Watch the moment when a 16-year-old becomes the world champion of 'Tetris'

Stack 'em up.
 By 
Shannon Connellan
 on 

How fast can you Tetris? This teenager can absolutely blitz the classic puzzle game.

16-year-old gamer Joseph Saelee has defeated seven-time Tetris world champion (and current champ) Jonas Neubauer to take the official crown, reports Kotaku.

The Classic Tetris World Championships wrapped up at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo inside the Oregon Convention Center on Sunday.

The game on the table? The same version of Nintendo Tetris used since the 1990 Nintendo World Championship competition.

Players bring their own standard unmodified NES controllers, and can often use a technique called "hypertapping," which the publisher explains as tapping the D-pad constantly instead of holding it down. Not all players use this, but the new king of Tetris, Saelee, does.

Also appearing in the finals were Japanese Tetris master Koryan, and previous world champ Harry Hong, who, in 2009, became the first to achieve the highest possible score of 999,999 points.

We've posted the full final right down below, but if you're keen to skip to the end, here's Saelee in his winning run against seven-time world champ Neubauer (it's in two parts):

It's seriously swift stuff from both players. Here's the final moment, when we get a shiny new Tetris world champion.

Needless to say, the crowd went pretty wild over this young'un defeating a longtime legend.

Posting on Twitter, the Tetris Championship pointed out a fun fact about the new world champ, which will make you feel incredibly old and unaccomplished.

Hoo boy.

If you're keen for more high-speed Tetris wizardry, here's the full final, starting around the 10-minute mark. The commentary is A+.

Topics Gaming Nintendo

A photo portrait of a journalist with blonde hair and a band t-shirt.
Shannon Connellan
UK Editor

Shannon Connellan is Mashable's UK Editor based in London, formerly Mashable's Australia Editor, but emotionally, she lives in the Creel House. A Tomatometer-approved critic, Shannon writes about entertainment, tech, social good, science, culture, and Australian horror.

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