Game Over screens are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. Sure, some games still have a screen that pops up when a player dies or makes a mistake. But a ‘restart from checkpoint’ option doesn’t have the same bite to it as a disappointed Sonic, a dazed & dejected Mario, or Mike Haggar being 10 seconds away from getting blasted by dynamite.
Still, there are some games both in the past and today that liked to grind the player’s face in their failure. They didn’t instantly respawn them, offer an easy mode, or a level skip. They just mocked them for not being good enough to beat the challenge, or just taunted them in general. Here are some of the more notorious examples.
9 Battletoads In Battlemaniacs And Battletoads-Double Dragon
Rare is no stranger to hard games. They reveled in difficulty back when they were called Ultimate and made games for the ZX Spectrum. So, Battletoads being so infamously tough to beat isn’t a surprise. Neither is its taunting. In the SNES Battletoads in Battlemaniacs game, if the player opted not to continue, the Dark Queen would mock Professor T.Bird for gathering such weaklings, and he’d implore the Toads to “get mad, bad and crazy”.
By Battletoads & Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team, he’s lost patience and faith. Whether they were playing as the Toads or the Lee Brothers, T.Bird will scorn them regardless. “Call yourselves the ultimate team? Don’t make me laugh!”. It’s not easy being green.
8 Katamari Damacy
It’s often been said that the only thing worse than making one’s parent angry is disappointing them. The Katamari Damacy series has offered a few crushing failure screens, like the bullet hell-inspired one in We Love Katamari where the King zaps the Prince for boring their fan and thus making the series feel like a mistake.
But the harshest one is in the original Katamari Damacy. Give him the teeniest, tiniest katamari, and the screen goes dark and stormy as he monologizes for a minute on the player’s failure. All the Prince can do is sob as his dad expresses his disappointment, saying he should’ve asked the Prince’s cousins to do it, and saying the fault actually lies with himself…for actually believing his son could’ve produced a decent Katamari.
7 Total Distortion
Total Distortion is a weird PC game by Pop Rocket where the player has to make music videos to earn fame and cash. That sounds like a typical sim game, but there are point-and-click elements, battles with the ‘Guitar Warriors’ within the ‘Distortion Dimension, and failure states. Lots and lots of failure states.
There are many ways to die, most of which involve falling to the Guitar Warriors. Text will pop up, telling the player “You Blew It!”. Then it’ll play a song mocking them for being dead. If the on-screen text and catchy refrain of “You Are Dead!” didn’t hammer home the message, the full lyrics would (“I hope you improve your lousy score!”). The game is painfully 90s, but the song is evergreen in its contempt for lackluster play.
6 Zone Of The Enders
Hey, it’s that mech shooter game with the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo! Hideo Kojima didn’t come up with Zone of the Enders (that would be director Noriaki Okamura), but he was the producer. He liked the project enough to reference it almost as many times as his other works like Snatcher and Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hands.
It’s up to Leo Stenbuck and his Jehuty Frame to save the human colonies from Viola and the BAHRAM military force. Unless the player falters against the bosses. Aside from Leo crying out each time Jehuty blows up (who can blame him?), each boss has some pithy, cutting remark to make on his loss (“Stupid kid. Why are you so eager to die?”). The voice acting is more Resident Evil than Metal Gear, so each quip feels that much more annoying each time it comes up.
5 Sierra Entertainment Point & Click Games
Nearly every point & click game could count for this list. They’re infamous for their moon logic puzzles leaving players to wander for eternity or die in a variety of ways. Sierra Entertainment’s games are the most notorious in this instance, from their text origins in the original King’s Quest, to the more refined Quest for Glory series.
Players learned about game saves the hard way if they didn’t watch what they did. Enter the conclave without the Snake Tattoo in Gabriel Knight and the title character gets throttled to death. Mess up the cryochamber in Space Quest 5 and roast Beatrice to “a toasty golden brown. Nice going”. Bed a certain lady in Leisure Suit Larry and get an STD. Get slimed by snails in Freddy Pharkas. All with the customary, withering quote about doing better next time.
4 Batman: Arkham Series
It’s hard to imagine how the Arkham games could be topped in making the player feel like they are Batman. Beat up thugs! Throw Batarangs! Solve crimes! Be vulnerable to bullets! Yes, Batman can die if the player messes up too much, and his rogue’s gallery will be there. Across all four main console games, the villains look down on the player and make a comment.
In Arkham Asylum, the Joker offers a salute, a raspberry, and giggles until he falls. Failing in Arkham City would comment on his superiority and sneer directly at the player. Black Mask voices his disappointment in Arkham Origins (“What an anti-climactic ending!”). Arkham Knight offers some sympathetic voices from Alfred and Robin, but the Knight himself and the others still provide the gloating.
3 Scarface: The World Is Yours
Everyone was making a Grand Theft Auto clone back in the early 2000s. Some even had movie licenses like The Godfather, and others became their own deal like Saints Row. Since GTA3 and GTA: Vice City referenced the 1983 Scarface film so much, it was only natural that it would get the game treatment.
Created by Radical Entertainment, the game brought Tony Montana back to life for another adventure that was kind of superfluous. Messing up in GTA gave the player a ‘Wasted’ or ‘Busted’ screen. Saints Row told them they were ‘Smoked’. Scarface went more personal and direct when the player died, telling them clearly and concisely “You Fucked Up”. The world would’ve been theirs, but instead the only thing they own is their mess.
2 Spec Ops: The Line
Spec Ops: The Line was a little special back on its release. It seemed like a bog-standard ‘oo-rah’ shooter, and it is. Gameplay-wise anyway. Narratively, it commented on the morality of war and military duty as Captain Martin Walker leads his men to a grim fate in search of Lt. Colonel John Konrad. He makes the hard calls in gameplay and in cutscenes, and the game will make him, and the player, pay for them.
Messing up gives the player the requisite loading screen. Usually there’ll be some questionably relevant gameplay tip to help them out. In Spec Ops: The Line, they’ll be mixed with some taunting line about expecting some terrorist-killing sim (“If you were a better person, you wouldn’t be here”). It’s pretty basic today, but it stood out back when Call of Duty and other shooters were at their height.
1 Mechwarrior 3050
The NES Friday the 13th game has an infamous screen, telling the player plainly “You and your friends are dead”. But Mechwarrior 3050 on the SNES is more cutting. Originally released on the Genesis as Battletech, the game was essentially a ground-based mech take on the Strike series as the player achieved objectives on the field to help their Clan succeed.
Unless they mess up. Then they’ll get a screen of their destroyed mech, and their Commander giving them the bad news. Not only has their failure sealed the fate of their Clan, “For generations your name will be remembered with shame”. In the world of Mechwarrior, the player will be an eternal disappointment. Until they try the level again anyway.