After 13-year-old Willis Gibson became the first human to beat the original Nintendo version of Tetris, he dedicated his special win to his father, who passed away in December 2023.
The Oklahoma teen beat the game by defeating level after level until he reached the “kill screen” – that is, the moment when the Tetris artificial intelligence taps out in exhaustion, stopping play because its designers never wrote the code to advance further. Before Gibson, the only other player to overcome the game’s AI was another AI.
For any parent who has despaired over their children sinking countless hours into video games, Gibson’s victory over the cruel geometry of Tetris stands as a bracing corrective.
