The thriving niche scene that is competitive Tetris has reached a new milestone.
On December 21, 2023, player Blue Scuti reached level 157 of Tetris for the NES, and triggered a game crash. He is the first person to reach this high of a level in NES Tetris, as well as reaching what the community is calling the “true killscreen”.
Blue Scuti is the first human player to attempt this feat. In a regular game of Tetris, the player will eventually lose, or topped out.
By deliberately causing the game to crash, only achievable at ridiculously high levels, you effectively beat Tetris, as the game can no longer give you a game over.
For the longest time in competitive Tetris history, level 29 was considered the “killscreen”. The puzzle game’s difficulty increases on each level by making the Tetris pieces, the Tetrominoes, drop faster and faster and by level 29, it was considered impossible to clear. Hence, it was widely considered the “killscreen” for Tetris.
(Though not in the same vein as the famous killscreen from another game Pac-Man, where half the screen is garbled up with no way of progressing any further once level 256 is reached.)
The world record for highest level in NES Tetris (NTSC) level was level 30, just one level past the “killscreen”, set by Thor Aackerlund in 2011. The record would only be beaten seven years later in 2018 after new techniques of play was discovered.
As the game progresses beyond level 29, the colour palate stops following the established patterns in the past levels, and the game becomes ever more unstable and can lead to a game crash should a specific action is done during that level (like clearing a single line). Thanks to a TAS bot, the community has made a list of game-crashing levels, points where you can “beat” Tetris. And it’s these levels that players were racing to be the first.
The attempt to reach a game-crashing moment was first initiated by Classic Tetris World Championship 2023 champion Fractal, which started on December 19. Blue Scuti, who finished in the semi-finals in the same tournament, set the world record of the highest level achieved in NES Tetris on that same day of Fractal’s first attempt, at level 153. And that was only 18 lines away from the first “true killscreen”.
“I was so close, I might as well race [Fractal] for it, and try and beat him to the [game crash record],” said Blue Scuti in an interview with the Classic Tetris YouTube channel.
As impressive as this feat is, there is still more records to chase. As outlined by competitive Tetris documentarian aGameScout, it is possible to achieve level 256. In Level 255 of NES Tetris, the colour palette turns all red. And after that level is cleared, the game loops back to level 0- dubbed in the community as the “rebirth screen”. In order to reach that, the player must not only beat the game, but also avoid any glitches that can trigger the “true killscreen”.
The world of competitive Tetris has seen records shattered left and right as the younger generation joins, and it’s interesting to see a game from 1989 to still have an active community, and new milestones are still being set to this day.