After obsessing generations of gamers for 40 years, the video game Tetris has finally been beaten by an American teenager, a feat so far only accomplished by artificial intelligence.

At the age of 13, Willis Gibson became the first human to overcome this Nintendo classic, where the player must fit together blocks that fall faster and faster, to form complete lines and make them disappear.

"I can't feel my fingers anymore"

This highly addictive puzzle game, developed by a Soviet engineer, doesn't really have an end: when the machine can't keep up, the screen suddenly freezes. That's what happened to the teenager, aka "Blue Scuti," when he reached level 157, after 38 minutes of effort.

"Oh my God," the young man exclaims when the game stops, in a video of his game posted on YouTube. "I can't feel my fingers anymore," he whispers, overwhelmed with emotion.

Congratulations from Tetris' CEO

"This has never been done by a human before," Tetris World Championship president Vince Clemente told The New York Times. "It's something everyone thought was impossible until a few years ago."

For a long time, level 29 was considered the limit of Tetris, when the game becomes so fast that humans can't react fast enough.

But in recent years, a new generation of gamers has pushed the boundaries of what's possible by embracing the technique of "rolling," which reinvents the way the NES console controller is used. This allows you to use all the fingers rather than just one or two and increases the frequency of the presses.

Originally from Oklahoma, Willis Gibson used this process to set his record, a few months before the 40th anniversary of the game released in June 1984. A feat widely praised within the gaming community.

Tetris CEO Maya Rogers also congratulated the young player. "Congratulations to Blue Scuti on this extraordinary feat, which defies all the preconceived limitations of this legendary game," she said in a statement sent to Popsci.com.

With AFP

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