Just before Christmas, 13-year-old Willis Gibson – also known as Blue Scuti – became the first person to "beat" the 1989 NES version of Tetris, one of the most popular variants of the game on the competitive circuit.
Gibson – who dedicated the achievement to his father, who passed away a week before – managed to trigger the game's "kill screen" on level 157, making history in the process (as well as being told to "go outside" by a British news reporter).
Now, two other people have beaten the game – and they've done it within a day of one another.
You see, NES Tetris has more than one kill screen, and Gibson actually missed his original target, level 155. That meant that the goal of reaching the earlier kill screen was still up for grabs – and on January 3rd, fractal161 managed to trigger it.
If you've been following the whole saga, you'll be aware that fractal161 was the player who started this challenge in the first place and was actually streaming his own attempt when Gibson triggered the kill screen on December 21st, 2023.
Amazingly, just a day after fractal161's kill screen, on January 4th, P1xelAndy performed the same feat, triggering the same kill screen at level 155.
Is that it for NES Tetris? Not quite. If you avoid all of these kill screens and make it to level 255, the game will loop back to level 1, so there's still one more challenge lurking within this 34-year-old video game.