Glossary Entry: Kill screen
Definition
Older arcade games often fought with technical limitations, a common one being how much data they could store or access. This sometimes resulted in unforeseen consequences when the player managed to reach certain levels or score more than a certain number of points.
When the game failed to properly handle these values, it usually rendered the game unplayable (either because the screen was completely corrupted or the game would outright crash). This phenomenon became known as a "kill screen".
Being able to trigger a kill screen is something to be proud of, as it usually takes a lot of skill or exceptional knowledge of a game to reach that point.
Perhaps the most famous kill screen was the one found in the original Pac Man game. Reaching level 256 caused the game's code to get confused, corrupting the screen in a very predictable manner and making the game completely unplayable.
When the game failed to properly handle these values, it usually rendered the game unplayable (either because the screen was completely corrupted or the game would outright crash). This phenomenon became known as a "kill screen".
Being able to trigger a kill screen is something to be proud of, as it usually takes a lot of skill or exceptional knowledge of a game to reach that point.
Perhaps the most famous kill screen was the one found in the original Pac Man game. Reaching level 256 caused the game's code to get confused, corrupting the screen in a very predictable manner and making the game completely unplayable.
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