Boy, 13, Is Believed to Be the First to ‘Beat’ Tetris

Ms. Cox purchased her son a model of a Nintendo console known as a RetroN, which used the identical {hardware} as the unique Nintendo console, from a pawnshop, in addition to an outdated cathode-ray tube tv to assist him get began. In a given week, Willis stated, he performs about 20 hours of Tetris.

“I’m truly OK with it,” Ms. Cox, a highschool math trainer, stated. “He does different issues exterior of enjoying Tetris, so it actually wasn’t that terribly troublesome to say OK. It was more durable to search out an outdated CRT TV than it was to say, ‘Yeah, we are able to do that for a little bit bit.’”

For many years, players “beat” Tetris by hacking into the sport’s software program. However Willis, who within the final yr has turn into one of many nation’s high Tetris gamers, is regarded as the primary to do it on the unique {hardware}.

“It’s by no means been carried out by a human earlier than,” stated Vince Clemente, the president of the Traditional Tetris World Championship, including, “It’s mainly one thing that everybody thought was unattainable till a few years in the past.”

Within the aggressive Tetris world, the article is usually to outscore your opponents fairly than to outlast them. “Attempting for the crash” is a unique strategy fully. It’s an act of survival.

“The primary technique is simply enjoying as secure as you may,” Willis stated.

It’s a bit extra sophisticated than that, stated David Macdonald, a online game content material creator and aggressive Tetris participant generally known as aGameScout. Lately, high gamers have begun utilizing the “rolling method,” a fast tapping methodology utilizing a number of fingers as a substitute of only one or two. This innovation has modified what is feasible in aggressive Tetris. Extra high gamers are “going for the crash,” versus merely accumulating as many factors as attainable earlier than being defeated by the sport.