The article recounts a game-programming hack from the 8-bit PC era, when hardware was slow and programmers resorted to creative solutions to achieve playable speeds. The author, a college undergrad at the time, tells the story of a friend who had successfully replicated a graphically impressive arcade game on a 1980s-era PC, but was struggling with performance issues. The friend had managed to squeeze the game into the limited hardware, but it was still unplayable due to speed constraints, setting the stage for a clever and unconventional solution to be revealed.