I think - correct me if I am wrong - that Dig Dug's kill screen comes about over the fact that the bad guys are placed closer to the player for each level. So you eventually get to a point where the game starts the monsters off ON the player, and that's effectively the end of the game.

But there's a lot of misinformation about arcade games in the world and I don't want to contribute more. I will delete this post if I do research tonight and learn that I heard wrong.

(The kill screen for Donkey Kong 3 is that the game is so bad, nobody wants to play it past the first board.)

Long ago I used to know a pattern on the original pac-man and could play as long as I wanted, but god, how could anyone keep playing for that many levels without throwing up from sheer boredom!


THE
PUKE MAN
AARDVARK

I will explain it to you, but by asking that I now know you have not seen King of Kong. You should see King of Kong.

A "kill screen" is when a game crashes due to a programming error. Pac-Man and Donkey Kong are two popular games that have kill screens. Pac-Man's kill screen comes on level 256. The current level is stored in an 8 bit address so it can only go up to 255. When it gets to 256, the game crashes and can no longer be played. A similar thing happens in Donkey Kong. It has something to do with the timer and something in the formula exceeding 255. At that point (somewhere during the 22nd level), Mario just dies for no reason and that's the end of the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmkhXdSC62w

What's this kill screen business?



THE
OFF TO
WIKI-LAND
AARDVARK

[quote]New York City's own Hank Chien, a 35-year-old plastic surgeon based in Flushing, Queens has just been crowned the Lord of the Barrels -- having just set a new world record in the classic arcade game Donkey Kong.

Chien's score, 1,061,700 points racked up in just 2 hours and 35 minutes was verified by Twin Galaxies, the official keepers of DK records since 1981.

The dexterous doctor ended the game on the famed "kill screen" glitch that does not allow play to continue.
Chien's new scoring mark beats the 1,050,200 point record score set by Florida's Billy Mitchell at a live event in Florida in July 2007.

Twin Galaxies officials David Nelson of New Hampshire and Eric Akeson of Washington state verified Hank Chien's record game, done on an original Donkey Kong machine in New York.[/quote]

Walter Day's been gone for two days and already everything we thought we knew about arcade games is FALSE!!