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  • This is Willis, akaBlue Scutisetting a new world record for the longest game  

  • of NES Tetris by getting the first ever level 157. But something unexpected is about to happen

  • Ohohohoh my godHe just became the first person ever to trigger  

  • a game crash, reaching theTrueKillscreen which is by far the biggest milestone in the 34  

  • year old history of the pro classic tetris scene. So why is this such a big deal, and can a  

  • record like this ever be broken? To answer both those questions,  

  • we need to go back and start with the  firstunbeatablebarrier in the game

  • In NES Tetris, released for the  Nintendo Entertainment System in 1989, 

  • the goal is to assemble falling  blocks to clear complete lines

  • For every 10 lines cleared, you move up a level and the speed gets a little bit faster

  • The fastest speed is reached at level  29, and at this point the pieces can  

  • no longer reliably get to the sides by  holding down the side to side buttons

  • For decades, this was considered the end of the  game, and level 29 got dubbed thekillscreen”  

  • because it always killed your run. Except, it wasn't a killscreen  

  • in the traditional sense. In retro games, a killscreen  

  • normally refers to when it's impossible to get  any further due to a glitch in the game's code

  • For example, in Pac-Man, the killscreen is reached  at level 256, where a glitch garbles the entire  

  • right side of the screen and you aren't able  to eat enough white dots to clear the level

  • NES Tetris doesn't actually  have a glitch at level 29. 

  • The level is clearable if you can somehow  figure out a way to move the pieces faster

  • And in 2011, Thor Aackerlund became the first  person to reach level 30 on video by vibrating  

  • his fingers to mash the controller  faster than the game's built in speed,  

  • a technique known as hypertapping. And because level 29 is the maximum  

  • speed in the game, all the levels  afterwards don't get any faster, so  

  • it was theoretically possible to go even higher. Thor's Level world record would stand for 7 years,  

  • until a teenage hypertapping prodigy  Joseph Saelee broke it in 2018 by  

  • becoming the first player to reach level 31. Joseph's skill would allow him to win two  

  • tetris world championship titles in 2018 and 2019 and he slowly kept pushing the level world record  

  • upwards all the way to level 35 until an even faster hypertapper  

  • EricICX came along and became the  first to reach levels 37 and 38. 

  • Now this was light years ahead of what anyone  would have expected when the game first came out 

  • but overall progress on the record  was still slow because hypertapping  

  • only barely made level 29 speed possible. Deep runs into the 30s still required getting  

  • good luck with the pieces and near perfect  placements with almost zero margin for error

  • In order to truly push things a lot furthersome kind of breakthrough was needed

  • But then a new technique came  along that would change everything

  • In 2020, a tetris player named cheez watched  a video on various button mashing strategies  

  • and had the epiphany to combine a multi-finger  technique by Hector Fly done on arcade cabinets  

  • and another technique that used a finger  on the bottom of the controller to push  

  • it into another finger on the top. He called this new technique rolling 

  • and it allowed him to easily  reach button mashing speeds  

  • over twice as fast as the quickest hypertappers. He became the first player to ever reach level 40,  

  • and although a hypertapper named Alex  Thach would end up taking the record back,  

  • he would be the last tapper ever to do so. Over the next few months there was a flurry  

  • of new records as most of the top players in the  scene switched over to the new rolling technique 

  • culminating in EricICX, now a rollershattering the record in 2021 by  

  • making it all the way to level 95. With the fastest speed in the game  

  • now fully mastered, it seemed like the sky  was the limit for how far players could go

  • But as it turns out, an even bigger  challenge was looming on the horizon

  • NES Tetris was originally designed with 10  normal looking color palettes for levels 0 to  

  • 9 that were bright, colorful, and easily visible. Every time you go up 10 levels, the game loops  

  • then loops around back to the first color scheme. But because this game was coded in the 1980s,  

  • everything is written to try and  be extremely memory efficient 

  • so the line of code that's supposed  to determine the level color glitches  

  • out starting at level 138 and starts  pulling data from outside the color table 

  • resulting in a bunch of random bizarre  color palettes that can be difficult to see

  • If you're into code and wondering  exactly how and why this happens 

  • HydrantDude has made a greatminute explainer video on the  

  • subject that I'll link in the description. Obviously the colors glitch wasn't a problem  

  • when the game first came out because making  it to level 138 would have been a pipe dream 

  • but now players were actually  on the verge of getting there

  • Technically the first player to reach  the glitched colors was Fractal161 

  • but he opted to go for it on the lesser played  PAL version of the game which runs 20% slower  

  • than the much more common NTSC version that  is used in the World Championships and most  

  • of the main leaderboards, including this one. EricICX became the first person to achieve  

  • glitched colors on the NTSC version impressively managing to achieve it  

  • in an actual tournament match and making it all  the way to level 146 before a particularly dim  

  • level caused him to top out. He ended up winning the 2022  

  • world championships a few months later. But now the combination of challenges with  

  • visibility and sheer endurance were starting  to seriously slow down people's progress again 

  • as Eric's world record game  had lasted nearly 40 minutes

  • It took over a year before anyone was able to  get past the dim level that had taken out Eric 

  • and when a player named PixelAndy finally  managed to beat it, he got taken out by  

  • an even more difficult level featuring  pieces that were nearly pitch black

  • Where are the colors? I can't see it! Nooooo I could - I couldn't see it

  • I couldn't see it on my screen. It's just - it just went dark.” 

  • So what was the future of the record? Slow incremental progress at  

  • increasingly difficult to see levels? Well, it turns out the most significant  

  • achievement yet was closer than anyone thought. Back in 2021, a programmer Greg Cannon had made  

  • a Tetris playing AI called  stackrabbit in order to push the  

  • game far beyond what was possible for a human. Not limited by stamina or eyesight, stackrabbit  

  • was able to fly past the most difficult glitched  color levels with ease, and Greg ended up coining  

  • names for each of the color schemes as they passed such as calling the dim level that took out  

  • EricDusk”, and the black level  that took out Andycharcoal”. 

  • Stackrabbit would continue to play through even  more bizarre glitches that happened later on,  

  • such as level 235 which lasts for  800 lines instead of the typical 10. 

  • But eventually, the game  just can't function anymore

  • And there's the long bar, and it's gonna  crash the game with that tetris into level 237. 

  • Its final score is 102 millionSo what's going on here

  • In the simplest possible  terms, the game is running  

  • on code which is instructions on what to do next and RAM which is its workspace where it calculates  

  • things and keeps track of what it's doing. The game's code starts to become really  

  • inefficient on very high levels, because  no one was expected to get this far,  

  • and eventually a glitch happens where the  game switches from reading instructions from  

  • the code to reading the RAM as if it were code. If the resulting garble generates a stop command,  

  • it completely breaks the game, leading  to it being called the true killscreen

  • If you want the full technical breakdown, again  HydrantDude has a great video on the topic that  

  • I'll link in the description. But here's the thing

  • The game crash doesn't always happen  in the same spot, because the glitch  

  • can get triggered by very specific things  depending on the level, such as what piece  

  • you have or how many lines you clear at once. And stackrabbit was actually playing on a modified  

  • version of the game that has 7 digits in the score  counter instead of six, so it didn't have the same  

  • crash points as an unmodified version. In 2022 there was a massive effort put  

  • into researching the mechanics of the  crash, and Hydrantdude made a spreadsheet  

  • tallying up every possible situation that  could cause the crash to be triggered

  • Yeah, I know, the same guy again, this  guy's the mvp of documenting all this stuff

  • And it turns out that the earliest  possible trigger for the crash on the  

  • unmodified original version of the game was  a single at the transition into level 155. 

  • That actually wasn't too far  off from the world record

  • A human might actually be able to do thatprovided they could get through dusk and charcoal

  • In 2023, after Fractal won the world championships  and firmly established himself as the best current  

  • player in the scene, he decided to start  livestreaming daily attempts to get the crash

  • But on the very first night of his grind,  a player named Blue Scuti shocked the  

  • scene by being the first player to ever beat  charcoal and make it all the way to level 153. 

  • Not only did this set a new level world  record and score world record to boot,  

  • it was only 18 lines away from the first crash. Scuti was a newer player in the scene who'd  

  • recently been on a meteoric riseachieving a surprise semifinals  

  • finish in the 2023 world championships. And after the record he decided to challenge  

  • Fractal and start grinding for the game crash  himself, and later said in an interview

  • You know, I just thought if I was so close  I might as well race him for it and try and  

  • beat him to the crash.” But Fractal looked like  

  • he could be getting it any moment. Less than 24 hours later on day 2 of the grind,  

  • he had a game early on that went all the way  to the level right before the glitched colors

  • Are you ready? Oooohhh - oh okay

  • Hahaha! Ahahaha!” Later on in the  

  • night he succeeded in getting to the glitched  colors but disaster struck when he hit dusk

  • Oh my god. No I got completely blindsided.” Despite not getting the game crash,  

  • this game would actually end up taking back  the score world record from blue scuti

  • On day 3, Fractal started up againready for another evening of attempts

  • But just 20 minutes into the  stream, the chat alerted him  

  • that blue scuti was currently on a big run. “Wait, what is Scuti - what is Scuti at right now

  • Hooooo my godBlue Scuti was on a roll,  

  • having reached the glitched colors and  easily coasted through dusk with a low board

  • Next up was charcoal. He had a little bit of trouble at the beginning  

  • but managed to clutch a line piece to the left  to get the stack down to complete the level

  • Now it was just a matter of carrying  the game to the finish line

  • He slowly kept downing levels, passing  his old record and making it to 154. 

  • This was it - he just needed a single  on the final line clear to get it

  • But then, 4 lines in, he misdropped. Now in dig mode, he started optimizing  

  • his stack for survival instead of singles. He managed to open his board just in time to  

  • fill a long bar dependency but oh no! *gasp* “I missed it.” 

  • He'd accidentally passed by the crash trigger  by clearing a triple instead of a single

  • Scuti marched onward, unsure of  when he'd get another chance

  • Oh my god. Just please crash.” The next available target was on level 157,  

  • where every one line clear would have  a 73% chance of triggering the crash

  • But as Scuti entered the level, he  suddenly started to misdrop again

  • Nothing was clearing any lines. His chances were slipping away

  • But in a last ditch effort with a  J piece to the left - it happened

  • Ohohohoh my godImmediately reactions poured  

  • in from the rest of the community. “Ohohhh he did it? He did it?” 

  • Wait! He got it! Oh my god! Let's go!' The truly crazy thing about this achievement  

  • is that NES tetris had always been  considered an unbeatable game

  • No matter how good you played, eventually  your board would reach the top of the screen  

  • and the game would be over. This was the first time ever  

  • where instead of the game beating the  player, the player had beaten the game

  • And this really feels like a turning  point for the scene as a whole

  • At the time cheez invented  the new rolling playstyle,  

  • he expressed concern that it was too OP  and would eventually destroy the scene

  • But instead, it's caused the scene  to have a complete renaissance

  • Concerns about tournament games going too long due  to endless lineouts have instead been replaced by  

  • rom patches adding a new, faster speed at level  39 that resulted in exciting battles for bigger  

  • line clears that are worth more points. The level and score world records,  

  • once thought to be getting stale as they  turned into a mere endurance challenge

  • had suddenly given us the most exciting  record chase the community had ever seen,  

  • with the world records changing hands  multiple times in a single week

  • And now that the game crash  has officially happened

  • there's a ton of possibilities of where  the record chasing can go from here

  • Players could go for speedrunning  the crash or trying to get the  

  • highest possible score before it. “I know fractal, he said that he was  

  • interested in going for an efficient game  crash so I think he's definitely gonna be  

  • coming back for the world record.” “If he's gonna go for an efficient  

  • game crash then I might as well too.” And Blue Scuti as a person feels like  

  • a representation of the very best of what the  community is. At live events, he's always been  

  • a cheerful and gracious competitor. And he's shown that hard work really  

  • can pay off, as he's said that he  practices around 3-5 hours a day

  • Do you have anything to say to the young  players out there that may get inspired  

  • to play because of this historic game?” “If you set your mind to something and  

  • you put work into it, most likely you  will get it if you try hard enough.” 

  • His first place finish at the Kansas  City regional championship this past  

  • month was his first live tournament victory and if you'd like to see him play live again,  

  • his next appearance will be at the Heart of  Texas Regional championship in just a few weeks

  • But one final question remains - after  the game crash, is there any major  

  • milestone left to achieve in the game? As it turns out, the answer is yes

  • What if, instead of intentionally trying  to get to the crash as quickly as possible,  

  • you instead try to avoid it? Just how far could you possibly get

  • In order to push the game further beyond what  humans and even AIs can currently do, some people  

  • in the community have constructed tool assisted  speedruns aka TASes, where instead of being played  

  • in real time, every move is manually entered in. This allows them to simulate what it would look  

  • like if a player was able to avoid all the  potential traps that could trigger the crash

  • This would become almost a fundamentally  different type of challenge than any  

  • previous one in the game. Instead of being rivals,  

  • the player and the game would be working together  as a team, with the player doing everything they  

  • can to ease the burden of the game's ancient  code limping along keeping them both alive

  • If both the player and the game survived every  pitfall, the final level they would reach is level  

  • 255, with a glitched color scheme of pure red. This is the last level that can be stored  

  • in the game's memory. And things are so unstable  

  • that 5 of the 7 pieces in the game could  trigger the crash when falling normally 

  • so the player basically has to push  down on every piece to survive

  • So what happens when the level clears? It loops right back around to level 0. 

  • The game officially resets back to the beginning. If the original killscreen was the game's way of  

  • beating the player, and the true killscreen was  the player's way of beating the game, beating  

  • level 255 is the rebirth screen, with both the  player and the game emerging triumphant together

  • If it can be done someday, it will be the  ultimate final achievement of the original game

  • Thanks so much to the patrons on patreon who make  videos like this one and future videos possible,  

  • with an extra special thanks to channel  sponsors Scott Gray and SuperAnthony,  

  • the creator of Joltzsi. Joltzsi is a game that Anthony  

  • originally conceived of when he thought about what  Tetris would look like if you played it in 3d. 

  • You arrange blocks to clear complete  lines on a grid - but with a twist

  • If you block lands on top of another  one, it adds to the number on the block  

  • and then you need to make all the numbers  in that line the same value to clear it

  • But if a number goes above 4,  you top out and the game is over

  • The biggest possible move isgiant grid of 4, known as a Joltzsi

  • I beta tested the game and got the top score  on the leaderboard other than Anthony himself,  

  • and I can genuinely say it was a really  fun take on the puzzle game genre and I  

  • can't even imagine how high a top tetris  player would be able to score on this

  • The game is available for early  access play on February 13,  

  • so if you'd like to play, you can either  add it to your steam wishlist or follow  

  • Anthony on twitter for future updates  through the links in the description

  • Thanks to Joltszi for being a sponsorand see you in the next video.

This is Willis, akaBlue Scutisetting a new world record for the longest game  

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人類終於戰勝俄羅斯方塊了!年僅13歲玩家在直播中把遊戲「玩到壞掉」!(After 34 Years, Someone Finally Beat Tetris)

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    Frank Masonx posted on 2024/01/09
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