Tetris Has Finally Been Beaten After 34 Years (thegamer.com) 67
A 13-year-old has beaten the original NES Tetris, previously thought to be an impossible task, after 34 years. The Gamer reports: The assumption I always had was that Tetris goes on forever and ever until you finally run out of space. While that's mostly true, as the game has no story, levels, or any form of progress beyond high scores and increasing speed, you 'beat' the game by crashing it, AKA reaching the "True Killscreen". It's called the "True Killscreen" because, for decades, it was assumed that level 29 was the Killscreen.
For context, the longer you play Tetris, the faster the blocks fall, upping the ante as you're forced to think in split-second moments about where each piece should drop. The speed caps at level 29, making it near impossible to reach the sides. So, the community believed that was the 'end' of the game. It isn't. The end comes when you reach a level so high, Tetris simply crashes.
For context, the longer you play Tetris, the faster the blocks fall, upping the ante as you're forced to think in split-second moments about where each piece should drop. The speed caps at level 29, making it near impossible to reach the sides. So, the community believed that was the 'end' of the game. It isn't. The end comes when you reach a level so high, Tetris simply crashes.
By that criterion... (Score:2, Funny)
I've beaten several cars.
I mean, shit, there's all sorts of ways to crash games mid-play.
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No, Tetris doesn't always crash .. the glitch that kid triggered was done deliberately. Tetris, in theory, can be played all the way through to level 255 without crashing and then it rolls over to back to level 1.
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This is demonstrated near the end of the video showing the game being run in a simulator. Whether a human will ever do it? Hard to say.
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Re:By that criterion... (Score:5, Insightful)
You've got the problem the wrong way around. No crafted combo of glitch keys was used here.
At this stage in the game, you need a tool-assisted play in order to avoid crashing it. Several legit moves (or non-moves -- simply not pushing down pieces is one) crash the game.
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I have a problem with this. My (now dead) mother finished NES Tetris. It goes up to level 140 or something. It did not crash. She did it while talking on the phone, smoking a cigarette, drinking tea, and talking to me (a little).
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The glitch is more of a bug - at a certain point, the NTSC version of NES Tetris may take too long to calculate the score, which results in a game crash.
An analysis of the game itself shows that it's quite hard to avoid after a certain point - one would have to go out of their way to avoid crashing the game.
Which is what happened to Blue Scuti - he was aiming for a single at line 1480 - that was the earliest way to trigger the bug. But he missed and di
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Does the same thing happen in Welltris?
[Never liked Tetris, but I did like Welltris. I'm weird.]
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It's definitely cooler to figure out all those ways, and the probabilities for encountering them:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zAQIo_mnkk0c9e4-hpeDvVxrl9r_HvLSx8V4h4ttmrs
Which is why this is more than just a hammer job.
Re:By that criterion... (Score:5, Interesting)
Watch this short documentary about it and you'll understand. It's pretty neat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
21st century (schizoid) myths (Score:3)
turns out there is an actual passionate community around hiscores in this game, this is a big thing for them and in some sense it's just lovely that people can have so much fun with this ... nonsense? :D
for the rest of mortals, indeed, there is nothing of relevance here. nothing has really been cracked or beaten, no limit has actually been reached, they aren't even talking about the original game, just one of many implementations (the one they happen to love which is totally cool but ... lol? whatever). thi
Re: 21st century (schizoid) myths (Score:2)
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This isn't complicated.
The game is 34-years-old. The kid is 13-years-old. The kid was able to build on the work of many other people over the game's 34-year-old history, achieving something no one else had managed before.
We use this same language when someone solves some long-standing problem in math or science. For example: "Fermat's last theorem solved after 358 years."
Pointing out ambiguities in language can be funny. This is not one of those cases.
Tetris-Wargames (Score:5, Funny)
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I found Tetris to be fun for a couple hours in the early 90's.
Then I got bored.
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Maybe you would like some of its variants, such as this one.
https://store.steampowered.com... [steampowered.com]
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I found Tetris to be fun for a couple hours in the early 90's.
Then I got bored.
Like a lot of people my age, my first exposure to the game was that it came bundled with the Game Boy. Tetris was fun, but replacing those 4 AA batteries got old fast.
Re: Tetris-Wargames (Score:2)
I had a rechargable power pack. You could plug that into the mains and play forever.
One of these: https://www.fullyretro.com/pro... [fullyretro.com]
you can get around the crashes and loop it back 0 (Score:2)
you can get around the crashes and loop it back to level 0
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It's technically possible but nobody's done it yet, or even come close - that's beating level 255.
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I can't. Can you?
huh? (Score:1)
Umm, truly an amazing achievement for the Tetris scene, but triggering a glitch/crash isn't the same as "beating". Beating the game is beating level 255.
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Note, what I am saying is that only if the glitch was unavoidable can triggering a glitch be considered "beating the game." This particular glitch that was triggered in Tetris is an avoidable glitch. Therefore beating NES Tetris absolutely requires beating level 255. There are many games that you can crash by doing something weird, so merely triggering a glitch deliberately isn't the same as beating it.
Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
You can only rollover the level counter with TAS (savestates and RNG manip) because when you progress far enough, merely dropping a piece of a particular type will crash the game. You need to consecutively win thousands of RNG rolls get a piece type that won't crash the game.
So in a game community like this (Score:3)
Donkey Kong kill screen is the max level you can g (Score:2)
Donkey Kong kill screen is the max level you can get to. But unlike pac-man there is no MAX score and some scoreing is random in game.
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Watch this documentary about it and you'll understand. The crash is beating the game, you cant go any farther because the game runs out of memory and starts using data it shouldn't which causes all kinds of odd behavior in the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Nope. That documentary is false/wrong. The game can go further if the glitch trigger move was not done. He triggered the glitch deliberately. It's possible to avoid triggering the glitch (and subsequent glitches) and get to level 255.
Re: huh? (Score:1)
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That's an awful lot of confidence for someone who just found out about this a few hours ago.
I want you to seriously consider the possibility that you're wrong. Try to figure out why the experts in the classic Tetris community disagree with your assessment. Don't just guess. Read their forms. Ask questions.
Other posters here have offered what appear to be perfectly reasonable answers to your objections. I can't speak to them personally, but that seems like an appropriate place to start.
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Am wrong about what? That it’s possible to reach higher levels? Or that the game is “beaten” even when there are higher reachable levels? I don't need to consult forums to find out wether shit smells good or bad. Let me ask this, when he forget to trigger the bug in level 151, how could he have continued to play if the game was already beaten? How were there new and different looking levels? You have your definition of beaten, and I have mine. Let’s argue about whether Pluto is a pl
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So you've decided to neither think nor do any reading. I can't say I'm surprised.
Just so you know, you're very obviously wrong here. It's almost comical seeing you put so much energy into an opinion based on nothing, when it would take just a few minutes to understand.
The only question is do I bother explaining this to you? You don't seem interested in anything other than your own nonsense and have already said that you're not willing to put in any effort yourself. On the other hand, a public thrashing
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I did read it, and I did look at the documentaries. As far as thinking, I did decide to de-allocate neurons as I have some other more important and real-world relevant ponderings going on --like why in God's name did they cast Jason Momoa in Aquaman 2 didn't they learn their lesson the first time? Besides, locking down the "real" definition of beating Tetris isn't exactly going to solve cancer. Anyway, I did watch the EricICX's documentary and a few others. None of them convinced me that when a game has ent
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I did read it, and I did look at the documentaries.
Yet you still don't understand it.
I did decide to de-allocate neurons as I have some other more important and real-world relevant ponderings going on
Yes. It is completely trivial and doesn't matter in the slightest. Yet, here you are, fighting furiously to promote your uninformed opinion! It's very silly.
For anyone curious, the reason he tried to "trigger" the crash is because that's essentially the last opportunity he has to control what happens. At that point, the game is broken and will crash, it's just a matter of when. They say the game has been beaten at that point because the player has exceeded the limits of
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The crashes can be avoided by playing a certain way, therefore it's not broken. Many games can be crashed by playing legal moves, we don't consider that beating the game. As for whether it's beaten because you think a human can't do it, that's as dumb as saying you beat Flappy Bird after trying it for 10 seconds.
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Just going to double-down on nonsense then? Did you not see my perfectly clear and simple explanation? How incredibly stupid.
Ha! It's not like I actually expected you to understand something this simple. You're not terribly bright and seem almost completely incapable of learning. Well, I tried. Enjoy the weird little well of ignorance you've dug for yourself. It must take incredible effort to remain that uninformed.
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It's you who rejects logic. Anyway, by your standard it appears I have beaten you in this argument since you're stuck in some kind of loop and can't process input.
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Keep crying. It won't change reality. It's pretty funny though.
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Yeah, props to the kid and the scene, but this is a click-baity BS headline and summary quote and article (but the video is ok).
TFA is somewhat ok in that it chronicles that highest level has increased over the years into the hundreds, but even the article doesn't say that "the dude got a probabilistic crash to happen on level 157 and he's the first guy to get it or something" or even contain the number 157 afaict.
The video is better in that it explains some stuff but in a "in the beginning was the big ba
Incredible (Score:2)
That's actually quite incredible. I had no idea there was such a fervent community built up around speedrunning TETRIS, but I suppose it's sensible that there would be - there is for everything else, these days.
The highest we ever got was level 35 in my family. We didn't really develop a specific methodology for it, just fast twitch muscles, caffeine and extreme focus.
We may have gotten a bit further than that, still. I remember we were finally able to get past the harder parts of some games when we realize
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You definitely didn't make it to 35 on NES Tetris! The former world champion got the first level 35 run in 2020 using hypertapping.
The best of the best can only make it to 29 using the original (DAS) control scheme.
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Level 25 I'll believe. That's no small accomplishment, but absolutely within the ream of possibility for a family that likes to compete with one another. 35? Not a chance.
Anything beyond level 30 was though to be impossible until a few years ago, and that absolutely requires special techniques. Hell, even level 30 was mythical, as we only had Thor Aackerlund's word that it was possible. It turns out that it can be done as he described, but it requires incredible skill, a deep understanding of the mechan
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Yup. Even the developers regarded level 29 as a kill screen since they didn't bother coding the level counter to work correctly past level 29.
Total Time Waster (Score:1, Troll)
Think about what he could have learnt and/or achieved in all the time spent practicing. One day he'll grow old, his reaction time won't be as fast as it is now and he's going to reflect on all those pointless gaming trophies.
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Umm, virtually guaranteed he'd be owning or working for a major game production company .. or even the Space Force or a brain surgeon. Virtually any profession that requires focus and good coordination is a possibility.
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It can go either way. Some kids have the aptitude and self discipline to excel at more than just their hobbies, and some don't. Look at that "radioactive Boy Scout" guy. You might've assumed his motivation to attempt to build a reactor in his shed would've lead to a career in nuclear physics, but nope, he was just a weirdo who liked playing with radioactive materials.
Game companies hire creative folks and coders, not kids who have figured out how to mash buttons quickly. And running your own company req
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Given the nonsense most of us face on a daily basis at work, his "time wasting" is good practice for a corporate job.
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If he continues playing similar games, chances are good that when he grows old, his reaction time will be far better than of a non-gamer of a similar age.
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Think about what he could have learnt and/or achieved in all the time spent practicing. One day he'll grow old, his reaction time won't be as fast as it is now and he's going to reflect on all those pointless gaming trophies.
Why didn't he spend all his time correcting people on slashdot and complaining about dupes and stuff instead?
He's sure gonna regret that when telling interesting stories to his grandkids...
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Think about what he could have learnt and/or achieved in all the time spent practicing. One day he'll grow old, his reaction time won't be as fast as it is now and he's going to reflect on all those pointless gaming trophies.
Maybe he took this out of the time that most people allocate for sitting passively on the couch watching other people win pointless gaming trophies.
Spoilers (Score:2)
"This game has no levels" (Score:3)
More amazed by (Score:3)
I'm just more amazed by how some people can dedicate themselves to something like "beating" Tetris. I would've bailed out of boredom at lvl 10.
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Playing at higher levels requires a lot of concentration, which makes it incredibly engaging. If you're getting bored, it's probably because you're starting at too low a level and aren't quite skilled enough to reach the higher levels. Try starting on level 9 and work your way down until you find a good starting speed. Then work your way up as you learn how to play.
"Original" (Score:4, Informative)
It seems the first version published outside the USSR was for MS-DOS, although I first saw the arcade port.
Korobeiniki starts playing in everyone's head... (Score:2)
Korobeiniki [wikipedia.org] started playing in my head immediately after reading the headline.
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Bradinsky [youtube.com] is the true Tetris theme. Fite me biecth.
Not the original (Score:2)
This is the third version of Tetris for the NES, after the BPS port and the Tengen port.
I call BS (Score:1)
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