History Main / OverflowError

* In ''VideoGame/{{Sinistar}}'', if you get hit by a projectile and touch an enemy simultaneously while on your extra life, the game will subtract two lives, rolling backwards over 0 and reading it as 255 lives remaining.

[[folder:Shoot-'em-up]]

[[folder:Arcade Games]]
* Atari's ''VideoGame/Battlezone1980'' started the player out with slower, boxy tanks to shoot, until the player had blasted five of them, then the game threw quicker, sleeker tanks at the player. That is, up until the player had 255 tanks killed; thereafter, the register overflowed to -1, an error code. The game however simply interpreted this as "player has not yet killed enough slow tanks" and thereafter fielded the older, slower boxy tanks. This typically happens around the 80000 to 90000 point mark.
* The famous KillScreen in ''VideoGame/PacMan'' was known to be caused due to the levels being stored in an 8 bit byte, and since the byte rolls over to zero, the game attempts to proceed to level 256, and renders more than half of the maze as a glitched array of tiles-- the game keeps track of the level number by the fruit in the bottom right corner, and there's always meant to be only one. Similar glitches also exist in ''VideoGame/{{Galaga}}'' (which varies depending on what rank you have it set at) and ''VideoGame/DigDug'' (which causes a level that instantly kills you because an enemy spawns in the same space as the player).
* Similarly, the kill screen in ''VideoGame/DonkeyKong'' is caused by a glitch in the algorithm that determines the level timer. On Level 22, the timer is set so high that it overflows and ends up being set at just 4 seconds, making the level impossible to complete.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Sinistar}}'', if you get hit by a projectile and touch an enemy simultaneously while on your extra life, the game will subtract two lives, rolling backwards over 0 and reading it as 255 lives remaining.
[[/folder]]

* Chess.com, an online {{TabletopGame/Chess}} app, crashed on 32-bit {{Platform/iOS}} devices once over 2^31 games had been started because of a signed integer game ID overflow. 64-bit iOS devices were not vulnerable to this problem. A patched version was quickly rolled out once the overflow was diagnosed.

[[caption-width-right:350:If [[Literature/DoAndroidsDreamOfElectricSheep androids someday DO dream of electric sheep]], [[AltText don't forget]] to [[UsefulNotes/{{Java}} declare sheepCount as a long int]].]]

** While most games cap how many Bolts you can hold, the UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 ones didn't, leading to this error. Famously, a fan by the name of [=RSmit=] spent three and a half years doing this in the second game, ''[[VideoGame/RatchetAndClankGoingCommando Going Commando]]'' (saying that it was "[[SelfImposedChallenge too easy]]" to do it in the third and fourth games), in what he called the Quest for the Max. He eventually succeeded in 2007, and as a result flipped the number to approximately -2 billion Bolts... meaning he couldn't afford the Tractor Beam gadget to progress past the second level in his next [[NewGamePlus Challenge Mode]] run.[[labelnote:Why it happened]]Since the game used 32 data bits, and one of the symbols has to be the positive/negative symbol, the maximum amount of Bolts is 2 to the power of 31, or 2,147,183,648. When he exceeded that number the only thing the game could do was change the positive/negative sign bit, hence the flip.[[/labelnote]]

* Chess.com, an online {{TabletopGame/Chess}} app, crashed on 32-bit Platform/iOS devices once over 2^31 games had been started because of a signed integer game ID overflow. 64-bit iOS devices were not vulnerable to this problem. A patched version was quickly rolled out once the overflow was diagnosed.

* The famous KillScreen in ''VideoGame/PacMan'' was caused by attempting to proceed to Stage 256 -- the game keeps track of the stage number by the fruit icons in the corner, and there's always supposed to be at least one. Similar glitches also exist in ''VideoGame/{{Galaga}}'' (which just causes the game to freak out and then crash) and ''VideoGame/DigDug'' (which causes a level that insantly kills you because an enemy spawns in the same space as the player).

This is a programming-specific relative of ReadingsBlewUpTheScale. In older video games, a KillScreen or MinusWorld is often a result of this, when trying to read data for level "257" causes a RealityBreakingParadox. Compare CrossesTheLineTwice when a situation is so horrible that, whether intentionally or not, it becomes hilarious.

** In ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'', [[GlitchEntity Missingno.]] will always be at an absurdly high level due to the nature of the variables being read - namely, the characters in the player's [[HelloInsertNameHere name]], which will always have a hexadecimal value above 100, the normal {{Cap}}. Attempting to level up your level 255 [=Missingno.=] with a Rare Candy, however, will reset its level to 0, and attempting to train it at "legal" levels past this will prove difficult because without the advanced level multipliers, it's quickly found out the hard way that it has the 6th lowest base stat total of all Generation 1 Pokémon, only being beaten out by Magikarp and the not-fully-evolved [[ComMons bugs]].
** In Generation I, if a Pokémon has 255 or 511 HP, any attempts to use self-healing moves like Recovery and Softboiled will fail.

* This is done InUniverse in ''VideoGame/SuperPaperMario'' when Dimentio brings the heroes to a dimension of his own design that multiplies his powers 257-fold. Because of the overflow, his strength is reset. Not that it mattered; it also strengthened the heroes as well.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* The MillenniumBug was a {{defied}} example of this trope. Due to resource constraints, early programmers stored the "year" variable as a two-digit number; however, this meant that when the year 1999, stored as "99", became the year 2000, it would roll over as 1900 instead, potentially causing unintended operation. Fortunately, the attention called to the impending problem prompted tech companies to spend the money needed to upgrade any remaining affected systems before the year 2000 hit, so only minor damage occurred.

* In ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords'', a conversation option with your Wookiee teammate Hanharr allows you to break his will, reducing his Intelligence stat in exchange for a Strength increase. A GoodBadBug left over from the game's TroubledProduction lets you do this repeatedly, eventually sending him ''past'' zero and [[GeniusBruiser raising his Intelligence to the maximum possible value]].

*** the Thick Club held item can increase Marowak's Attack past 1023 (2^10-1), causing it to roll over to 0 and deal minimal damage.

Note that the limit does not strictly apply to 8-Bit systems and thus can be higher than 256, but occurrences of that sort are the most famous and most common due to the comparatively low cap. While mostly obsolete because of [[TechnologyMarchesOn technology improvements]], these types of errors still remain famous because they were known to cause some [[GoodBadBugs pretty hilarious crashes]] or {{Ascended Glitch}}es.

* In ''Webcomic/KidRadd'', the title character's "Mega Radd" ChargedAttack only charges up to a max value of 255 in his own game because it was 8-bit. [[spoiler:But the game's programmer was lazy and didn't set an actual limit in his coding. This becomes a [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt potentially major problem]] much later in the comic, long after Radd set foot outside his game]].

* The MillenniumBug was a {{defied}} example of this trope. Due to resource constraints, early programmers stored the "year" variable as a two-digit number; however, this meant that when the year 1999, stored as "99", became the year 2000, it would roll over as 1900 instead, potentially causing unintended operation. Fortunately, the attention called to the impending problem prompted tech companies to spend the money needed to upgrade any remaining affected systems before the year 2000 hit.

** ''VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl'' introduced the move Trick Room, which is supposed to invert Speed order. However, from ''VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite'' onwards, if a Pokémon has 1809 or more effective Speed, it overflows and still moves first.

[[caption-width-right:350:If [[Literature/DoAndroidsDreamOfElectricSheep androids someday DO dream of electric sheep]], [[AltText don't forget]] to [[UsefulNotes/ProgrammingLanguage declare sheepCount as a long int]].]]