Advertise here with Carbon Ads

This site is made possible by member support. โค๏ธ

Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.

When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!

kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.

๐Ÿ”  ๐Ÿ’€  ๐Ÿ“ธ  ๐Ÿ˜ญ  ๐Ÿ•ณ๏ธ  ๐Ÿค   ๐ŸŽฌ  ๐Ÿฅ”

Another Tetris World Record Completely Demolished! What Is Going On?!

Tetris was created by Alexey Pajitnov 40 years ago. The NES version has been out since 1989. You’d think that people would have “solved” the game long ago. But humans, properly motivated, are relentlessly inventive, and the past few months have seen a flurry of record-setting activity that is remarkable for a 35-year-old game.

It’s only been a little more than a month since a 13-year-old player named Blue Scuti reached the kill screen for the first time in history, a feat only performed previously by an AI. Now it’s been done twice more and the world record for points changed hands three times in three days.

And then just three weeks later, in mid-January, a player named PixelAndy absolutely destroyed the highest score world record. Here’s the engaging story about how he did it, including a surprising family rivalry and a clever strategic innovation:

I’ve written before about how great these video game analysis videos are at communicating how innovation works:

This is a great illustration of innovation in action. There’s a clearly new invention, based on prior effort (standing on the shoulders of giants), that allows for greater capabilities and, though it’s still too early to tell in this case, seems likely to shift power to people who utilize it. And it all takes place inside a small and contained world where we can easily observe the effects.

Comments  4

Sort by: thread โ€” thread . latest . faves

CW Moss

It's like the 4-minute mile. Impossible until it isn't. What a joy!

I wonder how deeply those players experience the Tetris effect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect

Early on, when I was playing a lot chess, in the middle of a conversation I could see a chess board of our conversation. Thankfully as I've slowed down, that has gone away. I don't think it's healthy to see conversation as a winning/losing proposition.

Jason KottkeMOD

Oh man, I had the Tetris effect bad when I was a kid. I remember playing for hours at a time on the Game Boy and then reading Where the Red Fern Grows and seeing Tetris pieces formed by chunks of text.

Re: "conversation as a winning/losing proposition", that reminds me of the scene in Arrival where Louise, a linguist, explains the issue with zero-sum communication.

CW Moss

In 3rd grade, when reading Red Fern as a class, I bawled my eyes out and I remember my teacher made fun of how I blew my nose. Memories!

PS - Dune 2 in just a couple weeks. Yee!

Reply in this thread

LUKE A HACKNEY

I understand the technique is completely different, and this may be a dumb question, but is there something about playing on an emulator that makes it easier?

Hello! In order to leave a comment, you need to be a current kottke.org member. If you'd like to sign up for a membership to support the site and join the conversation, you can explore your options here.

Existing members can sign in here. If you're a former member, you can renew your membership.

Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or extensions that you have installed on your browser...sometimes they can interfere with the Memberful links. Still having trouble? Email me!