8 More Video Games You Can Break By Playing Perfectly

2. Kill Screen - Donkey Kong (1981)

Jumping back in time but with yet another entry that just lets us congratulate you for being way too good at video games, we’ve got the Kill Screen from the original Donkey Kong arcade game. On the 22nd stage which is the 117th screen so, yeah, you’ll have been absolutely killing it at the game to get to this point, there is a bug in the game’s programming.

This bug happens as a result of an integer overflow where the time allowed for each individual screen is determined by the level you’re on. So every level's time limit is determined by the following equation: 10 seconds multiplied by the level you’re on plus four.

I know, I’m sorry I’m making you do maths right now, I’ll break it down for both of us.

If you make it all the way to level 22 the timer is coded to give you 10 multiplied by 22 plus 4, which for those among you who didn’t drop out of maths in grade 10 like I did gives you 260 seconds. That’s all well and good but the 8-bit counter rolls over at 256 so we end up with only 4 seconds which is not long enough to complete the level and effectively gives us the Donkey Kong arcade game kill screen.