‘I can’t feel my fingers:’ 13-year-old becomes the first to beat Tetris

A 13-year-old boy from Oklahoma has done something the gaming world thought was nearly impossible.

Willis Gibson beat Tetris.

“Oh my god,” Gibson repeats in a high pitch, in a video of his victory that he posted to YouTube on Tuesday.

“I can’t feel my fingers.”

Watch the moment that Willis Gibson, a 13-year-old competitive Tetris player prodigy from Oklahoma, advanced so far in the original Nintendo version of the game that it froze and his score read “999999.”

“I can’t feel my fingers,” he said afterward. https://t.co/lGkGRmDYvo pic.twitter.com/uT2g2DcSXE
— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 4, 2024

The video, shot on Dec. 21, showed Gibson in front of his frozen computer screen. His Tetris score reading “999999.”

So far, only Gibson and artificial intelligence software have advanced that far in the original Nintendo version of the puzzle game.

Gibson made it to what gamers call a “kill screen,” a point where the Tetris code glitches, crashing the game, something gamers work to achieve, The Associated Press reported. Gibson dropped a piece that triggered the glitch in the game, causing a single line of blocks to vanish.

The game, which features shapes floating down a computer screen, was released on the original Nintendo Entertainment System in 1989, The New York Times reported.

The aim of the games is to try to keep the shapes from piling up.

Many thought the game was unbeatable because it does not have a scripted ending. Others have beat the game, but only by hacking Tetris’ software.

According to CNN, the limit of the game was thought to be at Level 29, when the blocks start falling at an incredible rate. However, in 2011, that level was broken.

Gibson got to Level 157.

Gibson finished third in the 2023 Tetris world championships where gamers compete to beat the game. He has played Tetris competitively since 2021 under the name Blue Scuti.

“It’s never been done by a human before. It’s basically something that everyone thought was impossible until a couple of years ago,” said Vince Clemente, president of the Classic Tetris World Championship.