An American 13-year-old is the first known person to complete Tetris 34 years after the game’s release. Tetris is a game where the tetrominoes come at you faster and faster and you’re forced to make quicker decisions before your grid fills up and it’s game over. A 13-year-old boy from Oklahoma, however, has now turned the table on the game that never ends, as he straight up crashed the game. At level 157 the game froze, and Willis Gibson became the first known person to beat the iconic 1988 Tetris game for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Gibson was live streaming himself playing the game when he reached the mountainous level of 157 and crashed the game, which had never happened before. The game gave up trying to beat Gibson after he cleared an impressive 1,511 lines in 38 minutes. Tetris isn’t supposed to end in victory, but success is measured by how many lines you’ve cleared after defeat. However, Gibson set out to find out just how far the game takes you. The teen player rushed through the levels as the lines broke one by one. Less than a minute before he beat the game, he said, “Oh my God. Please crash.” When the game finally crashed, and he realized he’d beaten the game, Gibson was overcome with joy, so much so that he started hyperventilating and said, “I can’t feel my fingers.”
In an interview with ITZsharky1 on YouTube, Gibson said he wanted to dedicate the achievement to his father, who had passed away in December. Gibson started playing Tetris when he was 11 years old and placed third in a competition in October. He also said that if anyone beats his record, he’ll be ready to take back the crown right away.