You wouldn't love a nice acknowledge from uncle Woz?

geomela

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I hope Matthew McConaughey sends him one.

paraphrand

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He use to be really good at it afaik.

Windex007

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Wozniak was obsessed with Tetris, and would send his high scores to Nintendo Power Magazine.

Eventually, since nobody was able to touch his scores, Nintendo Power asked him to stop, so he (Steve Wozniak) started submitting them as "Evets Kainzow", and at least one of his scores was printed under that name.

So, yeah, he has a history as a (the?) Top human player of Tetris in an age past.

unreasonabro

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poor little guy nearly had a heart attack...

cosmicrookie

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I beat it on gameboy in the early 90s. Is that a different Tetris than the one mentioned here?

Had to wait until the day after to share with my friends at school

itsralC

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It's the NES version, all speedruns are made on that version.

lolcatnip

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It's crazy living in a time when "first human to ______" is a normal headline.