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A 13-year-old is the first human to beat Tetris | Numerous theoretical milestones remain
(www.techspot.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
This person did it by playing it until it crashed. There are several points where particular actions will crash the game.
I would argue though that to beat Tetris you would need to beat level 255, at which point the level counter wraps to level 0
There was a 73% chance at the level it crashed that any single line clear would have caused it and the percentage only goes up from there. That is why there are theoretically more that could be accomplished since there is still a chance it won't crash but is very unlikely.
I reckon completing level 255 isn't going to happen for human players on the NES. They are pushing the input hardware beyond it's design to play the levels they're at now, and also crashes become more common at higher levels making a clean run to 255 even harder
If you look into it, the only limiting factor are the colour pallets glitching out, after level 29 it does t become any faster, but at a certain point the palates were causing hard points as one level named charcoal was barely visible.
You somehow managed to write palette wrong twice in two different ways. I salute you.