15-Year-Old Gamer Breaks 6 Tetris World Records With The Highest Ever Recorded Score

In a major accomplishment, a 15-year-old gamer has broken six world records in the classic video game Tetris, through March and April this year. According to a report by Time Extension, Alex Thach smashed through the 10 million score milestone at least twice, which resulted in a top score of over 16.7 million. With this, he also surpassed Blue Scuti’s kill screen world record of reaching Level 157 with 6 lines complete. The extraordinary feat has ended up winning him thousands of dollars in prizes.

He’s also the first person to trigger a visual glitch in the game which has been named “Summoning Satan”. Youtube channel aGameScout, which posts videos about Tetris, shared the teen’s achievements with various clips of him in action. 

Watch the video here:

On March 11, he became the first player to ever reach 10 million points in NES Tetris. He hit over 16 million, nearly doubling the previous high score.

”16.2 Million. When I first started Tetris, I wanted to be one of the most skilful players and receive recognition. I have seriously played this game for 4 years and this is the greatest achievement I got in my whole career as an Esport NES Tetris Player. Even if I lose my Mega Masters title or go down in a blaze of glory in CTWC, this achievement will glow in my heart,” the teen wrote while sharing the video on his YouTube channel. 

Watch it here:

Between March 11 and April 14, he set world records for a score on a modded cart, the highest level achieved on both modded and original carts, the highest score achieved at a game crash, and the highest score achieved before a game crash trigger. On April 15, he broke his own modded cart score record, as per Games Radar. 

What is Tetris?

Tetris, a video game, involves manipulating falling blocks of various shapes to create solid lines in a box, which then disappear to make room for more blocks. The game gradually speeds up, making it increasingly challenging, and traditionally, players are left overwhelmed. To overcome the game, one must achieve extraordinarily high scores, causing the game’s memory banks to overload and crash. 

It is believed that Level 29 is the point where things move too fast for humans to react. Beyond this point, the game presents challenges with changing block colors, from violent pink to nearly invisible dark blocks. The NES version of Tetris was previously only beaten by AI, which operated with near-instant perception and flawless decision-making, beyond the capabilities of human performance.

However, both Willis Gibson and Alex Thach have managed to do the unthinkable. 

The first version of Tetris was developed by Russian scientist Alexey Pajitnov on June 6, 1984, on an Electronika 60 terminal computer while working at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He derived its name from the Greek numerical prefix tetra (all of the game’s pieces contain four segments) and tennis, Pajitnov’s favourite sport. It was popularised on the Nintendo Entertainment System.