Nonstandard Game Over: Difference between revisions
m
clean up
m (update links) |
m (clean up) |
||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''"The house and everyone within a 5 mile radius have been destroyed in a massive nuclear meltdown. THE GAME IS OVER."''|''[[Maniac Mansion]]''}}
In most games, players see the dreaded [[Game Over]] screen when their [[Player Character|in-game avatars]] are defeated in some way. Maybe they [[Life Meter|took too many wounds]] and lost all their [[Hit Points]], or maybe they fell down too many [[Bottomless Pits]] and lost all their [[Video Game Lives|lives]]. They could have failed an [[Sliding Scale of Video Game Objectives|objective]] or lost a critical [[Non-Player Character|NPC]]. They might have forgotten to pause the game while reading the walkthrough they pulled from [[GameFAQs]] and the game's [[Timed Mission|timer ran out]]
But, there are a few games that give special punishments to particularly noteworthy player screw-ups. [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|These are]]
'''There are a few variations on this theme:'''
* Otherwise standard game overs (loss of hit points, lives, etc.) that receive special treatment because they occur in a particular place or time (e.g., a unique death cutscene for losing a [[Boss Fight]]);
* Punishment game overs that the game levies against usually unsuspecting players who attempt to [[No Fair Cheating|break the rules]] or derail the plot (e.g., when the game actually lets you [[Refusal of the Call|say "no" to the main quest]]
* Odd or bizarre noncanon endings [[Press X to Die|that the player can choose to acquire]], which usually involve failing a mission objective in such a way that causes the death of the main characters.
Line 21:
{{examples}}
* One of the ''[[Kirby]]'' games has a [[Boss Rush]] mini-game. When you lose all your lives, you [[Death Throws|fall down one last time as if there's a hole]]. And instead of "Try Again" and "Quit", you get "Accept Defeat".
* ''[[Tales of Destiny]]'' offers a unique example: if you manage to defeat Leon when he attempts to arrest you (a task requiring either cheats or insane amounts of early-game level grinding), you are treated to a ''positive''
* In ''[[Splinter Cell]]: Double Agent'', if you fail the final minigame-for-a-boss, you are treated to a very disturbingly realistic portrayal of emergency services and new helicopters flying over {{spoiler|Manhattan as a smoking ruin after a nuclear blast.}}
** And in the first ''[[Splinter Cell]]'' game, you are on a training facility, and in certain point you get a gun. If you turn back and kill an officer, you get fired.
Line 27:
* In ''[[Romancing SaGa 3|Romancing Sa ga 3]]'', if you die during the battle with the final boss, you get to watch it cause an explosive chain reaction that destroys the entire universe. It even destroys the depiction of the world map (on an actual map) that is floating in space when you access it. {{spoiler|It blows up if you beat the game, too}}.
* In ''[[TimeShift]]'', if you block or otherwise interfere with certain movable objects while using your Time Reversal power, you get a non-standard Game Over due to [[Time Paradox]].
* The normal [[Game Over]] sequence in ''[[King's Quest]] VI'' is a very short cutscene in Hades. There are three
** The [[Baleful Polymorph]] [[Game Over]] is definitely worth a chuckle if you're playing [[Hey, It's That Voice!]]; Alexander is voiced by Robbie Benson, who was the voice of [[Beauty and the Beast|the Disney's Beast]]!
* In ''[[A Dance With Rogues]]'', your character is subject to two loyalty tests in the middle of the first chapter. Failing either of them (selling the thieves' guild to the man in the Mysterious Note quest or going off north instead of returning to Betancuria in Lesson 7) causes the game to end and the standard credits to roll.
Line 59:
** Anything that resulted in a "normal" dead body would trigger this scene. (Interestingly enough, getting killed in an alley would result in one of the techs saying Larry screwed up again, but nowhere else.) Getting run over wouldn't, as he'd be too, er, sticky to be dumped into the bit bucket.
** More obscurely, if the player took too long to reach the end game, Larry sees the sun rising, and then shoots himself in the head in despair over ''still'' [[A Man Is Not a Virgin|being (technically) a virgin]].
* The original ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' used the Nonstandard Game Over as a plot device on one occasion, being told before a possibly-fatal [[Mini Game]] that "[[This Is Reality|there are no continues, my friend...]]". And, of course, dying results in a
** The game can go even further to psych out the player here. If you haven't saved in a while, the game will detect this and call you out on it. "Do you really want to lose all of your progress?"
** In ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]'' during the Tanker chapter, if Snake gets caught sneaking around during the Commandant's speech, the player is shown the soldiers in the Tanker taking Snake into custody before "[[Game Over]]" is displayed.
Line 67:
** In ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'', die during the final battle & you will be given the choice to "Continue" or "Exist". Choose the latter, and you will hear Ocelot tell you "Not yet, Snake!" and you will have to choose again, only "Exist" will have returned to the traditional "Exit".
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ker0WQAIf88 Gurlugon]. Possibly the most bizarre game over sequence in the entire series.
* The ''[[Disgaea]]'' series tends to give you often humorous
** In ''[[Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories]]'', a multitude of characters propose bills to be the main character in the Dark Assembly. Should they be passed (and there's a very high chance they will without any intervention on your part), you immediately get a game over. Also, {{spoiler|''winning'' the [[Hopeless Boss Fight]] against Laharl, or the one against Etna, nets a
** Revisiting the final level of the first chapter in ''[[Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice]]'' and winning the battle there before a certain point in the story also results in a humorous
* Signing a ceasefire with a major enemy group in ''[[Super Robot Wars]] Alpha 3'' results in a sequence of events over several missions in which the situation [[It Got Worse|degrades until your army dies a horrible death]]. In the same game, should a particular character be defeated in action, its defeat causes the end of all existence, complete with a special game over screen.
* RPG [[H-game|eroge]] made by Eushully tend to have this. Even losing in battles that should be somewhat easy will result in a slightly extended ending. For example, losing against an assassin in ''Reiki'' has you have the main character talk with said assassin before going to the game over screen.
Line 90:
* ''[[Metal Saga]]'' features several Nonstandard Game Overs, usually for humor and initiated with a single conversation. The very first appears before the game even begins, when the player character's mother asks if he'd like to stay and work in the family garage instead of embarking on a quest for fame and fortune. If the player agrees, an epilogue detailing the rest of the character's life (which is entirely un-noteworthy) begins and the game ends. The player character may also marry his first prospective party member at any time simply by asking her, at which point they both quit adventuring to start a family.
* In an [[Older Than the NES]] example, many old text adventures ([[Interactive Fiction]]) games allow you to easily recover from death (sometimes by simply "walking out" of the afterlife, sometimes with an "undo" command) but have some exceptions where that doesn't work if you ''really'' screw up, such as by wiping yourself from existence through [[Temporal Paradox]].
** Example: The original ''[[Zork]]'' trilogy always cut to a prompt allowing you to "RESTART, RESTORE or QUIT" upon death. The notable exception was if you died in ''Zork 3'' while using the time machine to travel to the
** The [[Nintendo Hard|notoriously cruel]] ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (video game)|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' text adventure also does this if you, as Ford Prefect, negate the events of the game by not saving Arthur Dent from the Earth's destruction in the first place. It is particularly notable for causing chaos and consternation among players by actually quitting the game in MID-SENTENCE.
** Quitting the game became a less acceptable option over time at [[Infocom]], but the ''Enchanter'' Trilogy, sequel to the ''[[Zork]]'' Trilogy, kept up the tradition of having special ways to die. In all three games it is possible to take actions that not only cause you to fail your mission but make the world substantially worse off than it was before. Thus, your score displayed at the game over prompt, which normally would be some score taken out of a total (100 out of 400, say) and give you a rank dependent on your score (from "Charlatan" to "Enchanter" to "Sorcerer" to "Archmage"), would instead become a score of -100 and your rank would be "Menace to Society". In the original game, ''Enchanter'', one earned this rank for releasing a powerful Lovecraftian demon upon the land; in the sequel, ''Sorcerer'', one earned this rank for successfully tracking down your demon-possessed mentor and allowing the demon to transfer itself to your far more powerful body; and in the finale, ''Spellbreaker'', it was revealed that the [[Evil Plan|entire plot of the game was a cunning trap]] and that actually succeeding in your goal would grant you this rank if you didn't see the ruse in time.
Line 97:
* In the ''[[Strike]]'' series of Helicopter games, simply getting yourself blown up would earn a normal game over. Failing a mission or otherwise rendering the level [[Unwinnable]], however, would result in your being recalled to base for a dressing-down from your commanding officer which changed according to what you did wrong. (From ''Jungle Strike'''s first level, if you [[Turned Against Their Masters|tried some]] [[Monumental Damage]] of your own: "You redecorated the [[White House]], Beruit style!")
** In ''Nuclear Strike'', it is possible to have a nonstandard game over piled on top of a nonstandard game over. If you tried to refuel thrice after being told to return to base because of a SNAFU, General Earle orders your (literal) termination for going rogue.
* The ''[[Code Geass]]'' game for Nintendo DS normally uses a still picture from the show's ending credits as the Game Over screen, with a voiceover by C.C. admonishing the player to not be so stupid next time. However, one can earn a
** Until you realize one of the two things happen - One would be that now it is a Special Administrative Region, the other nations of the world will begin the power grab ala Nightmare of Nunnally. Or that V.V. and other Geass assassins will eventually come in and make sure the place is an Area once again...
* ''[[Metroid Prime]] 3'' has one: Stay in [[Super-Powered Evil Side|Hyper Mode]] for too long, and you see a cutscene of Samus turning into Dark Samus, followed by a modified death screen. Normally, the game over screen has a red splatter appear, presumably blood. If you get this Nonstandard screen, there's this dark blue blotch (Phazon?) that grows on the screen, and the words "Terminal Corruption" appear.
Line 120:
* ''[[Rise of Nations]]'' has two kinds of Game Over: the normal defeat, when your opponent simply wins, and the [[The End of the World as We Know It|Armageddon defeat]], which happens if you [[Nuke'Em|drop too many nukes]], and basically means everybody loses. Similarly, the [[Cold War]] campaign has two Game Overs: the normal defeat, where the opposing side wins, and the Nuclear Holocaust ending, where everybody fires [[Mnogo Nukes]].
** So does ''Theatre Europe''. Notably, you [[Unwinnable|can't win]] as Warsaw Pact under the hardest difficulty, as NATO will, as a desperate measure, launch a major nuclear attack against you, leading to an [[Endofthe World As We Know It]]. (Conversely, when playing as NATO your goal is to defend yourself for a requisite number of turns; if you ever enter the Warsaw Pact territory, the enemy will start a global nuclear war. You can also trigger it deliberately, or by provoking the enemy by launching one too many nuclear missiles against them.)
* ''[[Fire Emblem]] [[Fire Emblem Elibe|7]]'' has an interesting case - in one of the sidechapters, the completion goal is to make it to the other side of the map and talk to the boss, [[Pirate|Fargus]], in order to earn being ferried by his crew to the Dread Isle. If you so choose to attack Fargus, he'll probably kill any unit you have at the time. But if you [[Lord British Postulate|somehow defeat him]], the mission ends with him telling you that you now have no way to continue.
* In ''[[Silent Hill 3]]'', if you die a certain way or in a certain place, Valtiel is shown carrying away Heather's body.
** And if Heather shoots Claudia, Heather "births" the god and dies in a rather gruesome cutscene, where Claudia says "Oh God, bring us salvation".
Line 133:
* In ''[[Persona 4]]'', if someone appears on the Midnight Channel, you have to rescue the person from the TV world before a certain date passes. If the deadline passes and you didn't save the person, said person will die when the fog is at its heaviest. Your hero collapses and you are then given the option to exit to the title screen or flash back seven days to try again.
** The stated in-game reason for this Game Over is not because the person dies (though that's obviously the motivation), but because the death frustrates any further attempts by the hero to investigate the murders due to lack of clues or information.
*** And the very last
* In ''[[Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World]]'', if you defeat {{spoiler|Lloyd and Marta}} in the game's penultimate boss battle, you don't proceed to the real final boss. Instead, you get a scene where {{spoiler|Emil [[Driven to Suicide|commits suicide]] upon seeing that he wounded Marta while faking possession by his [[Super-Powered Evil Side]] and becomes a core.}} The final scene is days later and shows Marta {{spoiler|writing in a diary as if to Emil, noting that they will never see him again.}}
* There are three non-standard Game Overs in ''[[Harvest Moon]] DS'' and two or three in ''[[Harvest Moon]] DS Cute''.
Line 142:
** ''Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town'' and ''Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town'' have this as well. If you choose not to inherit the farm after the mayor asks you, the mayor will be sad and the ending credits will roll.
** In the ''Wonderful Life'' subseries, your game ends if you are not married by the end of the first year. In later chapters, allowing your farm and shipment levels to fall by the wayside can cause your wife to leave you. In the [[PlayStation 2]] special edition, you can end the game in the first cutscene by simply telling Takakura you don't want the farm.
* A Japanese interactive movie ''Super Voice World'' has several
* In the Atari game ''Kya: Dark Lineage'', standard Game Overs show a screen saying "Game Over". However, near the game's end, if you're hit by {{spoiler|traitor Aton}}'s Wolfen Gun, you can see a sequence where Kya [[Transformation Trauma|slowly transforms into a scary, female Wolfen]]. And that's The End.
** In fact, Kya remaining as Female Wolfen would solve Brazul's need of {{spoiler|kidnapping Nativs}} to obtain more Wolfens...
Line 154:
* In the ''[[Magic Knight Rayearth]]'' RPG for the SNES, there is one battle were you're pitted agains your [[Mind Control|mind controlled]] friends. Defeat them, and you get a screen telling you that [[What the Hell, Player?|you're a bad friend]], and a game over.
** Losing to any of the final dungeon's bosses gives you a Nonstandard Game Over as well; each boss has a different one.
* There is exactly ''one'' of these in ''[[Rayman]] 2: the Great Escape''
* ''[[Cave Story]]:''
** After the standard [[Critical Existence Failure]], the gameover screen reads "You have died. Would you like to try again?" If your [[Oxygen Meter]] runs out underwater, the screen changes to "You have drowned." If you fall into either of the two [[Bottomless Pits]] in the game, it reads "You were never seen again..."
Line 192:
* In ''[[EVO Search for Eden|E.V.O.: Search For Eden]]'', several bosses ask you to join them (the "Tyrasaurs" at the end of the dinosaur stage, the Birdman King in the first mammal stage, and the boss Rogon in the final stage). Saying "yes" results in a short (and usually somewhat comedic) ending, then puts you back on the world map.
** You also get dialogue choices with the Yeti, but both lead to the same result (fighting him)
* ''Super Bases Loaded'' for the SNES. In this particular sports game, you end up getting the
** ''Baseball Stars'' uses a similar "mercy rule", ending the game if either team is ahead by ten or more runs at any point.
*** So did Sega's ''Sports Talk Baseball'' for the Genesis. It was explicitly called a "10-run Rule", and the talking commentator would say the team won "by domination".
| |||