13-year-old boy named Willis Gibson/Blue Scuti just got the first NES Tetris kill screen (game crash) on level 157. A monumental accomplishment that was considered pretty much impossible. It was originally thought the kill screen was level 29 because the game speed up to the point where nobody thought actual play was possible. Well, it turns out by using hyper-tapping (invented by Thor Aackerlund), you can get past level 29 all the way to level 41. Rolling was invented by Cheez and got people up to level 148.

Along comes StackRabbit. StackRabbit is a automated Tetris playing bot that was created by Gregory Cannon. With the machine playing the game, they discovered there really was a kill screen on level 237. As people (HydrantDude) dug into the crash, they discovered the crash could happen on different levels because several different factors triggered the crash. HydrantDude discovered the earliest it could happen was level 155 – that was within reach of human players for the first time ever.

That’s what Willis/Blue Scuti just did on level 157. This was considered the very first human reached true kill screen.

But, as the video points out, there is always a new set of achievements. Because the kill screen depends on game conditions, it is still possible to go to even higher levels.

It’s been interesting to watch the record chasing in the NES version of Tetris. From new control techniques to reaching levels that people never thought possible.