A groundbreaking event occurred in the world-renowned video game, Tetris. 16-year-old American Michael Artiaga made history as the first person to reset the classic Tetris game. Artiaga streamed his gameplay of Nintendo’s version of Tetris on Twitch, sharing this historic moment with thousands of viewers.
Tetris resets itself for the first time!
Artiaga reached level 255, triggering the reset and experiencing a “rebirth” moment. After reaching the maximum level, the game restarted from level 0. It took him exactly 82 minutes to achieve this feat. Expressing his disbelief, the young player asked his viewers, “Am I dreaming, guys?” and could not hide his shock. He went on to score 29.4 million points before announcing, “I don’t think I ever want to play this game again,” as he prepared to end the stream.
Michael Artiaga was playing the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) version of the game, where Tetris can continue beyond level 155 without crashing. In this version, previous issues with the game crashing at higher levels were fixed. Earlier this year, another young player, Willis “Blue Scuti” Gibson from Oklahoma, claimed to have finished the game after reaching level 157, where his game crashed after 38 minutes of play.
Tetris was designed by Soviet engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984 and has maintained its global popularity through hundreds of different versions since then.
The game’s simple mechanics and increasingly challenging structure make it both fun and equally frustrating. Players try to align falling shapes into horizontal lines to clear them, but as the game speeds up and blocks stack up, the game ends when the board is filled.
Artiaga is no stranger to the competitive Tetris scene. In 2020, at just 13 years old, he became the Classic Tetris World Champion by defeating his older brother in the finals. Following this latest accomplishment, Artiaga expressed his joy by saying, “I can’t believe it… I’m the first to achieve Rebirth!” He also took the opportunity to thank his long-time supporters.
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