With a name so ingrained into video game history, there are few gamers who haven’t playedTetris. Created by Soviet engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984,Tetrisis recognized as one of gaming’s greatest hits, and has established itself as one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time.
The enduring popularity ofTetris, as well as its status as a retro game with a simple, easy-to-understand gameplay loop, has made it into the perfect avenue for players to showcase their talents byrecreatingTetrisin other games such asMinecraftor – in this case – for programmers to develop an AI that plays through the game with increasingly better efficiency. More often than not, this efficiency far exceeds that of a normal human player – allowing players, programmers, and other interested parties a completely different glimpse into their favorite games of old.
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In this particular example, programmer Greg Cannon shared a gameplay video of his StackRabbit AI playing through theNES version ofTetrisin which the AI managed to progress so far as to break the game entirely. While still being subject to the arbitrary cruelty ofTetrishanding players a sufficiently large sequence of alternating S and Z tetrominoes, the AI was not limited in terms of reaction times or input techniques the way a human would normally be.
The conventional ending for this particular version ofTetriswas intended to be Level 29, where the speed of the game would make finding solutions on the fly downright impossible. However, thanks to StackRabbit AI, Greg Cannon was able to effortlessly progress into higher levels that weren’t intended or accounted for by the game’s programming.
After getting past the 29th level,Tetrisstarted to exhibit strange behaviors such as generating bugged color schemes, or breaking the game’s level indicator and score tally altogether. The color schemes for the levels were lovingly given amusing nicknames such as “Stardew ValleySunset”, “Week-old Bubblegum” or “Internship at Marie Curie’s Lab” – and there was even an instance of an “endless” level (Level 235) represented with a monotone dark green color scheme that kept going almost ceaselessly from a score of 59 million to 101 million points.
The game eventually gave up, surrendered, and broke entirely at Level 237, with 102 million points as the final score. An interesting statistical takeaway is that even over 8,000 tetrominoes later, the highly coveted I shaped ones were still the rarest type by a noticeable margin. Some people have idly wondered ifTetrisever had an ending, and a resounding answer to that age-old question has at last been provided.
