Tetris, which was born in 1989, has sold 500 million copies to date, making it the best-selling game in the world. Over the past 35 years, this work without plots, characters, and even thought by many players to have no ending, has endured, and is still the enlightenment for many teenagers to get in touch with games.
It's just that unlike many players' perceptions, this game can actually be cleared.
A few days ago, Willis Gibson, a 13-year-old teenager from Oklahoma, USA, uploaded a 38-minute video of himself getting through "Tetris", which immediately caused a sensation. Because although this game is 35 years old, no human has ever achieved a playthrough achievement in the past.
I won't go into too much detail about the rules of Tetris here, after all, everyone is familiar with it. And Alexei, the Soviet programmer who originally created the game, actually didn't really set the rules for the game. Because every time you beat a level, the speed at which the block descends will increase by a notch. Until 2011, the limit of humanity was only to the 29th level.
The game that has been cleared here essentially refers to the crash of the game caused by the operation of the game code for a long time. There is no exact number at which level this will occur, but it is generally believed that it will be after level 155. But if you can play level 255, you'll be able to create a cycle where Tetris will reset the difficulty from level 1.
In 2021, a programmer developed a Tetris robot specifically designed to push the game's limits. At that time, the AI program, called StackRabbit, triggered a game crash when it reached level 237. This is also the record for the most playthroughs of Tetris to date.
During Willis Gibson's challenge, the game crashes at level 157. When no more blocks are dropped, the 13-year-old realizes that he has become the "number one in the world". Maybe you don't have an intuitive idea of this, but just know that the average player can fight hard to reach the 30th level, and Willis Gibson only took a few minutes.
Willis Gibson's record has a special meaning for the entire history of Tetris. Because from scratch, he proved that humans can overcome mechanical processes by manipulation.
Just as scientists in the 20th century once asserted that it is impossible for humans to break the 100-meter dash in less than 10 seconds, the American sprinter Hines set a miracle record of 9.95 seconds at the 1968 Olympic Games, inspiring countless future generations. Jamaican flyer Usain Bolt has already broken the record to 9.58 seconds at the 2009 World Championships.
Level 157 isn't the limit for humans to challenge Tetris, it's not even the limit for Willis Gibson. In the future, I believe that in the process of more players' continuous challenges, this record can be broken again.
So when you first played "Tetris", how many levels did you challenge at most?