A new milestone from the Tetris world: after playing the original NES version until it crashed for the first time late last year, someone has now survived all 255 for the first time. 16-year-old streamer Michael “DogPlayingTetris” Arteaga accomplished the feat in a live stream, which was documented on YouTube.
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It took “DogPlayingTetris” 80 minutes to complete “Rebirth” – this is the point at which level 255 is defeated and the game goes back to level 0. Arteaga played some more before the game eventually ended with a score of 29,486,164 points.
Modified version of Tetris
One Report from Ars Technica According to Arteaga, he was playing a modified version of Tetris that does not crash on certain levels. In the original NES version, these crashes end the successful performance of professional players in most situations: in this version there are Various triggers that can trigger a game crash or “kill screen”.Apart from a few conditions, all of them require a particularly long time of play: the first crash trigger is at level 155.
The modified version makes it slightly easier to play from these points forward. The modified Tetris version has a special challenge level, 235, which shows blocks in dark green. This makes them difficult to distinguish from the background. According to Ars Technica, Ertiga became the first Tetris player to beat this level in May.
Last December, player Willis “Blue Scotty” Gibson managed to play the original NES version of the classic game for the first time until it crashed. The 13-year-old American is the first person to achieve this feat – before that only an AI had managed to play Tetris for so long. Following his record, other Tetris professionals also managed to play the classic game until it crashed.
Level 29 as upper limit – He once was
For a long time, level 29 was considered the limit of what was possible in the original NES version of Tetris – the falling stones simply moved so fast that it was not possible to be able to counter them in time with the NES controller. In 2011, a Tetris player managed to reach level 30 for the first time with short and quick vibration movements of his fingers. This then-world record was slowly being overtaken until players discovered a new way to make even faster inputs on the NES controller.
This is a technique called “rolling”. The scene YouTuber David “aGameScout” MacDonald demonstrates in the videoPlayers place the fingers of one hand on the buttons of the NES GamePad and “drum” the fingers of the other hand on the controller from below to press the buttons on the other hand and thus trigger inputs. According to MacDonald, this new input method allows for up to 20 inputs per second, allowing records to fall faster and enabling players to get closer to records previously achieved only by AI.
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