NES Tetris Has Finally Been Beaten By A 13-Year-Old Prodigy

The speedrunning scene in NES Tetris has thrived over the decades and achieved huge milestones. Now, another prodigy has risen and finally beaten the game for good. A new speedrun record was made when the 13-year-old NES Tetris player Blue Scufi reached a point while playing where the level simply crashed. A new video by the Classic Tetris channel delves into the new triumph and interviews the winner.

The crashing has been dubbed the “True Killscreen” in the community, which precedes the “Original Killscreen.” The latter term points towards level 29, where the blocks start falling at twice the normal speed. Moving the blocks left and right and reaching higher levels is difficult without using specific play techniques like “Hypertapping” or “Rolling.” Level 29 in NES Tetris is deemed the end goal for every casual player.

All the levels afterward feature the same speed, which meant that competitive players could go even further in the levels using strategies. After speedrunners broke many records made over the years and climbed the levels, more anomalies in the game were discovered. NES Tetris colors after level 138 adopt a bizarre random color palette, with two specific levels becoming quite pitch black to see.

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The True Killscreen lies after these oddities at level 237, which Blue Scufi was able to beat after enough practice. From that level, the title’s code becomes inefficient, and a glitch happens where it reads the instructions from RAM instead of the code. The crashes, as a result, are dubbed the True Killscreen. I highly suggest watching the video below to catch up on the lore of NES Tetris so far. 

NES Tetris’ future looks bright since players have begun speedrunning to get the earliest crashes. However, crashes are caused due to certain triggers —which are documented by the community. The competitive scene now may also start speedrunning to avoid crashes and reach the last stage of the game, level 255.