Tetris from the NES have finally passed after 35 years - a 16-year-old American reached level 255 and the game's "revival"

Last weekend, 16-year-old American Michael Artiaga made history by becoming the first NES Tetris player to reach the "rebirth" of the game—level 255—successfully resetting it.

The teenager streamed his record-setting two-hour run live on Twitch. It took him just over 80 minutes and 3,300 cleared lines to achieve the world's first nearly legendary "rebirth" of the game before hundreds of viewers. After a brief celebration, Michael continued playing for another 40 minutes, accumulating 4,216 lines and an astounding 29.4 million points. Humanity has been working towards this achievement for 35 years.

Technically, Michael Artiaga's record isn't completely "clean." He used a modified version of the game that avoids crashes. The NES Tetris glitches prevent players from advancing past level 157. Nonetheless, this marks the first reset in the game's history.

For decades, players have struggled to pass level 29—when pieces start falling so quickly that it becomes nearly impossible to slide them to the edge of the board. However, in recent years, the development of hyper-tapping techniques and other methods has allowed professional Tetris players to move pieces faster, tapping the buttons up to 30 times a second. With perfect execution of the "rollover" technique, it was at least theoretically possible to continue playing NES Tetris indefinitely, even at maximum speed.

However, NES Tetris was never designed for gameplay beyond level 29. This means glitches inevitably begin to affect enthusiasts sooner or later. At level 138, a memory overflow error causes pieces to appear in increasingly bizarre colors, including palettes that are incredibly difficult to distinguish at levels 146 and 148. There is also a glitch starting at level 155 due to an inefficient counting algorithm. Although it is theoretically possible to avoid situations that cause crashes, tracking all the complex variables and probabilities that determine whether a glitch can occur in an unmodified version is nearly impossible.

Nonetheless, even with a modified game, Michael faced another massive glitch before level 235. To reach it, he had to overcome a colossal 810 lines due to a counting error. Moreover, the color palette of level 235 is a dull green, making the pieces hard to see against a black background.

Earlier this year, 13-year-old Willis "Blue Scuti" Gibson became the first person to pass the final level 157.

In May, 15-year-old Alex Tach scored 16.7 million points, breaking six game records.

Michael Artiaga's achievement of 29.4 million points seems to surpass all others, establishing an important technical milestone. However, the challenge of further progressing in unmodified NES Tetris remains virtually impossible.

Source: Ars Technica