Willis Gibson, a 13-year-old boy, made history by becoming the first person to ‘beat’ the Tetris game by forcing the more than three-decade-old classic Nintendo game into a ‘kill screen.’ While playing the Nintendo version of the game, his screen froze, implying that he achieved a feat that was previously only credited to AI.
In a small video clip shared across social media platforms, Gibson was seen saying, “Please crash” as he quickly arranged the puzzle pieces cascading down the screen.The video shows the moments when the game froze and he exclaimed, “Oh my God!” in an awe of his achievement.
Here’s the full video he posted on YouTube. “Oh my God! Yes! I’m going to pass out. I can’t feel my hands.” His Tetris score displayed the number “999999.” Watch his reaction:

Why this victory is ‘special’
Reports noted that Gibson broke world records for the overall score, level achieved and total numbers of lines.
“This is unbelievable. Developers didn’t think anyone would ever make it that far and now the game has officially been beaten by a human being,” news agency Reuters quoted Vince Clemente, CEO of Classic Tetris World Championship, as saying.
An AI program called StackRabbit has managed to reach a kill screen with the NES Tetris in 2021. Willis, who is also known as Blue Scuti, has been participating in Tetris competitions since 2021. The game’s screen freezes and goes into “kill screen” where the game becomes unplayable due to coding limitations.
Willis uses a “rolling” controller technique popularised in 2021 that allows a player to manipulate the directional pad, popularly known as D-pad, at least 20 times per second to move the blocks.
520 million copies sold
Tetris was released in 1984 and became a worldwide sensation. It was created by Alexey Pajitnov at the Moscow Academy of Science during the Cold War, and developed as a business by gaming entrepreneur Henk Rogers.
According to The Tetris Company, the video game has sold 520 million copies, ahead of Microsoft’s Minecraft which sold over 300 million copies.