10 Moments That Literally Stopped Video Games

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem was a highly innovative action-horror game released for the GameCube back in 2002, with gameplay focused around an ingenious "sanity effect" mechanic.

Basically, the more that the player is spotted by enemy creatures, the more their sanity will deteriorate, eventually triggering reality-bending hallucinations, some of which quite literally stop the game dead.

These include a "blue screen of death" flashing up, trying to convince you that your TV has turned off, fake-resetting the game (complete with the GameCube boot screen), pretending to delete your save data, dropping a fake ending, and telling you that your controller has become unplugged.

Naturally in 2002 masses of players were fooled by these brilliant breaks in gameplay, and while we like to think of ourselves as much savvier today, the ingenuity of these effects remains no less brilliant.