In the annals of video game legend, level 255 is the final frontier, the undiscovered country, the last playable level of Pac-Man.
If you were a teenager in the early 1980s, you probably assumed that, forgoing starvation, you could play Pac-Man to infinity on a single quarter. Conceivably, if you were truly in the zone, you could play through increasingly difficult levels forever, until either the machine or your heart blinked out. But this was never true. Because of a programming goof, Pac-Man offered an insanely fast level 255 that led, if it were beat, to a chaotic level 256 — part game, part computer-coding mess, and way too digitally glitchy to play, let alone beat. Still, there were rumors of souls who beat the unbeatable.
Who saw level 257.
Which, it turns out, is in …
Schaumburg.
At the Woodfield Mall, near Sears.