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Weird Ways To Die
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1. Kind Of An Edgy Subject
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Everyone
knows how creative Super Mario Bros. was, you've got an Italian
plumber who has set out to rescue the princess who's been
kidnapped by a dragonish thing with a spiked shell on his back.
But with creative life comes creative death. For example, getting
crushed by... the edge of your screen? What would it read in the
obituaries? "Mario died on Saturday morning from... uh... the
edge of a boy's television screen." It's a very motivating
way to encourage a player to finish a level, but did you ever stop
to question it? Are we to assume the edge
of the screen is some kind of wall crushing the world? Where did
this wall come from? Who built it? Questions unanswered while people
are dying out there!
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2. Drained Killers
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"Don't mind me, just delivering your daily newspaper. OH
NO, A SEWER GRATE." That's right, in the game Paperboy you
can crash your bike on drains! You're not dead per se, but they're
lethal enough for you to fall off your bike and QUIT YOUR JOB
OVER. This was one of the most unbelievable ways to lose a life
I've ever seen. When I first played Paperboy I kept crashing on
the grates because I assumed a boy could go over those with ease!
But every time I crashed I stopped to ask "What kind of crash
is that?" Who built those cheap bikes? Do we really need to sacrifice
innocent paperboys over our precious rain drains? What measures
can we take to avoid these terrible accidents? More questions
unanswered, while paperboys are quitting their jobs!
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3. Time's Up
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Some games keep track of time to keep you going, but where's the
logic behind that? Logic is the last thing you should look for in
NES games, granted (100 coins equal the ability to die and come
back to life?), but what is going through Mario's head as he falls
to his death for no apparent reason? Does he have a heart attack?
Does he have some other form of motivation for getting to the end
of the level? Maybe he's got to go to the bathroom so badly that
if he doesn't make it in time, his bladder explodes and he falls
to his death out of shock because plumbers don't make enough to
afford a decent doctor. I have no idea where I was going with this
editorial, like I said when I make these things I don't expect
anyone to read them, but it just kinda makes me wonder how much
paranoia I'd have to live with if I was an NES character, being
able to die from things I didn't know existed.
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Pick Of The Litter
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I've got a good example of Nintendo's unusual logic
when it comes to death in video games. In the game "Popeye," your character must collect hearts (notes,
letters, etc.) from Olive Oil in order to advance each level. But if you fail to collect these tokens fast
enough, they sink into the ocean--thus resulting in Popeye's death. o_0
So by this logic, if you throw anything into the water, and it happens to sink, you will instantly keel
over. Makes sense. :-P Who needs a litter law when you've got instant death as an enforcer?
- Submitted by Alan D.
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| 5.
Touche
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| You forgot to mention the weirdest way to die in NES history...touching someone. All you have to do is bump heads with somebody and you die? What's up with that? I mean, the life insurance these NES heroes have probably covers a whole bunch of stuff, but does it really help all that much? No, it doesn't! All they have to do is run into or be ran into by someone who hates them and voila! Their $500,000 life insurance policy or whatever policy they have finally kicks in.
- Submitted by Stephen "Flying Omelette's Kitchen Chef"
Krokowski
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| 6.
Chaos Butterfly
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| Sometimes in Raid 2020, there are butterflies flying around. If you touch them or stand on them, however, you take as much damage as a hit from an enemy bullet. Seriously, being killed by the edge of the screen in a scrolling stage is one thing, but this is just something else.
- Submitted by Stephen "Flying Omelette's Kitchen Chef"
Krokowski
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| 7.
Birdie
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| Sometimes the seagulls with drop poop from the sky. If it touches you, you (once again) take as much damage as a hit from an enemy bullet. Things like "death by seagull poop exposure" actually make me wonder if the drug dealers laced the seagulls with cyanide or strychnine or something and made it so that those chemicals were in the birds' poop. Oh wait...according to the game manual, that's sort of Color Dreams' explanation for this stupid NES death.
- Submitted by Stephen "Flying Omelette's Kitchen Chef"
Krokowski
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| 8.
Mine Your Own Business
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| When you touch a land mine in Raid 2020, you instantly die. But the weird thing is that the land mines are found on level 1, which takes place on a pier. Land mines on a pier...what kind of weird freakin' parallel universe is this? Apparently the drug dealers you fight in the game have way too much free time as well as way too much money, and decided to spend it by figuring out how to successfully hide land mines inside the wooden planks of a pier. Apparently these guys must have been using 3/4 of the money they get for more drugs and the other 1/4 for stuff like land mines that can be used on piers as well as toxic seagull poop and harmless butterflies that actually kill you when you touch them. May I never play Raid 2020 again for as long as I live...
- Submitted by Stephen "Flying Omelette's Kitchen Chef"
Krokowski
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