Re-Visiting the 2021 Death of Tetris Champion Jonas Neubauer

This is my first of two updated posts on this story from 2021, which I first covered in this post.

Re-Visiting the 2021 Death of Tetris Champion Jonas Neubauer
Tetris Champ Neubauer, The Twin Towers, and Yale Skull & Bones

This story has always been of special interest to me. I’ve played a lot of NES Tetris, and although I’m not good enough to compete in it, I grew up playing in a lot of video game tournaments for all sorts of titles, from Tekken, to Halo, to Dance Dance Revolution. Last month, a new tournament called the Jonas Neubauer Cup was introduced, so I thought this might be a good opportunity to look more closely at this.

Head-to-head Tetris features two players building Towers while simultaneously trying to eliminate lines and destroy them. In the 1960’s, construction started on the Twin Towers, with the purpose of destroying them a few decades later:

The World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed in September of 2001. Earlier that year in March, Jonas Neubauer became the first NES Tetris player to obtain a “Max-out.” A max-out occurs when a player scores 999,999 or more points, which freezes the score counter on the original cartridge. This is an incredible feat of concentration and requires many months, if not years, of devoted practice to the game.

Over the following years, Jonas gained notoriety online as an exceptionally-skilled player. In 2010, a filmmaker named Adam Cornelius contacted Neubauer regarding his plans to bring the top Tetris players around the country together in a tournament to decide who the best block-stacker was.

The documentary, called Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters came out in 2011, first being screened at the Austin Film Festival on October 21st. The film led to the creation of the Classic Tetris World Championship, an annual tournament series that crowns a champion each year. Jonas won a whopping Seven out of the first eight titles, before a new generation of talent came along and transformed the game.

Three years after his seventh and final championship and shortly after moving to Hawai’i with his girlfriend, Jonas suddenly passed away at the age of just 39 in January of 2021.

Four (4)

33 days after he died, quarterback Tom Brady led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl championship, earning himself a record Seventh ring, which matched Neubauer’s Seven Tetris championships.

7 is the 4th Prime number

4 is the big number associated with the game Tetris, which is the term used for clearing 4 lines at a time. To complete this, players must arrange Tetrominos – pieces made up of 4 smaller blocks.

Jonas died in 2021, which was 4 years after 2017, when he won his last title. News of his passing broke 4 days after his Wikipedia death date of January 5th, although most sources online say it was January 4th – the 4th day of the year. Perhaps he suffered his medical emergency occurred overnight – either way, I will show how both dates are significant.

4 squared is 16. Alexey Pajitnov, the man credited with inventing Tetris, was born on 4/16: