As our three triumphant protagonists walk through the third gate, they hear a loud explosion before they were engulfed in light. They all had been killed in the game by a huge bomb. The bomb took out everyone and everything in the sector. Aech, Art3mis, and Parizval are shown the replay of their death before they get the oh so dreaded game over screen. However, Parzival doesn’t get taken to the game over screen. He gets taken to a screen that says, you have an extra life. He respawns in the middle of the battle field, which was completely destroyed by the blast, and he sees has only one thing from his avatar’s last life: a quarter. The same quarter he won from beating Pac-man. This quarter “was a single use artifact that gave my avatar an extra life” (Cline 36.408).
What if Parzival never played a perfect game of Pac-man? How would you feel in Aech’s and Art3mis’s position? Do you this artifact a one person only artifact or could more people go a find this artifact? Do you think if Parzival would’ve changed his play style if he knew he had an extra-life in his back pocket?