Teens are rewriting what is possible in the world of competitive Tetris

When the Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC) debuted in 2010, the kill screen was the game’s final, unbeatable boss. Players pushed to get the highest score possible before level 29, at which point the game’s pieces started falling at double speed. It seemed humanly impossible to keep up with the falling shapes, which would pile up on players’ screens and spell death for their game.

In the last four years, however, the once impossible has been a common occurrence in classic competitive competition. Tetris. The 1989 NES version TetrisWhile this is still the standard for competitive tournaments players can make it to level 30 and beyond. This new generation of talent, made up of mostly teenagers, has not only breathed new life into a 30-year-old game, but also completely upended expectations of what’s possible within it.

Classical classics have had competitive players since the very beginning. TetrisWe tried to make the game more than its creators imagined. This was the first step towards competitive gaming. TetrisWhen the maximum score is exceeded by 999,999, the game will not display an exact score. Level 29 was impossible, so players set a goal to reach 1 million. This meant maintaining “maxout pace” where players would complete enough “Tetrises” (when a player drops a straight I-block vertically, clearing four lines simultaneously and earning more points than single line clears) before the kill screen.

In 2010, players organized the first CTWC, largely in response to the world’s first indisputable maxout, accomplished by Harry Hong (other players like Thor Aackerlund and Jonas Neubauer claimed to have maxed out as well, but the proof wasn’t definitive). It was a desire to discover who is the best. TetrisNeubauer was the most successful player in the world and quickly built a strong case. In the final match of this 2010 tournament, Neubauer, who went on to win seven of the first eight world championships, beat Hong, the only player to interrupt Neubauer’s reign by beating him in 2014.

Over the first eight years of CTWC, maxing out before level 29 shifted from being an impossible frontier to a badge of honor for the game’s elite. It was still a notable accomplishment until the scene began to shift in 2018, when Joseph Saelee, a then-16-year-old from Visalia, California, began dismantling records and set the stage for a new generation’s influence on the game.

Saelee was able to max out the game for the first times in March 2018. This happened just five months ago, only five month after having picked it up. According to The New Yorker, Saelee set new records in terms of clearing the most lines within a single game, and for reaching 300,000. points fastest. He began to do things that other players considered impossible. He survived past the game’s kill screen, becoming the first player to make it to level 31 and 32 — then 33 through 35. None of the other players had made it beyond level 30 — not even Neubauer, the seven-time champion.

Saelee’s play style was a major reason for his high score. Nearly all of the players back then maneuvered parts by pressing down the directional keys on their retro NES controllers. Instead of opting for this method, Saelee learned to “hypertap” from another player named Koji “Koryan” Nishio.

“In 2016, Koryan was the first person to do hypertapping in a tournament,” Saelee told Polygon over the phone. “I just played around with that technique and eventually found my grip, stance, whatever you want to call it.”

Saelee learned to flex his arm and manually press the directional buttons more quickly than the classic game would automatically shift the pieces, enabling him to react faster at the game’s highest speeds, even in level 29 and beyond. As a result, he became the first “innovator of post-kill screen play,” according to Chris Tang, who has commentated on every CTWC since 2010.

Saelee was among the most senior competitors when he arrived at Portland’s CTWC 2018 finals. The Gen Z teenage in Hollister hoodies, who only just took up the game last year and came along with his younger sister to the 2018 CTWC finals in Portland didn’t know what to expect. They knew that he was an elite contender thanks to his Twitch streams, YouTube uploads and other videos. Saelee had already impressed the game’s elite.

Saelee, who was then 33, beat Harry Hong and Koryan on the road to the finals. To top it all, Saelee beat Neubauer at the 2018 CTWC finals to win 3-0 in best of five in what is still competitive. Tetris’ most viewed match and is colloquially known as simply Jonas vs. Joseph. Saelee lost his speech after beating Neubauer and then he walked away from the stage to give Neubauer a standing ovation.

“The most clutch Tetris that we’ve seen from anyone,” Neubauer said after Saelee’s convincing performance. “It’s truly an honor to pass the torch to the new generation of Tetris players.”

Saelee often watches the video. He felt it was an exhilarating experience. “It didn’t sink in until maybe days or weeks later.” Saelee, who is now 19 and in his second year of college, said. “It is one of the most significant days of my life.”

Saelee wasn’t done changing the competitive Tetris landscape. He went on to win 2019’s CTWC, beating Koryan in those finals. He did not stop there. Tetris’ established old guard, he also began inspiring other young players to pick up the retro game. The new players did more than break every record in competitive. TetrisBut, once more, reoriented how TetrisPlayers thought it was possible.

Photo by Classic Tetris World Championship

The world was changing by the time 2020 CTWC arrived. Tetris scene. The COVID-19 pandemic meant that CTWC could no longer be held in Portland. CTWC has moved to online. And a generation of new, younger players who had been inspired by Saelee’s 2018 heroics wanted to play on the game’s biggest stage.

Suddenly, Tetris’ top players weren’t in their 30s and 40s; they were in their teens, and Saelee was now the veteran. The average age of the 2020 CTWC’s top eight players was 17 years old. The youngest player was 13-year-old Michael “Dog” Artiaga, who went on to win the competition, beating his 15-year-old brother, Andy, in the final.

Artiaga, like many others at 2020’s competition, had found out about classic TetrisHe watched the Jonas-vs. Joseph match from his YouTube recommendation list and then jumped headfirst into it with his brother.

Vince Clemente, one of the tournament’s organizers, jokingly blames Joseph Saelee for the massive shift in average age from 2018 to 2020. There’s an importance to having a great champion, Clemente told Polygon. “They have a face and a star in Joseph. He’s a great champ. He’s well-spoken, emotional, and very kind. So yeah, I blame him.”

“We used to ask players for their job title to put on their bio, but now everyone is a student,” he said. “It’s a worthless question now.”

The young, innovative players came up with new ways to play the classics. TetrisMore efficiently. Before the 2020 CTWC, Christopher “Cheez” Martinez told Saelee that he had something in the works. The new way of playing classical was the best. Tetris that he called “rolling.” Instead of hypertapping, which was rather difficult to learn and punishing on the body, Martinez’s new method of rolling involved drumming his fingers on the back of the NES controller, putting pressure on the buttons on the other side.

“It looked more efficient in terms of left-to-right speed, so I thought it was eventually going to blow up,” Saelee admitted.

He was correct. The roll has led to another set of broken records. In the 2021 CTWC semifinal match between Saelee and Jacob “Huffulufugus” Huff, Huff had committed to rolling and pushed Saelee to the limit, breaking the record for the highest scoring competitive match. Saelee was averaging scores above one million, but it wasn’t enough; Huff was able to play well past the kill screen, once to level 36 and once to level 40, and catch up to him, no matter how high Saelee had scored.

Rolling took over Tetris world. The top 8 of the 2021 CTWC’s most successful players have switched to rolling over the last year, in preparation for the October 2022 CTWC. Andy Artiaga was fourth behind Saelee. A monthly TetrisArtiaga broke three world records: highest total score, lowest losing score, and highest winning score. Artiaga reached level 58, a full 29 levels after the game’s kill screen.

“Andy’s just in another world right now,” the commentator said during the game. “Andy can just go forever. I don’t even know how to count the score at this point. Someone is keeping track, I have no idea.”

A player who rolled on the PAL version was able, in February to achieve level 138 in competitive play. Tetris– which is approximately 17% faster than the standard NTSC version. This high-level game caused a glitch and the game began to use random data to populate the Tetris block’s color palettes. AI has done the feat before. However, it was never achieved by an individual player. Garish greens and pinks and spacey white blocks shaded with just more white rained down the screen as a star of Tetris’ young community found yet another way to break the game.

Classic Tetris’ elders are proud the game has managed to attract a new generation of talent who have completely transformed what is possible. The old guard built a community that thrived on friendly and collaborative competition, and the result is support for these new players — even as they’ve completely outpaced their predecessors.

Young players were able to master the game quickly for many reasons. There was Neubauer’s Tetris 101 video where he explained techniques and strategies that were key to competitive Tetris. There was Koryan’s willingness to share his method of hypertapping that invited so many others to learn. Instead of learning from scratch, the younger players were able to jump through the entire process of developing these methods.

“I never thought that players would actually want to share their secrets, but it’s that spirit of positive competition that we all have the potential to hold,” Chris Tang said to Polygon. “When you pay it forward, and you’re nice to your fellow competitors, it’s infectious. I think that’s always been there, and hopefully it will continue.”

Tang stated that there was a spirit of cooperation even at the Nintendo World Championships where Tang and key competitors were involved. TetrisCommunity like Thor Aackerlund or Robin Mihara (director of the TetrisDocumentary Emotional OrderTheir start in esports was with a friend ( The two were already exchanging secrets, tips and techniques with each other to improve their play. Tang was thrilled to see the children get the idea and they are now sharing their knowledge and tips to make the game more fun.

You will find that the friendliness and generosity of the community goes beyond high scores.

“We all get along, we all cheer for one another, we all want to see each other succeed.” Tang said. “A lot of that warmth comes from our hero, Jonas Neubauer, who carried that torch for so long and was a great example of what a champion is.”

Neubauer became the undisputed great-of all-time because of the warmth and generosity he espoused. TetrisPlayer, who died in January 2021 suddenly at 39 years old. The community was devastated, but it rallied to support its leader and made the trophy for the 2021 CTWC into a J-piece in his honor.

It was only the beginning of his contributions to competitive excellence. Clemente recalled how Neubauer’s character set the tone for how competitors treated each other.

“He was a gracious champ. If he was a bad champ, it wouldn’t have been as nice to come to these events,” Clemente said. “If you talk to the other players in the great reign of Jonas, they were going to the tournament to get to the top eight and just enjoy the competition. Everyone knew that Jonas was going to win — well, maybe everyone except for Harry.”

Though he didn’t get to know Neubauer very well, Saelee also credited him with setting a standard for the community that has become a central social network in his life as a young adult.

Photo by Classic Tetris World Championship

“He left a huge legacy,” Saelee said. “He set an example for the rest of us to follow.”

Everybody involved in the classic Tetris misses Neubauer, the older generation remembers an unbeatable champion who was not only crucial to the game’s growth but also a dear friend. Younger generations remember a kind champion, who loved to have his world changed and was happy to accept being beaten.

In April of this year, a player achieved level 95 by posting a world record score in the amount of 3.7million. After an amount of shock at the ludicrous achievement, he picked up the camera to focus on his tube TV as he manually typed in Jonas’ name on the 8-bit game and dedicated the score to him.

Current high scores in TetrisNeubauer and other senior players never imagined this was possible even a few years back. Every record held by the older generation is broken now. Tetris generation set, but they recognize they couldn’t have gotten here without those who came before them.