Theatre of Pain

[davidn]

As the graphical capability of computers was evolving in the early 90s and we were slowly getting exponentially more displayable colours to play with, there seemed to be a small movement among graphics artists who decided that a simple "GAME OVER" wasn't good enough any more, and spruced up their games by showing the player exactly how they met with their end. Dangerous Dave had little animations of your character being strangled by zombies or cut into toast-like slices by falling on to sharp fences. Uninvited was notorious for its far-too-closeups of death scenes, and a little later on, Fade to Black used the power of full motion video to bring us all the detail (or as much as they could at the start of the Playstation's lifespan) that we never wanted.

But it's strange that none of those rendered death scenes really hit me as much as the sprite-based ones. rakarr showed me this video of the death sequences from Waxworks by the appropriately-named Horrorsoft yesterday, which is a game that takes the idea to an extreme. I only have a vague idea about the plot of the game - from the gameplay surrounding the deaths in the video, it seems to be sort of halfway between Eye of the Beholder and Myst, with the plot revolving around having to travel around time and assume the identities of other people in a slightly Quantum Leap-like fashion. I can't really make out what's going on from some of the quick gameplay clips that play out just before the character meets yet another grisly end - this would have scared me to death if I'd grown up with it.

I've only watched this video to about the halfway point for self-preservation reasons - it doesn't start you off gently or anything, but I could cope with the first because of the hero's expression, looking utterly astonished that his head's just fallen off when all that happened was that he was poked in the ribs with a sword a bit. Especially when combined with the unreal sound of the music on the older sound cards, there's something about lovingly rendered pixel-art of your character's deaths that's far more disturbing than increasingly realistic 3D models can ever convey.

Comments

[kaedeko.livejournal.com]

Rise of the Triad for the PC was a bit high on the "cartoon" factor of the deaths it depicted, but as it was a 3D game that used sprites, the deaths were still quite graphical. In fact, I recall the game being heavily panned at the time because of the "ludicrous" level of gore that exceeded even DOOM, the most gorific game on the PC platform prior.

It made the "deathcam" rather infamous, where the camera would spin around your dying player as they exploded into a cloud of guts, then show a rather disturbing game over screen composed of things like eyeballs in pools of blood on the floor.

[davidn]

I loved Rise of the Triad! Much like Mortal Kombat - which surely inspired its digitized look - it made no apologies for its own utter insanity.

I do remember playing with the blood off, though, and definitely not looking too much at that sort of melting Game Over screen... I remember a friend of mine (yes!) couldn't watch when he used the Firewall weapon and reduced enemies to blackened skeletons that then crumbled away.

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

Worst video game death - Lara Croft's strangled gasps for air and then contortions before she floats/sinks lifelessly.

As if the swimming parts of Tomb Raider weren't stressful enough.

[davidn]

Oh... yes, I think you mentioned that death animation to me before, and I do remember it quite clearly (this was in Tomb Raider 2 - I don't know if they've added more excruciating detail since then!) Water isn't a good thing to be around in games in general...

Going back a few games along its path of evolution, I think being cut in half by the biting doors in the original Prince of Persia was the one that shocked me the most at the time.

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

Underworld has given Lara scuba gear for a few levels

Of course, that comes along with an impossibly low cut/high cut swimsuit

[kjorteo]

I can't believe you made an entire post about horrific death scenes in classic games without

1) posting it to videogame_tales
2) mentioning Another World.

[davidn]

I expected nothing other than that icon and it still gave me a jump when I opened the email...

This isn't really a tale, it's a link with some consequences of the way that I can never write anything under five hundred words splashed around it. But Another World is an interesting one to bring up, because I've just realized that the varied full-screen animations there were a direct precursor to Fade to Black's death FMVs... I can't remember if Flashback in between them had deaths like that, but I don't remember any. I may well reword it and invite other death-scene contributions...

[kjorteo]

To be fair, you posted the Mysterious Lady screenshot first. What else could I use in response? :)