Teen achieves first NES Tetris “rebirth,“ proves endless play is possible
Months ago, 13-year-old Willis “Blue Scuti” Gibson became the first person to “beat” NES Tetris, crashing the game after a 1,511-line, 57-level performance. Over the weekend, 16-year-old Michael “dopgplayingtetris” Artiaga became the first to reach an even more impressive plateau in the game, looping past Level 255 and instantly rolling the game all the way back to the ultra-slow Level 0.
It took Artiaga a bit over 80 minutes and a full 3,300 cleared lines to finally achieve the game’s first near-mythical “rebirth” live in front of hundreds of Twitch viewers. And after a bit of celebration and recovery on the low levels, Artiaga managed to keep his rolled-over game going for another 40 minutes, finally topping out after a total of 4,216 lines and a record 29.4 million points.
Artiaga’s record does come with a small asterisk since he used a version of the game that was modified to avoid the crashes that stopped Blue Scuti’s historic run. Still, NES Tetris‘ first-ever level rollover is a monumental achievement and a testament to just how far competitive classic Tetris has come in a short time.
