Teen Who Beat Tetris Dedicates Win To Recently Deceased Dad in Touching Interview: ‘I Think He Would Be Proud’
The 13-year-old Tetris prodigy believed to be the first player ever to defeat the classic video game made a tear-jerking dedication to his recently deceased dad during an interview with MSNBC’s Steve Patterson.
“I’m dedicating it to my dad,” Willis Gibson said of his amazing win. “He was always very supportive, and I think he’d be proud.”
Patterson reported that Gibson’s dad died in December.
Gibson appeared alongside his mom for the interview, in which he told Patterson that the feat “took a lot of practice.”
Patterson’s report included a video of the moment Gibson realized he had beaten the game, saying, “You are witnessing one of the proudest moments in the history of video games. Tetris, finally toppled by human hands,” as Gibson is heard celebrating and declaring, “I can’t feel my fingers!”
Patterson continued, “The 13-year-old prodigy scoring so high the game could no longer function, reaching its once-mythical ‘kill screen’ in 38 minutes at level 157.”
“I was just sort of shocked and just happy that I did it,” Gibson said.
“Tetris and its beautiful blocks have been falling into our hearts for nearly 40 years. The rules are simple: fit the fallen shapes into solid rows,” Patterson explained. “As the levels rise, Tetris tumbles faster and faster. The teen, believed to be the first to beat the game, so historic, the CEO of Tetris calling it, ‘a feat that defies all perceived limits’ of this legendary game,” Patterson said.
News of Gibson’s win took a sour turn when Sky News host Jayne Secker made a snarky comment about the teen needing to “go outside.”
“As a mother. I would just say, ‘Step away from the screen, go outside, get some fresh air. Beating Tetris is not a life goal,’” she said on air.
The gaming community immediately took to social media to defend Gibson.
Gibson’s mom, who is a math teacher, celebrated her son’s hard work in an interview with The New York Times, where she confirmed he plays about 20 hours of Tetris “in a given week.”
“I’m actually OK with it,” Karin Cox said. “He does other things outside of playing Tetris, so it really wasn’t that terribly difficult to say OK. It was harder to find an old CRT TV than it was to say, ‘Yeah, we can do this for a little bit.’”
Watch the clip above via MSNBC.
