13 year old FINALLY wins/defeats Tetris

[tangor]

[youtube.com...]

You can watch the whole video if you like, or skip to 37 minutes in, see the "win" and reaction!

This game made me nuts back in the mid-1980s. Very addictive! Thought I was something to get to level 20 ... but this kid did 158 levels in 38ish minutes!

Perhaps this will auger well for a great new year!

[lucy24]

Tetris ends ? ! ? !

I always thought it just went on forever. Or until you die, whichever comes first.

[thecoalman]

Lucy, it's a called a kill screen. The game doesn't end but crashes because of bug or something else happens to end the game, Happens in a lot of old games because there was no anticipation anyone would get that far into the game..The arcade version of Donkey Kong for example sets the timer so low you can't get past the level but you would have to play it for about two hours to get to that point. I'm lucky if I last 5 minutes.

[mack]

Used to pay this a lot when I was younger. Quite an anticlimax for an ending lol

Mack.

[thecoalman]

Well it only took 30+ years, for some perspective this kids parents may not even been born when the game debuted. I have watched some of these videos in the past. They are mostly using the NES for these record runs and until about a decade ago they were stuck at much lower levels. Then someone figured out you could roll your fingers across the back of the controller with one hand and move your thumb to depress the the cross buttons with the rolling motion.

What's interesting is if you watch the video they were doing really well right to the very final moments and the blocks were stacking up. They manged to get one last line to initiate the bug. They almost missed it.

[tangor]

Aside: further research simply because I was bored.

It appears that AI has been used to play Tetris to refine the AI algo. Apparently AI generally beat the program (or brought it to the crash). I suspect that the AI did NOT have a handheld controller and that might have contributed to such stellar results. :)

This makes me wonder of other game makers are using AI to develop their products...

[lucy24]

Happens in a lot of old games because there was no anticipation anyone would get that far into the game.

Vague analogy here with Y2K: Nobody could possibly ever reach a score of, say, 2^100 points, so we'll only code up to that.