“The ghosts are fast and they don’t turn blue.”

Some time ago, I shared a video talking about games that leaned into their bugs and made them part of their lore. One not listed there, perhaps because it’s the most obvious example, is Pac-Man’s kill screen. A few weekends ago at an arcade game convention, I spotted something really interesting. It was an arcade cabinet of Pac-Man, but with a twist: The game was modified and set up to start immediately at level 255, with all its challenges: fast timing, very angry ghosts, ineffective energizers. And once you beat that, you immediately face level 256: the infamous kill screen. I don’t think I have ever seen anything like this before. It reminded me of this joke someone made once about the olympics: that each competition should begin with the organizers grabbing regular people from the street to participate, just so the viewers can truly realize how impossibly hard those competitions are. I know a lot of software onboarding starts gently, walking you through basic scenarios to make you…