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

For many years after its 1989 launch, tons of of tens of millions of ordinary NES Tetris video games ended the identical manner: A block reaches the highest of the display screen and triggers a “sport over” message. That 34-year streak was lastly damaged on December 21, 2023, when 13-year-old phenom BlueScuti turned the primary human to achieve the sport’s “kill display screen” after a 40-minute, 1,511-line efficiency, crashing the sport by reaching its practical limits.

What makes BlueScuti’s achievement much more unimaginable (as famous in some glorious YouTube summaries of the scene) is that, till just some years in the past, the Tetris group at giant assumed it was functionally unimaginable for a human to get a lot previous 290 traces. The highway to the primary NES Tetris kill display screen highlights the surprisingly sturdy aggressive scene that also surrounds the basic sport and simply how a lot that aggressive group has been capable of collectively enhance in a comparatively brief time.

From hypertaps to rolling

If and when a participant reaches Stage 29 on NES Tetris (after clearing between 230 to 290 traces, relying on the beginning degree), the sport reaches its highest potential velocity. At this level, merely holding down left or proper on the NES D-pad cannot normally get a chunk all the way in which to the aspect of the properly until the board is extraordinarily “low” (i.e., items solely on the primary one or two rows, most). Thus, for years, gamers that reached Stage 29 discovered their video games normally “topped out” just some items later.

The primary identified well past the brick wall of Stage 29 was a way that turned often known as hypertapping. By utilizing a particular grip that allows you to vibrate a finger over the D-pad instructions a minimum of 10 instances a second, you possibly can successfully skip the “delayed autoshift” (DAS) that limits how briskly items can transfer laterally when the D-pad is held down.

With hypertapping, gamers can successfully transfer items at Stage 29 velocity even when the board is stacked 4 or 5 ranges excessive. Whereas that provides somewhat respiratory room, a run of dangerous items or execution can nonetheless put a hypertapper in an untenable place the place the items begin to stack up excessive, and finishing new traces turns into primarily unimaginable.

Famous Tetris professional Thor Aackerlund was capable of eke out a Stage 30 hypertapping efficiency in 2011. However it would not be till 2018 that Joseph Saelee used his mastery of the method to dominate the 2018 and 2019 editions of the Traditional Tetris World Championship, a stay match that takes place on the Portland Retro Gaming Expo yearly. By 2020, Saelee had hypertapped his method to a Stage 35 efficiency, whereas fellow participant EricICX had achieved the primary Stage 38 efficiency.

Then, in 2021, a brand new, even quicker button-mashing method appeared on the aggressive Tetris scene. This “rolling” method was impressed by arcade participant Hector “Fly” Rodriguez, who used an analogous multi-finger roll to set button-mashing data on the Monitor & Area arcade sport. Tetris gamers tailored this system by combining it with a grip that allows you to faucet the again of the NES controller with a “roll” of three to 5 successive fingers. This roll of the fingers then nudges the D-pad right into a finger alternatively to register a particularly fast sequence of directional button presses.

Rolling is quick sufficient to get items to the edges on Stage 29-speed boards stacked as much as eight rows excessive, giving Tetris masters fairly a little bit of leeway of their quest for longer video games. Cheez, one of many first gamers to grasp the rolling method, hit Stage 40 in 2021, however that was simply the beginning of how far issues may go.

By the point EricICX managed to roll his method to Stage 146 in August 2022, it was clear that gamers have been getting ok to successfully play indefinitely on the identical “Stage 29” velocity that had been thought-about an efficient kill display screen just some years earlier. Gamers have been getting so good at stretching their NES Tetris video games that the group began debating cease match matches from happening too lengthy (they finally settled on a modded sport with an excellent quicker Stage 39 “tremendous killscreen” for aggressive play).