I know what you’re thinking: “Ah, but does ‘Tetris‘ ever end? Is there a final cinematic? What was the story to begin with?”. And yes, it’s normal to doubt, but the truth is that Alekséi Pajitnov’s game has a kind of ending on NES that only artificial intelligence had reached until now. Beyond the “death screen” that appeared in arcades, on NES it simply… stops working and completely freezes.
Shapes made of four colored blocks
Pajitnov created ‘Tetris’ in Soviet Russia in 1985 and it was first released outside of computers and arcades on NES in 1988, although it was a mess because everyone believed they had the rights and licenses (I recommend the movie ‘Tetris’ to find out everything). The point is that before being synonymous with Game Boy, the game was already a big hit on Nintendo’s “big” console.
We go 35 years into the future, where Blue Scuti, a 13-year-old boy who has been playing ‘Tetris’ in its competitive variant since 2011, has been the first person in history to force the NES to fall into a “death screen” where the pieces fall at an impossible speed, the game freezes and it is impossible to continue playing.
And he didn’t make it up, not by a long shot: there’s evidence, because it was being recorded on live video on YouTube. Watching the moment when the pieces keep falling non-stop and he manages to place them with exact and perfect precision is fascinating, almost hypnotic. He only needs 38 minutes to break the game, which Scuti finishes by shouting “Yes! I’m going to faint, I can’t feel my fingers, I can’t feel my hands”.
The ultimate goal of Scuti is to stay at the top of the competitive ‘Tetris’ scene and inspire new players. I repeat: he is thirteen years old. Thirteen! At that age, the most useful thing I did was watch ‘Oliver and Benji’ while eating Nocilla sandwiches. The new generations are making a strong comeback in the retro scene.
