A of me nerding out on NES tetris.

The last ten years has seen some pretty amazing changes in high-level tetris play. It seemed like nearly each year, the top level pros pushed each other harder and harder. At first, getting to a maxout (999999 points) was an achievement.

Then the maxout became an expected for any high-level tetris player. The "kill screen" was similar. At level 29, it was believed the pieces fell so fast that it was impossible to play into this level.

Then came "hyper-tapping" where players used fast motions to press buttons.

The result is that not only did they get passed level 29, it wasn't surprising to see pros fighting it out to level 30 or beyond in competition play.

It seemed like this would be the physical limitation, though. Sure you can hyper tap, but there's a limit, right?

Just the ergonomics of pushing buttons quickly meant risking injury.

And then... some players got really, really clever.

I'll let you watch the video about this new third way of moving.

It's fascinating to me that competition can push people to think outside of the box and come up with sustainable, competition-level techniques on a game about to celebrate its 32nd year.