Last weekend, 16-year-old American Michael Artiaga became the first human player of NES Tetris to reach the «revival» game — reach level 255 and reset the game.
The teenager broadcast his record-breaking two-hour run on Twitch. It took him a little over 80 minutes and 3300 cleared lines to finally achieve the world’s first almost mythical «revival of a» game live in front of hundreds of viewers. After a short celebration, Michael was able to continue playing for another 40 minutes and reach 4216 lines and a record 29.4 million points. It took 35 years for the humanity to reach this achievement.
Technically, Michael Artiaga’s record is not exactly «net». He used a modified version of the game that avoids crashes. «Glitches» Tetris from the NES prevent players from going further than level 157. But still, this is the first time the game has ever been nullified.
For decades, players have found it almost impossible to get past level 29 — when the pieces start falling so fast that it’s almost impossible to get them to the edge of the board. However, over the past few years, the development of hypertapping and other techniques has allowed professional Tetris players to achieve faster piece movement by tapping the buttons up to 30 times per second. Thanks to the perfect execution of the «rolling» technique, it was at least theoretically possible to continue playing NES Tetris indefinitely, even at maximum speed.
However, NES Tetris was never designed to be played beyond level 29. This means that sooner or later, crashes are bound to start bothering enthusiasts. On level 138, a memory overflow error causes pieces to appear in increasingly outlandish colors, including palettes that are incredibly difficult to distinguish with the eye on levels 146 and 148. Also, an inefficient counting algorithm causes a crash from level 155 onwards. While it is theoretically possible to avoid crash situations, it is virtually impossible to keep track of all the complex variables and probabilities that determine whether a crash might occur in the unmodified version.
However, even with the modded game, Michael encountered another huge crash before level 235. To reach it, a whopping 810 lines had to be overcome due to a math error. What’s more, the color palette of level 235 — is dull green, and it’s hard to see the shapes against the black background.
Earlier this year, 13-year-old Willis «Blue Scuti» Gibson became the first person to passed the last passing level of 157.
In May, 15-year-old Alex Touch scored 16.7 million points and broke six game records.
Michael Artiaga’s achievement of 29.4 million points seems to exceed all others and sets an important technical milestone. However, the almost impossible further passage of the unmodified NES Tetris remains interesting.
Source: Ars Technica