According to the latest Tetris news, 16-year-old Michael Artiaga became the first known player to achieve the elusive rebirth in NES Tetris. This involved rolling the level counter back to zero after surpassing Level 255, what was previously thought possible in NES Tetris.
Michael Artiaga’s 4,216-line, 29.4-million-point run, completed in front of hundreds of live Twitch viewers.
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Michael Artiaga known as Dog in the gaming community and by his Twitch handle dogplayingtetris pulled off the first-ever Tetris rebirth. This moment occurred when the game’s level counter, upon reaching the highest possible level rolled over and restarted from level 0.
Tetris rebirth had long been theorized but had never been achieved before due to the numerous glitches and difficulties players face at the highest levels of the game.
According to the latest Tetris news, the rebirth moment was captured during a Twitch livestream, where Artiaga cleared level 255 after 82 minutes of continuous play completing 3,300 lines in the process.
He celebrated the occasion with his signature disbelief, exclaiming, “Am I dreaming, bro?” as the game restarted from scratch.
Michael Artiaga managed to accumulate a mind-blowing score of 29.4 million points, clearing a total of 4,216 lines.
This run spanned 81 minutes of intense, glitch-riddled gameplay. Artiaga was unfazed by the numerous technical challenges that arise after level 138 including visual distortions, algorithmic crashes and controller-speed issues.
Even after reaching the fabled rebirth, Michael Artiaga continued playing for an additional 40 minutes before wrapping up the session, finally exclaiming in exhaustion, “I’m so glad that game is over, I never want to play this game again.”
According to the latest Tetris news, the version of Tetris that Michael Artiaga used for this accomplishment was a slightly modified edition for the Nintendo Entertainment System. This version is crucial because it bypasses certain glitches that normally cause the game to crash after level 155.
For context, most classic versions of Tetris contain coding idiosyncrasies that result in crashes, making it near-impossible to surpass certain levels without intervention.
Earlier this year, another teenage Tetris prodigy, Willis Blue Scuti Gibson had achieved a personal best of reaching level 157 before his game crashed.
The small modification that Michael Artiaga used didn’t diminish his achievement, as the challenge of surpassing level 255 remains a test of skill and endurance even without the crash issues.
NES Tetris was widely regarded as unbeatable beyond Level 29, where pieces drop too fast for normal reflexes to cope. Advanced techniques like hypertapping and rolling have now given players the ability to move pieces fast enough to bypass this difficulty spike with rolling becoming the current meta for top players.
According to the latest Tetris news, Michael Artiaga used rolling techniques to repeatedly tap directional buttons at up to 30 presses per second, allowing him to control pieces at higher speeds.
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According to the latest Tetris news, One of the obstacles in achieving rebirth is the Level 235 glitch, where players are stuck in the same level for 810 lines due to a binary-coded decimal error.
Michael Artiaga is the first player to clear this level without crashing the game, enduring the glitchy green color palette of Level 235 that made it incredibly difficult to see the blocks against the dark background.
Artiaga played on a modified version of NES Tetris designed to avoid the crash-inducing bugs that plagued past high-level play.
In unmodified versions of the game, glitches begin appearing around Level 138, where pieces randomly change colors making play increasingly difficult as players progress past Level 155.
Without these modifications, players face a near-certain game crash at these levels due to memory overflow issues related to the scoring algorithm.
The farthest anyone had progressed in NES Tetris was a 157-level run by 13-year-old Willis Blue Scuti Gibson, who encountered the kill screen. The kill screen occurs when the game runs out of memory, causing it to crash after approximately 1,511 lines.
By using a crash-resistant version of the game, Artiaga was able to surpass Gibson’s record and achieve rebirth without the system crashing.
In the world of Tetris, surpassing level 29 had been thought to be the ultimate barrier. The blocks fall so rapidly at that point that it is physically impossible to reach the edges of the screen using traditional button presses on the NES controller.
In 2010, players discovered a technique called hypertapping, which involves vibrating one’s fingers rapidly to circumvent the speed limitations of the controller. This discovery opened the door to theoretically infinite gameplay.
By level 138, Tetris players begin encountering memory overflow errors that alter the appearance of the falling blocks making it harder to discern shapes and plan moves.
By level 155, the likelihood of an in-game crash increases exponentially, due to flaws in the game’s line-clearing algorithm.
According to the latest Tetris news, a glitch at level 235 forces players to remain in that level for 810 lines instead of the standard 10. Tetris Artiaga spent about 20 minutes enduring this level before advancing to the final stages of his run.
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