Nonstandard Game Over: Difference between revisions

** 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.

* In the computer game version of [[Frederick Forsyth]]'s ''[[The Fourth Protocol]]'' (in 1984), you have to uncover a Soviet plot to explode a nuclear bomb near a US Air Force base in Britain, to influence the upcoming British elections and lead to the election of an anti-NATO, anti-American, anti-nuclear, pro-Soviet government. Usually, if you take too long or don't get anywhere with the plot, you get a memo telling you you're [[Reassigned to Antarctica|being reassigned to]] [[British Frozen Rocks with Penguins and Landmines|the Falkland Islands]], until you get far enough. When you find the bomb you have to defuse it, and if you mess it up you are told the plan succeeded: Britain fell to the Soviets, and they started working on Europe from two fronts. But sometimes a different ending appears: the bomb leads to a limited nuclear war, destroying both sides and making the northern hemisphere uninhabitable. This comes "From the annals of the Australio-Indonesian Empire..."

* 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!")