This story might not make sense unless you know what a "kill screen" is First! Thank you for sticking around. No drama today. Just a little story that is kinda funny when viewed in retrospect.
So... as a kid I used to hang out at an arcade/billiards called Gold Tips. After a while the owner and managers got used to me being there and would often let me play anything I wanted for free if the place wasn't too crowded. Sometimes they would give me quarters on the sly to play.
Around the time Nintendo had arcade machines of Nintendo games like Super Mario Bros. Next to that machine was Donkey Kong. Donkey Kong usually had a small line in front of it so I barely got a chance to play. That day nobody cared. So I grabbed a stool and the free quarters and played all day.
After a few hours I was running low on quarters and knew when I ran out that I should go home. So I had to make every quarter count. All I wanted was a high score. So I restarted and tried hard. After what felt like forever... My bladder got real full but I didn't want to give up my game. I waved the manager over and told him to play while I go to the bathroom.
So I go to the bathroom as fast as I could, washed my hands and ran out drying on my shirt. As I returned, the manager was rubbing his head in confusion.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"I dunno. It's not working right. Look."
And then he pushed the control stick to the right. Little Mario took 3 steps and died. The manager told me to hold on. He unplugged it and restarted it. I watched the BIOS boot screen. It was the first glimpse I saw of one. He started a new game and everything seemed to work now. So I played it till the Game Over screen, went home and never thought about it since.
Fast forward about 15 years. I'm watching a documentary called King of Kong. As I watched it I became overwhelmed with nostalgia. So as I'm explaining to a friend that Donkey Kong glitched out on me back in the day as the segment about kill screens appears. I go silent. Apparently it was a big deal and nobody knew.
So as the narrator explains that only a handful of people in the world have done it, I'm laughing.
Anyways, recently I tried Donkey Kong again recently and couldnt even best the default high score. I went from Jimmy in the Wizard to Forrest Gump. Insane.
Tell your friends about me! Co-op 4 life!
The Jaded Gamer
XBL/PsN: IamFN2K
Twitter: @IamFN2K
