Very rarely do people play Pac Man and reach levels in the 200’s but if you happen to hang in there long enough, something rather odd occurs after you get past level 255.
You reach what is referred to as a “kill screen”. This kill screen essentially renders the game unplayable and you start to see some really strange stuff going on. This isn’t just exclusive to Pac Man either, other arcade classics such as Donkey Kong and Dig Dug also have kill screens.
So what’s behind all of this? Why isn’t there some type of formal ending? Well, the folks behind Numberphile have put together a great video that explains exactly why this happens.
It is mainly because Pac-Man Used a 8-Bit ripple thing(forgot what it was called) to count how many levels you passed and could only count up to 255