34 years later, a 13-year-old hits the NES Tetris “kill screen”

Enlarge / A moment in Tetris history.

For decades after its 1989 release, hundreds of millions of standard NES Tetris games ended the same way: A block reaches the top of the screen and triggers a “game over” message. That 34-year streak was finally broken on December 21, 2023, when 13-year-old phenom BlueScuti became the first human to reach the game’s “kill screen” after a 40-minute, 1,511-line performance, crashing the game by reaching its functional limits.

What makes BlueScuti’s achievement even more incredible (as noted in some excellent YouTube summaries of the scene) is that, until just a few years ago, the Tetris community at large assumed it was functionally impossible for a human to get much past 290 lines. The road to the first NES Tetris kill screen highlights the surprisingly robust competitive scene that still surrounds the classic game and just how much that competitive community has been able to collectively improve in a relatively short time.

From hypertaps to rolling

If and when a player reaches Level 29 on NES Tetris (after clearing between 230 to 290 lines, depending on the starting level), the game reaches its highest possible speed. At this point, simply holding down left or right on the NES D-pad can’t usually get a piece all the way to the side of the well unless the board is extremely “low” (i.e., pieces only on the first one or two rows, maximum). Thus, for years, players that reached Level 29 found their games usually “topped out” just a few pieces later.