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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Speedrunner Kosmic has passed Donkey Kong’s famously lethal level 22-1, but the achievement needs a precise qualifier: it was an emulator-assisted clear, not a conventional real-time run on an arcade machine. Frame advance enabled inputs too exact to reproduce consistently by hand. The run continued through later stages and ended at 22-6 without completing the game.
What is Donkey Kong’s kill screen?
In the US arcade version discussed by Ars Technica, level 22-1 is known as the kill screen because a timer bug leaves Mario only a few seconds to finish the stage. The game calculates the bonus timer with a limited 8-bit register. At level 22, the calculation overflows, leaving a value of 4; that bonus timer also acts as the stage’s overall timer.
For years, the stage was treated as effectively unbeatable. Kosmic’s run showed that 22-1 could be passed under specific conditions, though not by simply playing through it at normal speed.
How did Kosmic pass level 22-1?
The clear combined a movement glitch, frame-by-frame input control, and favorable timing in the game’s barrel sequence:
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- Broken-ladder movement: Mario can keep climbing past the top of the climbable part of a broken ladder. Ars describes the needed repeated input as holding down for four frames, then up for the fifth.
- Emulator frame advance: Kosmic advanced the game one frame at a time to enter those inputs precisely. The method did not modify the code on an official Donkey Kong arcade board, but the repeated timing was practically impossible to perform consistently with human hands in a real-time arcade run.
- Barrel timing: The timer only ticks down when a barrel is thrown, so a random delay in the throws can provide extra frames. Ars reports a 1-in-32 chance of a delayed throw and calculates roughly 1 in 40 octillion odds for the specific sequence that could let an ordinary climb finish 22-1 without the ladder glitch. That figure is Ars’s explanation of the game’s behavior, not an independently verified statistical study.
So the key distinction is not whether the game code was altered—it was not, according to Ars—but whether this was an ordinary arcade performance. It was not: emulator frame advance was central to the clear.
Did Kosmic beat the whole game?
No. After passing 22-1, Kosmic continued through later level 22 stages, but the run ended at 22-6. There, Mario reached the rivet stage and removed six of its eight rivets before the shortened timer ran out. Ars calls 22-6 the “true” kill screen, reporting no known way to remove the remaining rivets quickly enough under the timer glitch.
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Passing 22-1 is therefore a significant milestone, not a full completion of Donkey Kong.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Was this the first Donkey Kong kill screen?
No. “First” here means the first reported clear of the long-assumed unbeatable 22-1 screen—not the first time anyone reached a Donkey Kong kill screen.
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Guinness World Records’ 2020 statement says it reinstated Mitchell’s historical records after re-examining evidence and expert and eyewitness testimonials. Its record page names Billy Mitchell as the first gamer to reach a kill screen, on 7 November 1982. Reaching the screen and surviving it are different achievements.
In a separate historical account, NPR/WVXU reports that Steve Wiebe encountered level 22 in 1991 without initially understanding why Mario died. “I just died within about seven or so seconds,” Wiebe recalled. Donkey Kong had debuted in Japan in July 1981, and its difficult score-chasing game became a fixture of competitive high-score play.
These records and accounts should not be conflated: they describe different events, and Guinness World Records’ recognition is distinct from Twin Galaxies’ treatment of the competitive dispute discussed in the NPR/WVXU report.
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