Fair, but it's still an impressive feat in its own right.

Crash dodging comes with its own challenges, explained more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3f4T0WaDVM

There are some player actions that can avoid or reduce the risk of crash, including:

  - Pushing down <7 points
  - Pushing down 7+ points (note: very difficult at lvl 29+ speeds)
  - Turning off the next box while a line is being cleared
  - Avoiding specific line clear types on specific levels

However, on some levels, these actions will crash the game instead.

Crash probabilities are summarized here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zAQIo_mnkk0c9e4-hpeD...

Only very lightly modified to prevent crashes, which seems legit to me.

Only slightly. It's not as if the patch changes the core game play mechanics, it's only to make it past the "kill screen". When you keep in within context with the fact that making it to this "kill screen" was unheard of less than a year ago, it's still pretty damn impressive.

I'd argue that in the context of overflowing the level counter, dodging the crashes (the most difficult part) is in fact the core mechanic. This doesn't take away from the skill required for playing at this level on the hacked version, but it does make the title misleading. It's not a "NES Tetris rebirth", it's a "Tetris Gym rebirth".

To be fair, Blue Scuti also used a modified Tetris ROM to set his record.

Only to correct the score display for the benefit of viewers. Unlike removing the crashes, it didn't change how the game actually played.