Mundane Made Awesome/Video Games
- Perhaps the most infamous Real Life videogaming example is Kaz Hirai's ecstatic reveal of Ridge Racer on the PlayStation Portable at E3 2006, which has become a Memetic Mutation.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney lives off this trope. While trials are important and serious affairs in real life, in the game a trial is an epic battle of wits. With theme music, action lines, people reacting to arguments as if they have been physically struck, and finger pointing... lots and lots of finger pointing. That it remains hilariously self-aware of its over-the-top nature only makes the games that much more appealing.
- It's even lampshaded by Maya in the second game. "Spine tingling legal action! Mind numbing legalese! You will say 'wow!'"
- The very courtroom seems to be geared to a legal battle of wits, with the defense attorney and the prosecutor facing each other and the witness standing in the middle, as opposed to the standard "both lawyers facing the judge" courtroom.
- That's actually the standard layout for Real Life Japanese courtrooms, which look exactly like that. Not as much spiky hair and whip-swinging, though.
- Actually, it may be a subversion. It IS awesome.
- Aaand... they just outdid themselves. Ace Attorney Investigations applies the WDYMINA factor to Edgeworth's logical thought processes.
- Aaand... they outdid that even further by combining two fandoms: Professor Layton VS Ace Attorney. Cue the rejoicing.
- Contrast to This is Wonderland, the most unglamorous courtroom drama ever attempted. Most of the lawyers are either woefully unprepared or dealing with very severe personal problems. Or just bastards. This form of cinematography is frequently used for the purpose of extremely dark satire, complete with romantic, life-affirming theme music, a switch to commercial breaks that borders on the Neo-Classical, and lots of architectural shots.
- Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 brings Phoenix Wright into the cast, complete with a potent, spammable Finger-Poke of Doom when in Turnabout mode. His ultimate attack? "The real culprit...IS YOU!" Yes, this means he can defeat a world-destroying horror by providing evidence of guilt and giving it the pointer finger!
- The girls of Touhou's Scarlet Devil Mansion playing The best game of Jenga EVER!
- A particular Fan Vid called "Sakkyun Hair Makeover." Sakuya finds Meiling sleeping on the job, and decides to take advantage of the situation by...styling her hair. Like almost every girl from the Windows generation up. And cosplaying as them. All done with dramatic poses and ham.
- In the game Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, everything the Prince does is awesome. Even a relatively mundane act, such as taking a drink of water, is accompanied by a dramatic bullet-time camera rotozoom closeup, heroic music, and whooshing sound effects. It's the coolest water-drinking animation ever devised.
- Similar to the potion-drinking in the 3D Zelda games, where the camera closes on Link, who quickly "draws" the bottle, and after drinking, does an heroic lip-cleaning (sometimes breathing a fog colored as the potion). Only lacks different music and slow motion (though Time Stands Still as you drink) to try being more awesome.
- Taken even further in Super Smash Bros. Melee, where Young Link's single-player victory montage consists entirely of shots of him drinking milk, and the final triumphant chord coincides with a mouth-wipe in slow motion.
- In the same vein, Toon Link's Baton-taunt is so incredibly overdone that it makes his game-self look humble and modest in comparison. He waves that thing like the fate of the world would depend on it (OK, it once did, but that's not the case here).
- Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater plays this trope straight by inserting a vocals-only version of the game's theme song to an otherwise unremarkable ladder climbing sequence. This addition, however, has led to the ladder sequence becoming one of the game's most memorable parts, as many of those as there are in the game to begin with.
- Although by the end of it, it more closely resembles an Overly Long Gag, because climbing said ladder takes up the entire duration of the song. And the part where the song is a thinly veiled parody of spy film songs.
- And This scene involves the local equivalent of Light's potato chips.
- The game's many secret theaters merrily jog between this and a Crowning Moment of Awesome -- for example, let's play Rock, Paper, ROCKETLAUNCHER ! or Try to change the future to stay a main character, ogling some breasts in between and getting Ho Yay'd.
- Devil May Cry 3 has an Establishing Character Moment in its first cutscene, wherein Dante performs an utterly epic chair-sitting and phone-answering combo. Say this about Dante, he never does anything by halfs. Not even to answer a phone with nothing beyond "Sorry, not open for business yet." Link here at about 2:20
- The fourth ends with Dante kicking down a door, making a Charlie's Angels pose with Lady and Trish, having an explosion right behind him, and firing his guns indiscriminately. For no reason.
- This scene. Both Dante AND Agnus got into the act of being as over the top as possible before their fight!
- Slow. Motion. Pizza. Eating.
- Taking a break during battle while scythes are sticking out of his body to take a bite from said pizza.
- The Pokémon games all feature calm, ambient music while your character walks around. All very good and well... until Nintendo needed some music for the Pokémon levels of Super Smash Bros., at which point the songs (except for the battle themes, which are already awesome) gained a symphony orchestra's worth of strings, horns and electric guitars, and mutated into this, this and this. And that's before we get onto the Ominous Latin Chanting of the game theme itself...
- Ditto (pun semi-intended) for the Pokémon theme remixes in the Pokémon Stadium series.
- Brawl is made of this trope.
- The battle scenes in Pokémon Black and White could be seen as this due to the way the camera moves around almost constantly.
- Pokémon Colosseum/Pokemon XD did it first.
- Pokemon games have been doing this all over the place for years now. Music, battle settings and camera movement, attack animation... It's sometimes justified; when you're in a huge battle in the story or metagame, it does portray how awesome things get. But what should otherwise be a mundane 5 second battle with wild Pokemon you've run into a million times before, it starts to get a little ridiculous and some of it can make the battles last longer than they have to.
- Mario Strikers: Charged takes soccer--yes, soccer--and applies a LOT of Mundane Made Awesome to every aspect of the game. But don't take our word for it. And yes, everything--everything--in that video actually can happen in-game.
- Mario Strikers has nothing on Touhou Soccer, as exemplified in this clip. And this one... and this one, this one, this one... To name a few. What do you mean, it's not soccer?
- Touhou Soccer is a clone of the Captain Tsubasa game, which is just as much as Mundane Made Awesome as its parody.
- The final boss battle of Super Mario Galaxy has Mario fight Bowser inside the Sun to techno music!
- The boss battle musics from Donkey Kong 64 are the music of their levels, with full synth orchestras. Common instruments include strings, vibraphones, pan flutes, oboes, and clarinets. This has spread to popular remix site VG Music, under the moniker "Boss Remix". Example from Luigis Mansion.
- In this interview the game's compositer Grant Kirkhope admitted he likes to "write big melodramatic tunes that are a bit tongue-in-cheek" and that "Bosses are always a good opportunity to do this." It was only expected for this other projects like the Banjo games and Grabbed By the Ghoulies to follow this trend.
- Scribblenauts: "...steak can be attached to a baby to attract lions..." Shows you that the ESRB really does have fun with their games, even though they may be taking it a bit too seriously.
- In Mega Man Battle Network 1-5 Lan jumps into the air and shouts "Jack in!! Mega Man! EXECUTE!" every time he does what is simply putting a plug in a slot (and he isn't even doing that in BN 4, 5, or 6 due to the PETs being wireless). This is taken a step further when he spins the PET it to make the "MegaMan Symbol".
- Or the officials' Mad Operation Skillz in EXE2 during the Shadowman chapter? Extreme keyboarding to the max!
- Throughout the series you're running an anti-virus program! It IS awesome, when you think about it. What do you think operating actually is? That's right, constantly manually rewriting code to adapt to a virus trying to defend itself. Granted, it IS in the form of Extreme Graphical Representation, but still, think about that for a minute.
- Viewtiful Joe. Joe's over-dramatic bullet time action poses can actually kill enemies.
- His "epic costume change" at the beginning of the second game (right after a Male Gaze of his girlfriend's new set) makes him perform a Ginyu Force style pose so a V can anticlimactically * poof* onto his hat.
Joe: "Go go phat-hat!"
Joe: "SHAZAM!" |
- Most of the Kunio-Kun series practically lives off this trope. Starting from River City Ransom, most of the series has lots and lots of comical violence, even the sports games, where it become so absurd it's just plain awesome. And it doesn't stop there. One game features a cross-country event where you can run through people's houses. Super Dodge Ball involves players not just getting eliminated, they DIE -- and players and the ball go flying all over the place. And there's a lot more where that came from:
- And that's not even counting the other versions of Super Dodge Ball. The Neo Geo version could be mistaken for an SNK game, or another Pocket Fighter.
- Nekketsu Volleyball Dayo Kunio-kun had rather weird teams. The smile team bounces the ball off their asses.
- Nekketsu! Street Basket -- Ganbare Dunk Heroes had not one, not two, but THREE hoops stacked on top of each other, reaching absurd heights. And that's not even mentioning the fact that you can break the hoops and used them as weapons. Mario's got nothing on this.
- The Kunio-Kun soccer games also had their insane share of violence, especially the second, which allowed you to jump, and you could pull off special shots and whatnot... And there's the weather changes, like lightning bolts.
- Downtown Nekketsu Baseball Monogatari let you do things just as drop-kick and slide-kick people, and throw the ball at the umpires!
- Being able to beat opponents silly in Ike Ike! Nekketsu Hockey is enough for the price of admission alone.
- Kunio no Oden is a puzzle game... That happens to be the visualisation of a food-eating contest.
- In Shin Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun-Kunio Tachi No Banka, you can play as Alex and Ryan's girlfriends and beat up enemies with them. So, What do you mean it's not Awesome?
- Kunio-Kun/Alex himself. He's the freaking hero of the entire series, an incredible fighter (without pulling out any Ki Attacks whatsoever, except the stat-affecting kinds of techniques, which kinda makes sense), a super-star sportsman, and he's got a girlfriend who can kick ass. King of Video Gaming Awesome.
- As of River City Super Sports Challenge, it is apparently fair sportsmanship to use grenades in a triathlon, throw opponents off cliffs, push them in front of oncoming trains, and drown them during swimming sessions.
- Near the end of Zork: Grand Inquisitor, Mir Yannick gives a speech, in which he praises the vast technological advances of the past hundred years. They're actually bloated praise for wonder knives, the Clapper, and ice cubes.
- The prologue of Dark Cloud 2 features a circus performance where an elephant bicycle-kicks a large ball (complete with The Matrix-style slow-motion pan-around camera work) and bounces it off two clowns' noses before catching it with its trunk.
- In The World Ends With You, players take part in a game for their survival, where they have to complete missions while facing insanely tough enemies, which can only be fought using reality bending, psychic pins. (Or a stuffed cat, a cell phone, or a skateboard...)
- Minamimoto activating his final attack by reciting pi to 150 digits! You could say Sho is king of this trope. He demonstrates Math and Art can be pure awesome.
- SLAM ON!!!
- The bonus chapter "Another Day" is all about this. INPINCIBLE Shuto Dan would like you to know his pins are his SOUL and if you don't think the same... well, actually it doesn't occur to him that you might think any different.
- The creators of Duke Nukem really take the cake with this one.
- Most, if not all of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! involved people with real, though non-dramatic problems, which were fixed by dancing! Problems that included getting into college, cutting hair, recruiting for a school choir club, and not wetting the bed.
- Elite Beat Agents, its Americanized spiritual successor, is just as weird. Examples include two instances of babysitting, directing a movie (not the movie itself; the directing), driving a pregnant woman to the hospital, romancing a woman with artistry, digging for oil, auditioning for a play, and recovering from a cold.
- For an example that doesn't have much to do with the dancing (yet,) the opening of one of Ouendan 2's bonus levels has your target emit an epic scream because some guy dropped his cellphone. Then again, he dropped it in the sewers, and he needed to text his girlfriend for Christmas...
- Trauma Center: During most of the game, you feel like you are playing space invaders on someone's stomach. But again that "is" indeed awesome. Also, the final GUILT parasite at Under The Knife 1 Is a giant spider parasite that creates a web that seems to "Absorb" heartbeats?. Also, a doctor who begins an operation with a.... Asskicking Pose and/or hand gestures!
- Awesome Series, naturally, takes this and runs with it:
Nurse: There are deep lacerations along the sternum--WHERE ALIENS HAVE TAKEN OVER HIS BODY!! |
- Also, Surgical Bullet Time.
- Heroes of Might and Magic V has a lot of this during the in-game cutscenes. The characters have very few scripted gestures they can perform, so you often see them waving their arms around and glowing with arcane power while holding a perfectly normal conversation. Narm ensues.
- The little-known DS adventure game LifeSigns: Surgical Unit has this in ridiculous quantities, especially in the first game, which had dramatic cutaways practically every time you took a step.
- Also, when the main character, Tendo, finishes up an operation, he always comments on his sutures ("That's... Perfect!") accompanied with a light flash and sound effect for no apparent reason.
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 Just... well, just this.
- Oh snap!
- How do you vent your frustration over Mega Man 2's Air Man? Put it in the form of a music video.
- The game Audiosurf generates levels based on audio files. You're able to induce this effect yourself once you realize that not only can you give the same effect to less energetic song, but for any audio file, from speeches, to a recording of the Argument Clinic sketch, to John Cage's 4'33.
- One of Final Fantasy VIII's early cutscenes is of a satellite dish being turned on. It gets the full FMV treatment: dramatic camera motion, gratuitously complex machinery at work, the whole nine yards. It even finishes by beaming a frickin' laser into space.
- Final Fantasy X-2 features the same fetch quests that so dominate the RPG genre, save that this time they're all completely goddamn extreme. Complete with Charlie's Angels poses.
- In Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy, Laguna calls his own Perfect EX Burst "The greatest attack ever!"
- In the early Persona games, the eponymous Personae were called forth by just sort of willing them into being. Perhaps with the occasional cry of "Persona!" or "Help Me!". In Persona 3, Personae are summoned by shooting yourself in the head. In Persona 4, the gun-shaped Evokers are removed, and Personae are now summoned by shattering tarot cards (typically via an over elaborate strike with one's weapon, though the protagonist uses his bare hands because he's just that Badass)
- In Dark Forces Saga 2: Jedi Knight one of Kyle's Idle Animations is shaving his beard with a lightsaber
- In the same game, often times, you will be, say, walking through a perfectly mundane hallway with some of the most epic music in the game. Often with...amusing results. Probably unintentional, sadly.
- No More Heroes. The Coconut Collector guy says that coconuts are more important than human life and doing jobs gives you favour with the God of Mowing/Garbage/Whatever.
- The opening cutscene of Fable 2 has a small bird flying through a city, accompanied by epic music. It then poops. The cutscene focuses on the poo, and goes into Bullet Time as it falls...then lands straight on the Hero's head.
- The opening cinematic of Fable 3 has the mock-epic escape of the Rebellious Chicken.
- The opening video for Gaia Online's MMO zOMG! features a character putting on some rings to epic music. The rings then burst into flame. Justified, as A) this is Gaia Online, and B) the rings in question are the Improbable Weapon being used to fight Everything Trying to Kill You in the game.
- Makai Kingdom: Corn.
Zetta: "I, Overlord Zetta, DO NOT FEAR CORN, KETTLE OR OTHERWISE!" |
- In the PlayStation 2 and Wii rereleases of Resident Evil 4, Leon can get a gangster outfit with a Cool Hat. If you hit the reload button while using the infinite ammo Chicago Typewriter, he'll instead reach up and adjust it. On the third push, the camera angle changes to low-angle, he flings the hat into the air, and catches and dons it with a pose more suited to someone from High School Musical.
- Destroying all humans is awesome in its own right. Being the alien, hiding among the unwitting humans as ominous theremin-laden music plays, and then revealing yourself and causing mass hysteria and humongous explosions.
- Disaster: Day of Crisis has natural disasters combined with battling an former elite special forces unit, which is awesome in itself. But Evans likes to try and take things up a notch whenever he can, and he does this in the final chapter, first fighting Ray in a Metal Gear expy, then following up with an epic hand-to-hand fight (also like Metal Gear Solid). And he does all this while the pair are in a hurricane. And then he tries to set off a nuke. I repeat, IN THE MIDDLE OF A HURRICANE.
- Dragon Quest Swords has the tombola sequence at the item shop, which is given all of the pomp and circumstance of unleashing a Mighty Strike to what amounts to spinning a wheel for a single ball to pop out, although the balls that give out higher tier prizes do tend to be shot out of the machine with the force of a cannon shot and skid and spark afterwards.
- Rhythm Heaven is all over this trope, with games dedicated to picking vegetables, eating dumplings, and kicking soccer balls made incredibly awesome by the music and settings.
- Complete any level in Peggle (ANY level) and the game goes into slow-mo, cranks up Ode to Joy, and draws a trail of rainbows behind your ball.
- Castle Crashers. From fighting giant literal Cat Fish, weird..Giant fuzzy black things...Cute Teddy bears that attack you with dead fish, using a lollipop or a carrot as your own weapon... FIGHTING TO THE DEATH TO SEE WHO KISSES THE PRINCESSES AFTER YOU BATTLE HEROICALLY TOGETHER TO SAVE THEM.
- In Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, epic music plays as Regal does what can only be described as turning off the lights. Sure he's using special handcuffs, but Regal wearing handcuffs is not exactly something new.
- Taking the Daredevil trait in The Sims 3 allows you to go EXTREME versions of mundane things. 'Read something EXTREME' or 'Take EXTREME shower', for example.
- Taking the Evil trait gives you actions like 'Wash hands with evil soap' and 'Read something maniacal'.
- Mega Man ZX Advent is loaded with this. Here's an example, and a more X-TREME example! During gameplay, MegaMerging takes less than a second.
- Street Fighter IV has its final boss. An evil clone who can teleport, use everybody's attacks, and has an absolutely epic voice, and is borderline Nightmare Fuel announces his name... "I... am... SETH!"
- And this is without even mentioning that Seth looks an awful lot like Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen. With a spinning Yin-Yang symbol in his stomach and no genitals.
- Psychonauts in general tries -- and throughout the game succeeds fantastically -- at mixing the epic and the hilarious. Just have a look at the quote on the page for the game and its context. That's only the beginning -- try Kochamara Calling His Attacks, a Milkman Conspiracy, fluorescent pink bulls wearing boots, a Depraved Dentist sporting a shower cap and a steel claw arm that doubles as a pepper grinder among the antagonists, and that "in the end, aren't we all just dogs playing poker?"
- Deadly Creatures for the Wii takes this trope and applies it to ARACHNIDS. Seriously, the player controls a realistic-looking spider and scorpion, and both of them are capable of EPIC ARACHNID MARTIAL ARTS SMACKDOWNS on other arthropods, lizards, and small mammals:
- The Tarantula can use its spinnerets to make web zip lines, can spin-kick enemies into the air, and has a ninja stealth pounce attack that can hit a FLYING WASP.
- The Scorpion can block attacks and flip enemies with its pincers, and has the ability to perform insanely over-the-top finishing kills in very Kratos-esque ways. For example, it can spear a mantis with its stinger, use the tail to slam it into the ground, grab the mantis' claw with its own pincer, stab the mantis with its own goddamn claw, and finally drive the mantis' claw in even deeper with a slam of its pincer to finish the poor bastard off.
- The aluminum bat power-up in Backyard Baseball. The bat hits the ball, then the ball goes flying high (sometimes over a very, very tall wall) while a whooshing sound plays and immediately the character's Leitmotif (which is often Crowning Music of Awesome) plays.
- Even if not on a over-the-top manner, Sonic and the Black Knight features quick-time events for trading presents with villagers.
- Gauntlet Dark Legacy does this with the names of its Legendary Items, all spoken with epic intonation in Sumner's booming epic voice. The item names themselves also feature this with gems as the SCIMITAR OF DECAPITATION, THE LEGENDARY ICE AXE, and THE LAMP OF DARK OBSTRUCTION!
- As far as flash games go, Bejeweled 2 and Bejeweled Blitz. A color-matching puzzle game that has more and cooler explosions than most action games definitely qualifies.
- Bejeweled 3 turns it Up to Eleven, with even more epic soundtracks, even more awesome combos and special gems, game modes that are absurdly detailed for a gem matching game, complete with Nightmare Fuel-ish consequences (play Ice Storm for an idea of what I mean), and an instant replay available for big combos!
- Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII has scenes of Materia creation accompanied by battle music. This also applies to the squatting minigame.
- The cutscenes in Chrono Trigger are full of this, mixed with epic music, random close-ups and constantly changing camera angles.
- Dante's Inferno. That is all.
- Bayonetta uses this trope to an extreme, almost the entire game. From mixing drinks, to eating candy, to rescuing stuffed animals. Everything is over-the-top dramatic.
- The best example though, is taking her lipstick, loading it into the gun and firing it at the Big Bad with most badass line of the entire game.
Bayonetta: Don't fuck with a witch. |
- The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess features a sequence in which Link has to clear the Bokoblins out of an old ghost town, to a faux-Spaghetti Western guitar piece evocative of high-noon shootouts. Later, if you speak to the resident chicken as a wolf, it'll ask you to befriend all the cats in town. And if you accept, you have to hunt down all twenty cats...to the same high-tension piece they had him shooting Bokoblins to.
- Yakuza 3 whenever Kazuma is having a revelation and tapping away on his phone to update his blog.
- And in the sequel, Yakuza 4, the other playable characters take this up to eleven. Saejima doesn't cotton to all that newfangled technology, so he makes his Revelations with a wood-carving set, cutting an image from a piece of wood in the most epic fashion imaginable. Tanimura, while perfectly capable of using a cellphone, prefers to create his Revelations by sketchbook, demonstrating in the process that he apparently graduated from the Light Yagami School of Notebook Writing. Akiyama and Kiryu are epic as ever with EXTREEEEEME texting and blog-updating.
- Also, arguably, the Karaoke-sequences qualify. At first, you (or your date) is just singing in front of a screen, but halfway through the song, an appropriate stage materializes out of nowhere, and the singer starts rocking out with a full stage-show, including lights, pyrotechnics, dancing and microphone-spinning. Karaoke to the MAX!
- No love for Fire Emblem? This can be the only thing going through most of the characters' minds when they get critical hits! Flipping about elaborately when striking with your sword, and doing a tornado spin on your way back into position? Done. Stepping back, duplicating yourself, disappearing to strike the killing blow up close, then dropping down from the ceiling? Done. Throwing your shield the air, jumping higher than you threw the shield, landing before it while striking the killing blow, and catching it when it falls? Done. Waiting for your sword to gleam brilliantly in the sunlight? Done.
- In Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, you can choose to have every kill with a lightsaber move given a cinematic slow-motion effect.
- Smackdown vs. Raw. The game will "sell" a created wrestlers finishing the move like it's the most awesome thing ever. Watch as the game goes into slow motion with dramatic "whoosh" sound effect when your created wrestler does his finisher... an eye poke.
- In Zettai Hero Kaizou Keikaku, this is Enforced Trope in the Shakugan no Shana-themed Bonus Dungeon. All normal attacks are forbidden, and you have to fight using only over-the-top special attacks.
- Assassin's Creed II has... almost hilariously mundane Press X to Not Die events. For example, you get one to shake someone's hand.
- Hugging.
- For the yaoi fanboys and girls, that was an AWESOME hug.
- Drinking Coffee.
- Hugging.
- In Mass Effect 2, during Thane's loyalty mission, Commander Shepard is told about a Shepard VI, that spouts a line such as "I delete data like you on the way to real errors!" and when it crashes, the error message says that "The fate of the Galaxy is at stake, and you should try to fix the problem yourself". To which Tali or Garrus will comment "That's pretty extreme, Commander."
- Mirror's Edge is a game about mail delivery. Via Le Parkour, while people try to shoot you.
- Peeking at Hot Springs Episode is Serious Business for Winfield. With the most dramatic speech ever.
- Oh and fighting a boulder in generation 1, that definitely counts.
- In the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Visual Novel, the water gun fight in Tsumihoroboshi-hen brought this trope Up to Eleven with Night when the Invisible Scares you playing in the background of the entire 10 minute fight
- X-Play parodied the whole extreme game trend in the early to mid-2000s with Brian Blessed-level ham Johnny X-treme. The character decided no one was making a game X-TREME enough for him, so he created Johnny X-treme's X-treme Adventure, a game that will PUNCH YOUR BALLS OFF with gameplay that feels like BAKING A LOAD OF COOKIES UP IN YOUR ASS. Despite having nukes, chainsaw rocket launchers, flying snakes with searchlights, a water level with alligators used as skis, UNLOCKABALLZ(tm), and a battle with a sharkasaurus in front of the White House, the game got a completely un-X-TREME 3...out of 5.
- FIFA World Cup 2002 opens with a full orchestra, which plays at the start of a match to epic shots of the stadium, the teams walking out, over the top goal celebrations, missed shot reactions, even fouls. The series became far more cut and dry in future installments.
- NBA In The Zone had the option of having the national anthem before the game, like it were game seven of the finals or something.
- Saints Row the Third had a trailer which promised the game to be huge and full of never before seen footage from the game... of someone being punched in the nuts to truly epic music. As one Youtube comment claims, Grand Theft Auto raises the bar, Saints Row holds it to its crotch and pretends it's a cock.
- Dustforce makes cleaning awesome by adding trickjumps, wall running and slow-motion.
- In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, dragons don't breathe fire so much as wish it into existence with the Thu'um. Whichever smart-ass wrote the loading screen dialogs took this fact to the conclusion that when two dragons fight, they're really having an intense verbal debate.
- So does that make this an inversion? Awesome Made Mundane?
- Asura's Wrath, with Wyzen turning Giant sized, bigger than the planet, trying to poke Asura to death with a single finger. a finger as big as a country, but still a finger nonetheless. It's practically a Signature Scene for the game in how mundane it is.
- Inazuma Eleven series: Middleschoolers play football with Elemental Powers, completed with Calling Your Attacks and Power of Friendship.
- In Kinnikuman: Muscle Fight, Chienowa Man and Cubeman have a special animation that'll play out when they're low on health. They attempt to solve each other while "Ai o Torimodose!!" plays in the background. If Chie no wa Man is solved first, Cubeman swipes at him and causes Chie no wa Man to fall apart. Chienowa Man laments that he can't compete with modern toys. If Cubeman is solved, Chie no wa Man punches him and cause the panels to line up. Cubeman rockets into the sky and blows up.