Wired has a great piece up on how video game developers have dealt with in-game death over the years. From the power-up mushroom in Mario to the Regenerative Shields in Halo, developers have been tackling creative ways for players to ”˜die’ or ”˜fail’ for years.
I am of the camp that would like to see less ”˜fail-states’ in gaming, because let’s be honest, nobody likes to put  45+ min into a game only to have to start over because of not clicking the potion button fast enough. The game over screen shouldn’t even be considered in this day and age, there are more inspired ways of handling the situation. After all, fail-states are relics of the coin-op era where more deaths equaled more money.
Is there anything quite as frustrating as having to watch a 3 minute cut scene before a particularly hard boss battle over and over again? How about having to re-collect items from three rooms back because you ran out of hearts? Games like BioShock have done a better job by providing Vita-Chambers which resurrects the player to the nearest chamber while saving progress and damage on nearby foes. Simple but yet ingenius. Too easy for you? Just open a menu and turn the feature off.
Kirby’s Epic Yarn  has also tackled the issue of fail-states…and by that I mean it doesn’t have them. You can go through the entire game falling into every pit and hitting every enemy, but your end game ”˜bead’ total will be affected. Didn’t collect enough beads at the end of the level? Well then the secret level will be unavailable after the boss battle.
Perhaps I just need to suck less at gaming, but I play games to have fun, not get frustrated. How do you feel about dieing in games? Is it necessary, or a remnant of times past? Tell us in the comments!
I agree that most 'game over' screens are obsolete, mostly b/c of atrocious #'s of free lives, or a restart w/ no penalty, such as w/ the new Mario games, where at most u lose your "half way" point. The quick restart in platformers like BitTrip:Runner is nice, right back into the action w/ little delay. There r games those where the "game over" screen is fun/nostalgic, such as Resident Evil "You Are Dead," or the Bond bloody screen, they let u know ur not alive anymore.
I hate "Game Over" screens! 🙂 There are a lot of creative alternatives. These are some of my favorite ways of "dying" in a game while still being allowed to continue:
Dragon's Lair/Space Ace: A hilarious or gruesome death animation for every unique situation and enemy encounter, but the game keeps moving you forward through the story.
Super Mario 64: Getting booted out of the paintings. This was such a great idea that the whole "game over" concept in that game seemed unnecessary. And yet–what would a Mario game be without collecting extra lives? What would happen to the market for 1-Up Mushrooms?
World of Warcraft: You wake up as a ghost in the nearest cemetery and get a choice: You can physically run across the landscape to your corpse and resurrect yourself, or you can accept an instant resurrection with a temporary performance penalty.
Street Fighter: "Continue?"
Ideally, game designers should make failure imaginatively inconvenient, but not a colossal pain.
LOVE the Zelda II game over screen.
Ganon's silhouette against a red background always reminded me that he was resurrected by pouring Link's blood on his ashes. It was pure evil.
oh- and in response to the article, i like games that need skill to be seen through. ninja gaiden comes to mind. not all games need that challenge, but most games hold your hand so much these days it's disappointing to me. let's see some real organic challenges that don't require the computer being cheap. those games are always the most rewarding to play and beat. and since i very rarely play games to get all the points possible, changing the goal from beating a level to beating it with certain conditions and more points does not suit me. If you can't beat the second level boss in ninja gaiden, you don't get to see the rest of the game. I like it that way, you ninja dogs!
AGREED! fail screens are miserable and only lead to gamers rage. The worst rage by far :p
Take for example God of War 3, at the moment im stuck on Hades. It is a normal setting and now im considering starting over again on easy. Its so frustrating because i see the same level for ages and the same cut scene or dramatisation over again. There is absolutely nothing worse than this.
I think an interesting idea comes from Pokemon. You cannot fail all progess but get sent back to a 'safe' spot being the poke centre. Those you have beaten remain beaten and the pokemon in the wild can be skipped using a repel.. Something of this mind in GOW might go well. Example being in Hades one tears off and destroys parts of him. Re-spawning to that stage would be best instead of fighting the same fight 12 times.
Game over screens rule. They prove that you suck @ss at gaming and need to try harder.
@Janush LOL, took the words out of my mouth, I was going to say the same thing.
RE4 has the best Game Over screen. "You Are Dead." Straightforward, to the point, and no unanswered questions.
I do pay attention to "game over" and difficulty level, more than when I was a kid. I do like how modern games provide difficulty settings and checkpoints, for example Call of Duty and Gears of War. I liked the super guide in Mario Brothers Wii. I hate Donkey Kong Country for Wii because it is too hard and does not have difficulty settings, nor a super guide.
Racing games can have a peculiar problem of having you restart individual races (which is good), or restart the entire series (which is bad). For example, Midnight Club LA was frustrating because if you screwed up on the last race of the series and lost it, then you would have to restart the entire 3 race series again. Burnout Paradise was awful in that it required you to drive back to the beginning of the race to restart, what a waste of time.
Basically, I hate the "game over" that requires backtracking. The more customization for difficulty, the better. That allows the hard-core types to play it as difficult as they like.
There obviously need to be consequences for dying in a game, but I'm more of the mind to include bonus content for fewer deaths than having players replay a chunk of the same level. I hate having to replay parts of a level after a death.
I don't mind the game over screens to be honest, indeed, games nowadays are being made too easy in many genres, purely on the misguided principle that people HAVE to be able to see the ending and 100% the game regards of level of ability or practice.
Plus, the screens/movies are often pretty entertaining, at least in a morbid way (like when the moon falls on Termina in Majora's Mask, or when K Rool destroys DK Isle in DK 64). God I'd miss it if there were no more creepy game over screens where the main character is implied to have been killed horribly.
As for the idea they're annoying… well, they shouldn't be, the only reason people are getting annoyed with them is because certain games have certain poorly designed levels.
I just played 3D Classics: Excitebike earlier today, and the music that plays at the "Game Over" screen is all wrong. I half-expected a happy voice to say something like, "Thank you for playing this game! And congratulations! You've reached the Game Over screen!" at any moment.
I think you're mixing up Game over screens and games that unfairly put you in front of them too many times. Taking the edge off of failure takes the edge off success too.
I'm torn between wanting to see a game through to the end that might otherwise be too hard, but certain games would lose alot of their appeal, especially survival horror games where there's no danger of actually dying.