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Kill Screen: Difference between revisions

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Kill Screen (view source)

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{{quote|'''Homestar:''' Hey Strong Bad, what's a kill- kill- [[Kill Screen]]?<br />
'''Strong Bad:''' Oh, that's when you play a video game for ''so'' long, and get a score ''so'' high, and have a life ''so'' depressing, that you break the video game!|''[[Strong BadsBad's Cool Game for Attractive People (Video Game)|Strong Bads Cool Game for Attractive People]] Episode 5: 8-bit is Enough''}}
 
Ah, the iconic games of our youth. We humbly sit at the 256th level of ''[[Pac-Man]]'', proud of our meager ach--''WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THE SCREEN?!''
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[http://donhodges.com/how_high_can_you_get.htm This site] explains the Kill Screens for ''Pac-Man'' and ''[[Donkey Kong]]'' -- and actually contains patches that fix them.
 
Compare and contrast [[Minus World]], a level that is found by exploiting a glitch (such as world -1 in ''[[Super Mario Bros. (Videovideo Gamegame)|Super Mario Bros]].''), and is at least semi-playable, rather than breaking the game outright.
 
[[The Missingno]] is a game sprite that exists because of similar internal bugs.
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* After clearing round 255 of ''[[Dig Dug]]'', you go to round 0, a completely messed-up level with a Pooka starting right on top of Dig, killing him instantly before he can do anything. (If you clear this level via a cheat, the game loops back to round 1.)
* [[Heroes of Might and Magic]] 3 had a glitch that would crash any game after the third "month" of play. This was corrected, though.
* The original NES ''[[Tetris (Video Game)|Tetris]]'' becomes impossible at Level 29, at which point the pieces drop too fast to move them into the extreme left and right edges of the screen, which is why later games adopt the "lock delay" mechanic, first seen in Sega's 1988 arcade version of ''Tetris'', that allows a piece to still be moved around when it hits the stack or floor.
** Tetris prior to the 2001 reform also featured a largely theoretical "kill sequence", whereby the random flow of pieces can include a stream of S- and Z-shaped blocks that cannot be used to create complete lines. Assuming a perfect random number generator (and that the programmers have not spotted the problem), such a sequence is bound to happen in a game that is long enough.
* ''In RC Pro Am'', the [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|cheating]] [[Sin City|yellow truck]] eventually makes the race literally [[Unwinnable]]. While you only need to avoid last place, the other trucks will eventually speed up as well.
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* In ''[[Galaga]]'', clearing 255 stages will yield Stage 0, which crashes the game unless [[Nintendo Hard|the DIP switches are set for the toughest difficulty level]].
* Many games from the infamous ''[[Action 52]]'' do this, eg Thrusters starts blinking on and off in the second level, Atmos Quake has an invisible death barrier at Level 5, and Star Evil displays a blank gray screen on Level 4. In other version of this cartridge, some of these levels won't crash.
* ''[[Super Paper Mario (Video Game)|Super Paper Mario]]'' for [[Wii]] had glitches in PAL areas due to a problem with conversion from NTSC to PAL. This meant that on the Haunted House level, talking to a certain character basically caused the disk to freeze and [[Most Annoying Sound|buzz]] [[Hell Is That Noise|endlessly]] until the Wii was turned off completely. Luckily, Nintendo would let you get a new copy, free of charge, but some people just turn their language setting to German and it works fine.
* ''[[Bubble Bobble (Video Game)|Bubble Bobble]] Revolution'' had a later level that was unbeatable because the boss failed to spawn.
* ''Bioshock 2'''s DLC Minerva's Den has a mini-game called Spitfire. If you get the highest score, you get a "kill screen" that show all the sprites, some large numbers, {{spoiler|a large R}} and {{spoiler|a golf club}}.
 
=== Parodies, references, and Lampshade Hangings: ===
* The page quote comes from Episode 5 of ''[[Strong BadsBad's Cool Game for Attractive People (Video Game)|Strong Bads Cool Game for Attractive People]]'', where one puzzle involves ''deliberately'' triggering the Kill Screen in "Gel-arshie's Pro Fruit-Boarder". The reward is Gel-arshie himself as a party member.
* The back cover of ''[[Scott Pilgrim|Scott Pilgrim Vs The Universe]]'' has a picture of 8-bit Scott opening a door to Subspace, which apparently looks like a [[Kill Screen]].
** In the Tie-In Videogame, Subspace actually IS a Kill Screen. Made it on purpose though.
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