Game over
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Game Over is a traditional message in video games which usually signals the game has ended with a negative outcome. Notably used first in pinball machines and later arcade games, it has since been adopted widely and is now commonly associated with video games in general; however, it has been somewhat replaced over the years with messages such as "You died/You are dead" as seen in Resident Evil or "Busted/Wasted" as seen in the Grand Theft Auto series or "Good Night!" in Luigi's Mansion.
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[edit] History
[edit] Origin
The phrase was originally used in early devices such as electromechanical pinball machines, which would light up the phrase with a lamp (lightbulb).[1] This usage was carried over into arcade games. Early video arcade games such as Space Invaders have the phrase "Game Over" simply superimposed on the screen, while more recent games usually have a separate Game Over screen.
Some arcade games additionally used the "Game Over" not only to indicate the end of the game, but also to signify that the game was not currently being played; a flashing "Game Over" would appear over a demo of the game to indicate that it was not in use.
[edit] Modern usage
The usage of "Game Over" varies. Most games of today have dropped the usage of "Game Over" for a successful completion of the game, and instead use other ending texts such as "The End", "Congratulations", or an outro and credits sequence. "Game Over" is then only used to signify failure, though some series continue to use the phrase for all endings.
The most common methods of getting a Game Over is by running out of lives (e.g. Super Mario Bros.), or letting a time limit run out (e.g. Time Crisis), although Game Overs can also be triggered by failing certain objectives (e.g. letting Ashley die in Resident Evil 4). Most games, particularly arcade games, give the option to Continue. In arcade games require the player to insert more credits before a timer runs out in order to continue playing from where he/she last died. In console games, players either have a limited amount of credits (most prominently in ports of arcade titles), or have to earn Continues by filling certain conditions like collecting a particular rare icon, or collecting so many items in a bonus stage. If the player is unable to continue, the game ends, and the player will have to start from the beginning.
Genres such as RPGs, first person shooters and survival horror games do not have a life system. If a player dies or fails an objective, the game is over. Most games will feature a screen in which the player can retry from a checkpoint, beginning of a level, or a safe house, or quit and return to the main menu. In games such as Final Fantasy and Resident Evil, the player will instantly be taken to the main menu, and will have to continue from the last place they saved their game, either using memory saving or entering a password.
[edit] "Bad" endings
A "Game Over" is not necessarily the same thing as a bad ending. A bad ending occurs when the player finishes the game but is not completely successful for some reason. Bad endings are usually ending branches where the player has chosen poorly or otherwise failed some task. For example, the main character agrees to join the villain and rule together; the damsel in distress is not freed; the curse afflicting a character is not broken, and that character is dead in the ending; or the enemy is defeated but important goals/objectives are forgotten. These endings usually have their own unique screens and results distinct from a standard "death."
In all games in the The House of the Dead (series), there are multiple endings depending on the player's final score.
[edit] Variations
As games have matured, new twists have been found to keep Game Over sequences unique.
Destruction Derby uses the text "Race Over" over a checkered flag if your car explodes, Goldeneye 007 displays "Killed in Action" or "Mission Failed" on the debriefing screen, the Resident Evil series uses the ending text "You Are Dead" (also used by Total Distortion complete with a song with lyrics to that effect) or "You Died," usually in lettering that resembles bloody slashes or splatters (Resident Evil 5 on XBox 360 uses "Your Partner Died" if the player survived but his partner did not), and the Devil May Cry series further expands upon the latter concept by using such phrases as "Abandon All Hope," "Rest In Peace," or "Your soul is doomed" in addition to the original "You are Dead." NiGHTS into Dreams and NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams uses the phrase "Night Over." Mortal Kombat 4 and Mortal Kombat Gold contains a gory Game Over sequence where the beaten fighter falls down a chasm into a spike pit if they run out of credits or choose not to continue. Many other variant texts exist, from "Mission Failed"[2] to "Your adventure has ended."[3]
Occasionally, the screen contains no text at all, but merely a picture, as in Dracula (Jonathan Harker's dead body) or Duke Nukem: Time to Kill (either a Pig Cop replacing a historic or famous figure or landmark or several Pig Cops gathered around Duke's severed head). The phrase can also be spoken by someone off-screen as the scores are shown, such as in the Halo series.
In Need For Speed Most Wanted and Need For Speed Carbon, if the player is busted by numerous police cars, and he/she has only one car left and not enough money to pay the fine, no "Get Out Of Jail" passes OR the car has no impound strikes left, the game ends and the player has to start over from scratch.
In Delphine Software's Fade to Black, which is the sequel to Flashback, getting killed shows a video of Conrad getting killed by the action/enemy. Each video ends with game covering the top of the screen and over covering the bottom.
In the Destroy All Humans! series instead of simply coming back to life it is seen that a clone of Cryptosporidium is created and placed on Earth, even though the player's mission fails. However, it is impossible to get a "Game Over" as countless clones of Crypto himself will keep re-spawning, thus giving the player a chance to complete complicated missions.
In Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future, dying and choosing not to continue the game shows the player a short cutscene, in which the player finds himself\herself in a seaweed-filled pool, swimming toward a bright light, while back on Earth, the constellation Delphinus begins to flicker out and finally die.
In the Pokémon series, it is technically impossible to receive a game over, also referred to as "whiting/blacking out" in the game(although the manual states otherwise). However, if the player's team is defeated in a battle, half of the player's money is lost and he/she will backtrack to the last Pokémon Center visited, sometimes accompanied by text. Similarly, the Grand Theft Auto games don't really have game overs either, but the player will lose some money if he/she gets 'wasted', and will lose all weapons in the event the player gets arrested by the police.
In the final boss of Rez, in which the player must rebuild 'Eden', if the player dies, then Eden will slowly collapse.
Somewhat controversially as it was a children's game, Theme Park shows a cutscreen of the park owner jumping out from a window while Chopin's Funeral March plays if the player's park goes bankrupt. However, it is implied that the suicide attempt fails.
In The House of the Dead series, if the player ran out of credits, or decides not to continue playing upon running out of lives, it would show the player/players in a pitch black area, falling to the floor with dramatic music playing. After that, it would show how far the player/players got to the end of the game before dying, using a map of the areas the player went through, falling down/dieing where he/she lost in the game. It would show multiple paths that can be taken, boss encounters and names of the areas. Here is the map that would show when the player/players lost in the House of the Dead 1: http://www.gamefaqs.com/coinop/arcade/file/583587/34235
In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, for instance, the game is related as a story being narrated by the Prince. If the Prince or Farah dies, the Prince stumbles a bit and says "No, wait, that didn't happen. May I start again?" or "No, no, she didn't die. I defeated those monsters and moved on. Shall I restart?" Other games in this fashion are the interactive fiction game Spider and Web, where the player's actions are describing memories to an interrogator, and they will be accused of lying if they die; and In Cold Blood, which is also told as a flashback.
In the Futurama video game, the player, playing as Philip J. Fry, is asked by the Professor to retrieve a missing hammer in the first level, which also serves as a tutorial for the player. The player finds the hammer wedged under a massive stack of tools and boxes. When the player collects the hammer, Fry is immediately crushed and killed. This is followed by the game's standard Game Over screen. Then, in a cut-scene, Fry is revived/cloned, and it is explained that he was set up by the Professor who had been wanting to test his invention, "The Reanimator," which serves as an in-universe explanation for the game's multiple lives mechanic.
The Metal Gear series is particularly notorious for breaking the fourth wall, and has exploited the Game Over screen in game events. In Metal Gear Solid 2, several bizarre events occur, one of which is the sudden switch to the Mission Failed screen, except that the phrase "Fission Mailed" is in the corner, with the gameplay continuing in the small window that normally shows the main character's dead body. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater continues this tradition with a "fake death pill" that, when taken, shows the Game Over screen (though the player can still access items and revive themselves). Additionally, since MGS3 is a prequel, the text of the game over screen switches from "Snake is Dead" to "Time Paradox", and certain game over conditions (such as killing Ocelot) cause Major Zero, to berate the player for causing a time paradox.
In the Paper Mario series, most notably in the game Super Paper Mario, "game over" is used by the characters as a synonym for death. The "Underwhere" and "Overthere" are areas where one goes after one experiences a "Game Over", ruled by Queen Peach and King Bowser, respectively. A version of a marriage vow is also in the game where "till death do us part" is replaced by "till your games be over".
In Assassin's Creed, the main character, Desmond, uses a machine called the 'Animus' to access the memories of his ancestor, Altaïr. If Altaïr dies during a memory, the screen states "De-synchronised - Death", and the memory reverts to an earlier point, similar to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. This is because anything that happens to Altaïr happens in the past, and the object of the Animus is to see what happened, not to change it.
In Conker's Bad Fur Day, the first time Conker dies, he wakes up in some sort of dungeon, where a deep voice yells "you are dead". However, the voice is really being changed using a special megaphone in which lets out a screech and the user (Greg the Grim Reaper) throws it away shouting "I can't be arsed with this bloody ridiculous contraption! Whose idea was this anyway?" He explains that Conker is a "special case" stating that since he's a Squirrel, he can have "as many lives as [he thinks he] can get away with," that being the number of red Squirrel tails Conker has in his possession.
The upcoming game Heavy Rain is unique in that the game doesn't end when a character dies. If a character is killed in one of the levels, the story continues onwards, incorporating the consequences of their death. According to its developers, the story may continue even after all playable characters have been killed.
[edit] Voiced Game Overs
Voiced Game Overs are when the announcer of the game tells you that the game has ended. Game series such as the Super Smash Bros. series are known for this. Some games had a unique take on this, such as Sega Rally Championship featuring Takenobu Mitsuyoshi singing, "Game over, yeaaaah!" Or in The Metal Gear series when Solid Snake dies Otacon will yell "SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE" as a replacement for the Traditional "Game Over".[4] Another instance is Bill Paxton's "Game Over, man!" from the Alien 3 video game. [5]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ 1950 pinball machine patent
- ^ The Metal Gear Solid games are one example, while this one appears in the second game, Sons of Liberty. Another example includes the Star Fox series.
- ^ The Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance games are one example.
- ^ "GAME OVER YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! 2" uploaded by Sayaleen on January 14, 2008. Accessed April 14, 2009.
- ^ "Game Over, man!", uploaded by GameOverContinue on February 9, 2009.
