* Each time you die, the number of game overs you've had is counted.
* Your save file updates to record this.
* The number of startinglives is determined by the number of times you'ved game-overed, with the maximum being infinity lives (thereby providing a cap on the number of game overs you can go through in a typical game).

Requires a new patch.dta, but I'm not uploading that yet because not happy with the icon we've got going for infinity lives on the save select menu.