History Main / KillScreen

* Windows 95 and 98 will do this. After 49.7 days of up time a millisecond counter will overflow and crash the [=OSes=].

* Due to the limitations of the engine it runs on, ''VideoGame/{{Balatro}}'' has a kill screen on reaching Ante 39, where the required chips in order to beat the Small Blind is so massive that it causes an overflow error which is given as [=NANeINF=] as the score required. And even if you have a build that can score [=NANeINF=] chips, it still counts as ''less than the chips required to win'', thereby ending the run.

This is a common occurrence in older coin-operated video game machines, as the designers once had reasonable expectations that players would not have the time, patience, or quarters necessary to play the game for so long. But they underestimated what obsession can reserve on time, free up on patience and fish out of pockets. In addition, memory usage of making games had to be very efficient, forcing programmers to store level values in more unusual way. This resulted overflown numbers often altering sections of game's memory in a way it caused it to crash. It's less common for players to run into these in later games on stronger hardware with a higher overflow point; while that point ''is'' still there, it's so much higher that players will usually have to do weird things outside the scope of normal gameplay to trigger the Kill Screen.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' Beta 1.7.3 and earlier, terrain generation and game control near/outside of ±12,550,820 meters from the mathematical center of the map would completely freak out. As of earlier versions than even Minecraft Alpha, the map size is officially "infinite", but modern computers and Java Virtual Machines can't handle infinity. 12 million on a co-ordinate scale is just a little too high of a number for the virtual machine to handle. The cliffs that generate abruptly past this point are popularly known as "The Far Lands", and are the most well-known feature of this glitch. The terrain turns into strange, borderline ExistentialHorror-looking behemoths that seem to generate a crooked, minced reimagining of normal terrain in a 2D slice, and then the engine stretches that slice like a polygon prism into infinity. People who visit this location notice all kinds of crazy stuff, like stuttery movement, displaced block outline indicators, dropped item entities jittering back and forth, and extreme frame and responsiveness lag. It is technically possible to walk there in survival mode, and some people are currently trying, but it takes years to do it without cheating, so most people just hack the game and teleport there to get screenshots. Notch was going to fix the glitch, but then decided that it was cool looking and kept it in. In September 2011 the Beta 1.8 patch replaced the entire generator with a new fractal based one which unintentionally killed off the cliffs, and socially, the Far Lands title, which the fandom no longer uses in further versions. It did not, however, fix computer science's inherent problem with trying to parse infinity. In versions between Beta 1.8 and Full Release 1.7, the iconic cliffs are gone but many of the glitches were still present, including fake chunks and session crashes, and possibly a few new ones like bloated models for placed redstone and tripwires. Obscurely, this new location is known as The World Boundary, which became significantly less interesting once it was truncated entirely by the world border in Minecraft Full Release 1.8.

* ''Learn to Fly 3'' has this when you reach an altitude/distance of 107,375,182 units, due to that being the maximum possible value for any position in Flash. If you reach that cap vertically, the results are relatively mundane; either you [[http://i.imgur.com/ninCdP6.png?2 freeze in place]](if your shuttle was oriented straight up when you hit the cap), or you [[http://i.imgur.com/ubBjgRH.png?1 start going sideways]](if your shuttle was tilted in either direction when you hit the cap). Either way, unless you steer(which will cause you to start going sideways if you froze when you hit the cap), you won't lose any more fuel--you could keep going indefinitely unless you used up all of your fuel via steering or aborted the launch yourself. If you reached the cap horizontally, however, the results are far more interesting; you're treated to [[http://i.imgur.com/u1tzmEM.png?1 the sky trying to be the ground]] before the game locks up and forces you to refresh.

* ''VideoGame/{{Dogyuun}}'' is supposed to loop indefinitely as with most Creator/{{Toaplan}} games, but the game always crash shortly after entering loop 5. According to an interview, the developers did not find this glitch because nobody on the development team was good enough to get that far.

* Due to the limitations of the engine it runs on, ''VideoGame/{{Balatro}}'' has a kill screen on reaching Ante 39, where the required chips in order to beat the Small Blind is so massive that it causes an overflow error which is given as NANeINF as the score required. And even if you have a build that can score NANeINF chips, it still counts as ''less than the chips required to win'', thereby ending the run.

*** It is theoretically possible to play in a way that deliberately avoids the game crashing (which can happen any levels 155 and higher). If level 255 is cleared, then the game would wrap around to level 0 and stabilize again. [[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zAQIo_mnkk0c9e4-hpeDvVxrl9r_HvLSx8V4h4ttmrs/edit?pli=1#gid=1013692687 This painstakingly-researched document]] outlines the possible crashes and workaround in detail.

** In fact, the game will crash if a superhuman player manages to score 102 million points, which would put the player around gameplay level 237. Along the way, [[MinusWorld the game eventually begins to show corrupted color palettes for the tiles and glitched characters for the score.]]

This is a common occurrence in coin-operated video game machines, as the designers once had reasonable expectations that players would not have the time, patience, or quarters necessary to play the game for so long. But they underestimated what obsession can reserve on time, free up on patience and fish out of pockets. It's less common for players to run into these in later games on stronger hardware with a higher overflow point; while that point ''is'' still there, it's so much higher that players will usually have to do weird things outside the scope of normal gameplay to trigger the Kill Screen.

** If a player was superhuman enough to survive past level 29 for around 120 more levels, they would hit a point where the score counting code could take longer than a frame to execute, resulting in a true kill screen (described in more detail [[http://meatfighter.com/nintendotetrisai/#The_Kill_Screen here]]).

* In ''VideoGame/DuckHunt'', a kill screen occurs at Level 100 in Game A (1 duck). The level is displayed as "Level 0", ducks fly at insane speeds and jump around the screen so fast they're essentially unshootable, and then the dog repeatedly laughs at you until you get a Game Over. Interestingly enough, if you accomplish this in Game B (2 ducks) or Game C (clay shooting), it causes everything to become incredibly slow, after which it proceeds normally to level 1. In Game C, you even get to see up-close blast animations that are almost impossible to get at normal speed.

* Many games from the infamous ''VideoGame/Action52'' do this, e.g. 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 versions of this cartridge, some of these levels won't crash. Unlike most examples on this list, Action 52's kill screens are extremely easy to encounter and happen early on, as opposed to the usual convention of a kill screen only showing up so far into a game that 99% of people will never play long enough to see it.

* Many games from the infamous ''VideoGame/Action52'' 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. Unlike most examples on this list, Action 52's kill screens are extremely easy to encounter and happen early on, as opposed to the usual convention of a kill screen only showing up so far into a game that 99% of people will never play long enough to see it.

* ''Puzznic'' has a almost certainly intentional kill screen in the arcade version. Once you beat a level 8 section, it goes to the section below it on the level select, with the timer sped up. Each block of 4 levels completed speeds up the timer. After you beat 8(8-4) it goes back to 8 (1-1) with the timer even faster. If this is the second time you have played 8 (1-1) this game, the timer goes so fast it's completely impossible to beat the screen a second time.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' Beta 1.7.3 and earlier, terrain generation and game control near/outside of ±12,550,820 meters from the mathematical center of the map would completely freak out. As of earlier versions than even Minecraft Alpha, the map size, officially, is "infinite", but modern computers and Java Virtual Machines can't handle infinity. 12 million on a co-ordinate scale is just a little too high of a number for the virtual machine to handle. The cliffs that generate abruptly past this point are popularly known as "The Far Lands", and are the most well-known feature of this glitch. The terrain turns into strange, borderline ExistentialHorror-looking behemoths that seem to generate a crooked, minced reimagining of normal terrain in a 2D slice, and then the engine stretches that slice like a polygon prism into infinity. People who visit this location notice all kinds of crazy stuff, like stuttery movement, displaced block outline indicators, dropped item entities jittering back and forth, and extreme frame and responsiveness lag. It is technically possible to walk there in survival mode, and some people are currently trying, but it takes years to do it without cheating, so most people just hack the game and teleport there to get screenshots. Notch was going to fix the glitch, but then decided that it was cool looking and kept it in. In September 2011 the Beta 1.8 patch replaced the entire generator with a new fractal based one which unintentionally killed off the cliffs, and socially, the Far Lands title, which the fandom no longer uses in further versions. It did not, however, fix computer science's inherent problem with trying to parse infinity. In versions between Beta 1.8 and Full Release 1.7, the iconic cliffs are gone but many of the glitches were still present, including fake chunks and session crashes, and possibly a few new ones like bloated models for placed redstone and tripwires. Obscurely, this new location is known as The World Boundary, which became significantly less interesting once it was truncated entirely by the world border in Minecraft Full Release 1.8.

* As demonstrated in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJFXJ1QXyZ0 this video]], once you make the grueling effort reach the 133rd stage of the NES version of ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongJunior'', the game will start to behave strangely by playing [[SongsInTheKeyOfPanic the "time-running-out" jingle]] throughout the level and the bonus timer will display invalid scores such as "[=E800=]". By the time you reach the 135th stage, DK Jr. and the enemies will never spawn in and the game will hang for a moment before crashing spectacularly, displaying garbage graphics all over the screen, at which point there is nothing else for the player to do but reset the game.

* In the Commodore 64 port of ''VideoGame/RoboCop'', Level 3's time limit makes it impossible to complete without glitching through walls, which was likely intended to prevent players from accessing the unfinished Level 4.

* In the Commodore 64 port of ''VideoGame/RoboCop'', Level 6's time limit makes it impossible to complete without glitching through walls, which was likely intended to prevent players from accessing the unfinished Level 7.

* In the Commodore 64 port of ''VideoGame/RoboCop'', the penultimate level's time limit makes it impossible to complete without glitching through walls, which was likely intended to prevent players from accessing the unfinished final stage.