NES Tetri🍃s' original creators deem🔯ed it impossible to beat the iconic blocky puzzler when it launched 35 years ago, but that's exactly what happened this weekend.

But, wait, didn't someone else already 'complete' NES Tetris last year? For the longest❀ time, Tetris had no formal ending since exceeding a certain number of levels caused the game to go so fast, it was once thought to be impossible to progress without using AI scripts. Then some💫 high-level players discovered "hypertapping" and "rolling" button-mashing strategies in 2016 and 2020 respectively, and opened up a whole new arena. 

That's how 14-year-old pro Willis Gibson, aka Blue Scuti, became the first person to naturally trigger the classic game's k🌱ill screen - the point at which the blocks fall so fast and the cod✃e becomes so unstable that the entire game crashes - at level 157. But there was another, once theoretical way to beat Tetris all along. 

The community has long been aware that you could (again, theoretically) somehow manage to avoid the crash, beat level 255, and then cause the game to loop all the way back to the beginning. The so-called Rebirth has been the gameౠ's mythical true ending the entire time, but it was, again, thought to be impossible.

Until now: Streamer and pro player Michael Artiaga, better known as dogplayingtetris, has now become the world's fi🎀rst ever person to trigger Tetris' Rebirth without AI. You can see his winning moment in the clip below, where he's clearly just as shocked as the rest of us at the monumental achievement. "Oh my god," indeed.

Of course, once you beat Tet🧜ris, the only logical thing to do is to continue playing Tetris. Artiaga carried on his Rebirth run all the way until he reached level 91 again, meaning he powered through 346 levels in one sitting. 

After years in his brother’s shadow, another Tetris player emerged to obliterate the game’s world record score earlier this year.