After 34 Years, Someone Finally Beat Tetris
January 4, 2024 11:12 PM Subscribe
On December 21, 2023, a player named Blue Skuti became the first person to reach a "kill screen" in NES Tetris, on level 157. This is a gaming accomplishment that built on the work of many players and researchers and is far more interesting of a journey than you might imagine. The culmination of various efforts and discoveries have made right now the most critical time for record breaking in the 34 year history of NES Tetris.
First, how does one beat Tetris? An endless game is considered beaten when a "kill screen" is reached. A "kill screen" happens when a game runs for so long that its in-memory code becomes corrupt and the game crashes. Pac-Man is the most famous game with a kill screen.
Until a few year ago, no one knew that NES Tetris could be crashed in this way. For decades, level 29 was considered the end of the game, as the game reaches a speed where holding a direction no longer allows a piece to reach the edge of the board. But competitive gamers found a way. In 2011, Thor Aackerlund become the first player to reach level 30 by vibrating his finger faster than the game's built in speed - a trick called hypertapping. Over the years, players used hypertapping to inch the record forward - level 31, 32... up to level 38 in 2020.
But in 2020, a new technique was discovered by a player named cheez: rolling. Rolling involves tapping the back of the controller while wiggling the front in a counter motion. This allowed even faster movement and better control. cheez used this technique to reach level 40 and provided a new tool for other gamers to emulate. Because the game speed never increases past level 29, the game was now a challenge of endurance. The record soon ballooned, with EricICX getting all the way to level 95 in April 2022.
A new challenge emerged soon after. On level 138, the color palettes for the tetriminoes begin to glitch and new, randomized colors appear (explanation by Hydrant). At the speed of play, some of these new palettes present a real challenge. A palette nicknamed "Dusk" has taken out several runs while the dread palette named "Charcoal" is even worse, with some pieces almost completely black.
In 2021 a programmer named Greg Cannon wrote an AI program called Stack Rabbit to play Tetris automatically, which uncovered these new palettes before any players reached them. More importantly, he discovered the the kill screens. Unlike some other games, Tetris' kill screen is avoidable, at least for a while, and is triggered by certain conditions. Blue Skuti missed the first possible kill screen at the end of level 154, which occurs if you change levels after clearing a single line. He was able to make it to level 157, where any one line clear triggers a crash.
With a first kill screen achieved, the race quickly turned to who would trigger the first possible kill screen on level 154. On 1/3/24, fractal161 reached the 154 kill screen. A day later (just a couple of hours ago in real-time) another top player, P1xelAndy, also reached the 154 kill screen.
The question is now - what's remains to be done in NES Tetris? Will any player find a way past level 157? How far can this 34 year old game be taken?
First, how does one beat Tetris? An endless game is considered beaten when a "kill screen" is reached. A "kill screen" happens when a game runs for so long that its in-memory code becomes corrupt and the game crashes. Pac-Man is the most famous game with a kill screen.
Until a few year ago, no one knew that NES Tetris could be crashed in this way. For decades, level 29 was considered the end of the game, as the game reaches a speed where holding a direction no longer allows a piece to reach the edge of the board. But competitive gamers found a way. In 2011, Thor Aackerlund become the first player to reach level 30 by vibrating his finger faster than the game's built in speed - a trick called hypertapping. Over the years, players used hypertapping to inch the record forward - level 31, 32... up to level 38 in 2020.
But in 2020, a new technique was discovered by a player named cheez: rolling. Rolling involves tapping the back of the controller while wiggling the front in a counter motion. This allowed even faster movement and better control. cheez used this technique to reach level 40 and provided a new tool for other gamers to emulate. Because the game speed never increases past level 29, the game was now a challenge of endurance. The record soon ballooned, with EricICX getting all the way to level 95 in April 2022.
A new challenge emerged soon after. On level 138, the color palettes for the tetriminoes begin to glitch and new, randomized colors appear (explanation by Hydrant). At the speed of play, some of these new palettes present a real challenge. A palette nicknamed "Dusk" has taken out several runs while the dread palette named "Charcoal" is even worse, with some pieces almost completely black.
In 2021 a programmer named Greg Cannon wrote an AI program called Stack Rabbit to play Tetris automatically, which uncovered these new palettes before any players reached them. More importantly, he discovered the the kill screens. Unlike some other games, Tetris' kill screen is avoidable, at least for a while, and is triggered by certain conditions. Blue Skuti missed the first possible kill screen at the end of level 154, which occurs if you change levels after clearing a single line. He was able to make it to level 157, where any one line clear triggers a crash.
With a first kill screen achieved, the race quickly turned to who would trigger the first possible kill screen on level 154. On 1/3/24, fractal161 reached the 154 kill screen. A day later (just a couple of hours ago in real-time) another top player, P1xelAndy, also reached the 154 kill screen.
The question is now - what's remains to be done in NES Tetris? Will any player find a way past level 157? How far can this 34 year old game be taken?
This post was deleted for the following reason: The Z block is in another castle -- goodnewsfortheinsane
A fellow designer once pointed out to me that Tetris is probably one of the very few human video games that gets played by alien civilizations; it’s purely derived from time, gravity, and packing four-celled square tilings (“fourth order polyominoes” I think is the jargon). Pretty universal stuff; it’s entirely possible that - much like Douglas Adams’ pan-galactic Gin & Tonics joke - something recognizable as Tetris gets reinvented by every species that makes it as far as electronic computers.
posted by Ryvar at 12:19 AM on January 5
posted by Ryvar at 12:19 AM on January 5
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