We’re just two days into 2024 and already gaming history is being made. A 13-year-old has beaten the original NESTetris, previously thought to be an impossible task, after 34 years.

The assumption I always had was that Tetris goes on forever and ever until you finally run out of space. While that’s mostly true, as the game has no story, levels, or any form of progress beyond high scores and increasing speed, you ‘beat’ the game by crashing it, AKA reaching the “True Killscreen”.

Two years ago, YouTuber EricICX hit six million points in Tetris, whereas Blue Scuti crashed the game at 6.8 million.

It’s called the “True Killscreen” because, for decades, it was assumed that level 29 was the Killscreen. For context, the longer you play Tetris, the faster the blocks fall, upping the ante as you’re forced to think in split-second moments about where each piece should drop. The speed caps at level 29, making it near impossible to reach the sides. So, the community believed that was the ‘end’ of the game. It isn’t. The end comes when you reach a level so high, Tetris simply crashes.

Thor Aackerlund smashed through the level 29 Killscreen in 2011 with a new technique that involved vibrating his fingers, reaching the mythical level 30.

It wouldn’t be until seven years later in 2018 that Joseph Saelee reached level 31, laterpushing the record to 35. The aforementioned EricICX took things even further, hitting level 38 - a staggering nine more than the assumed “Killscreen”.

In 2021, a player called Cheez employed a new button-smashing strategy, “rolling”, that was far faster than finger vibrating, enabling them to climb to level 40, putting 29 firmly in the rearview mirror. Others jumped onto this trend and before long, EricICX clawed up to level 146, over five times the original “Killscreen”.

But level 146 presented a new challenge - a glitch that made the colour palette dull and hard to read, something that stumped players trying to climb to even higher heights. When itwasbeaten by P1xelAndy, the glitch worsened with practically invisible almost pitch-black blocks. Between 2022 and the end of 2023, the climb was a mere two levels, compared to the leap from 46 to 95 from 2021 to 2022.

Greg Cannon put together an AI that played through Tetris, reaching past the glitched colour levels to unveil what future runs would look like, giving players a heads up rather than seeing them literally stumble into the dark trying to break the world record. This program would discover the “True Killscreen”.

Now, in 2024, Blue Scuti hascleared that fabled ‘final’ leveland crashed Tetris, beating it after over three decades.