13-year-old gamer is the first to reach the ‘real’ ending of the original Tetris

13-year-old gamer Blue Scuti has become the first player in the world to reach the ‘real’ ending of the original game Tetris for the NES. By triggering a certain glitch in level 157, the American managed to crash the game and thus achieved the unofficial end of the game.

Blue Scuti, whose real name is Willis Gibson, achieved the record in the 1989 Nintendo Entertainment System game Tetris after setting several world records in recent years. During the same record attempt he also managed to reach the highest level ever.

The record can only be achieved by continuing to play the game well past level 29. Until recently, it was physically impossible to control the block shapes in these later levels due to the maximum falling speed, but thanks to new controller techniques such as ‘hypertapping’ and ‘rolling’, players have been able to get much further into the game in recent years.

Another obstacle is the color configuration of the blocks. At a certain point, a glitch occurs that causes the NES game to use strange color palettes, making the blocks barely visible. This obstacle was circumvented by AI in 2021, as the channel aGameScout explains. At the same time, it was discovered by the Tetris community that at level 155, an issue with the game’s code could occur, causing the game to crash. Blue Scuti was the first person to achieve this game crash, which is labeled as the ‘real end’ of Tetris.