20 Iconic Gaming Moments You Must See Before You Die

by Joe Pring

1. Kill Screen - Donkey Kong

I wasn't even old enough to experience this one first-hand, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate just how iconic and famous the 'kill screen' is in the original Donkey Kong arcade game.

Due to a design oversight in the game's programming, if you reach the 22nd stage (which is painstakingly hard, by the way) you'll be prompted to continue as normal, but you'll only have seven seconds to complete the stage.

Yes, that's literally impossible to do, and DK being an arcade game, Nintendo never fixed it. So what did players do? They used it as a measure of one's skill - making it to the kill screen was no easy feat, and it eventually became a pseudo-game completion screen.

In fact, if you want an idea as to just how momentous the occasion was when someone reached the fabled kill screen, you only need to watch this.

What are your most iconic and memorable video game moments everybody should play? Let us know in the comments!

Contributor
Contributor

Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.