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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/04/unsolved-mysteries-tetris-creators-alexey-pajitnov-and-henk-rogers/

Despite creating one of the most recognizable video games of all time, Tetris creators Alexey Pajitnov (who first coded the game in Russia) and Henk Rogers (who was instrumental in bringing the game to prominence in the West) have not been all that recognizable to the general public. That has started to change, though, with the recent release of Apple TV's Tetris movie, which dramatizes the real-life story of the pair's unlikely friendship and business partnership.

In Ars Technica's latest Unsolved Mysteries video, Pajitnov and Rogers went all the way back to the game's earliest origins. That includes the origin of "the Tetris song," aka Korobeiniki, which Game Boy Tetris fans have had stuck in their heads for decades now.

Related:
Happy 30th Birthday Tetris! 20140608
Most Addictive Game Since Tetris Released 20140318

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Multiple sites are reporting on 13-year-old Tetris player, Willis Gibson, also known as Blue Scuti, who played until the NES version gave out. New play methods, such as rolling and hypertapping, were needed to reach a skill level where one can play as long as endurance and the software hold out. In his case it took over half an hour on the NES using rolling:

Blue Scuti is a Tetris prodigy who employs the "rolling" controller technique, a new way of holding and using the NES controller that was popularized in 2021. Rolling surpassed "hyper tapping," which requires players to tap the controller's D-pad 12 times per second, as the fastest and best way of playing Tetris. Rolling is a method where players roll their fingers on the bottom of an NES controller and use that pressure to push the controller into their other hand, which presses the D-pad to move the blocks. With rolling, players can push the D-pad at least 20 times per second, which is fast enough to theoretically play the game until it breaks. The technique has completely revolutionized competitive Tetris over the last few years.

Also at Tom's Hardware, Tetris was finally beaten after 34 years, game kill screen pops up at Level 157 — hypertapping and rolling were key techniques and the BBC, Tetris: How a US teenager achieved the 'impossible' and what his feat tells us about human capabilities.

Previously:
(2023) Hackers' Delight: a History of MIT Pranks and Hacks
(2023) Tetris' Creators Reveal the Game's Greatest Unsolved Mysteries
(2021) Tetris is no Longer Just a Game, but an Algorithm that Ensures Maximum Hotel Room Occupancy
(2014) Happy 30th Birthday Tetris!

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/10/nes-tetris-first-ever-rebirth-loops-past-level-255-and-back-to-zero/

Months ago, 13-year-old Willis "Blue Scuti" Gibson became the first person to "beat" NES Tetris, crashing the game after a 1,511-line, 157-level performance. Over the weekend, 16-year-old Michael "dogplayingtetris" Artiaga became the first to reach an even more impressive plateau in the game, looping past Level 255 and instantly rolling the game all the way back to the ultra-slow Level 0.

It took Artiaga a bit over 80 minutes and a full 3,300 cleared lines to finally achieve the game's first near-mythical "rebirth" live in front of hundreds of Twitch viewers.
[...]
Artiaga's record does come with a small asterisk since he used a version of the game that was modified to avoid the crashes that stopped Blue Scuti's historic run.
[...]
NES Tetris was never designed for play past Level 29, though, which means unintended glitches start to get in the way of any truly endless Tetris sessions. At Level 138, a memory overflow error causes the Tetris pieces to show up in some increasingly funky colors, including palettes that are incredibly hard to make out at Levels 146 and 148.
[...]
Even with a modified game, though, Artiaga faced another massive mountain of a glitch before he could achieve rebirth: Level 235. While the Tetris Level counter usually cycles every 10 lines, vagaries of the game's binary-coded decimal line counter cause the level count to get stuck on 235 for a whopping 810 lines. To make matters worse, the Level 235 glitched color palette is a dull green that is hard to see against the game's black background, making the level a true test of endurance.
[...]
Artiaga—who started playing high-level Tetris competitively at the age of 10 in 2019—has won the Classic Tetris World Championship two times, in addition to setting multiple records in the game and dominating many smaller tournaments. Despite all that, he said during his stream that "this is the best thing I've ever done in Tetris, bro."
[...]
"Oh my god, I'm so glad that game is over, bro," Artiaga said on stream. "I never want to play this game again, bro... I was starting to lose my mind."

Now that the Tetris rebirth has been proven humanly possible (with crash-avoidance mods, at least), the community will no doubt move on to see who, if anyone, can complete a double rebirth in a single uninterrupted Tetris session.
[...]
One thing's for sure: The classic Tetris scene has certainly come a long way since the days of the Level 29 "kill screen."

Side Note: Tetris is now over 40 years old.

Previously on SoylentNews:
Tetris -- A Cognitive Vaccine - 20240927
Hackers Discover How to Reprogram NES Tetris From Within the Game - 20240512
NES Tetris Beaten - 20240106
Hackers' Delight: a History of MIT Pranks and Hacks - 20231124
Tetris' Creators Reveal the Game's Greatest Unsolved Mysteries - 20230428
Happy 30th Birthday Tetris! - 20140608

Original Submission