Willis Gibson: 13-year-old becomes first human to beat Tetris | Technology

A 13-year-old American teenager has become the first to beat Tetris, the classic video game, taking him to a “screen of death”, that is to say, exhaust it completely. Willis Gibson, known as Blue Scuti on the platforms, uttered a “please peta” as he arranged the puzzle pieces that fell onto the screen. Moments later, his wish came true when the game stopped, prompting him to repeatedly exclaim “Oh my God!” » in a video. which he uploaded to YouTube on January 2.

During his feat, Gibson broke world records for total score, level reached and total number of lines, according to 404 Media. “It’s incredible,” Vince Clemente, CEO of the Classic Tetris World Championship, told Reuters. “The developers didn’t think anyone would get this far and now the game has officially been defeated by a human.” Until now, only one artificial intelligence program had managed to beat the more than three-decade-old game, Clemente said.

Willis uses a “rolling” controller technique (rolling), popularized in 2021, which allows the player to manipulate the directional pad, or D-pad, at least 20 times per second to move blocks, much more efficient than the previously popular method of pressing keys as quickly as possible (hyper-tapping), according to 404 Media.

Tetris, first released in 1984 and quickly becoming a global sensation, challenges players to rotate and match seven different shapes of falling blocks. Created by Alexey Pajitnov at the Moscow Academy of Sciences during the Cold War and developed as a business by video game entrepreneur Henk Rogers, Tetris has demonstrated remarkable durability, spanning multiple generations. According to The Tetris Company, it is the best-selling video game of all time, with 520 million copies sold.

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