10 Fake Game Over Screens You Need To See

1. Sanity Effects - Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem was a criminally under-appreciated GameCube game which successfully attempted to keep players on edge by toying with their perception of reality.

Throughout the game, the player must keep track of their Sanity meter, a bar that drains whenever they encounter an enemy, and when the meter gets low, one of the game's many "Sanity Effects" will kick in, reflecting the protagonist's slipping grip on reality.

There are fairly simple and subtle Sanity Effects such as an off-kilter camera angle or slight changes in the environment, but some of them get devilishly, dementedly creative.

The more ambitious effects include the game throwing up an extremely convincing Blue Screen of Death, appearing to restart to the GameCube boot screen, randomly killing the player and even teasing that the game has actually finished, with a "To Be Continued..." screen teasing a sequel.

Some of these effects were convincing enough that nobody would blame you for falling hook, line and sinker, believing that your game had crashed, you'd been killed for real or you'd even reached the bizarrely abrupt end of the game.

Sadly, despite near-universal acclaim for its insanely inventive meta-narrative elements, Eternal Darkness was a commercial bomb, and numerous attempts to get a sequel off the ground have fallen flat.