6 Awesome Game Over Screens Worth Dying For
3. Ninja Gaiden Arcade - The Descending Buzzsaw Of Doom
These days, the contemporary gaming world is locked around the multiplayer online world experienced from the comfort of a living room bean bag. It’s easy to forget that for a significant portion of the medium’s history games were a pay-per-play arcade driven money maker, taking more loose change from kid’s pockets than all the stereotypical American ‘give us your lunch money’ High School bullies 80s Hollywood could throw at us.
As a consequence of this, games went to hysterical lengths to get kids to keep pumping those quarters. Enter: Ninja Gaiden Arcade.
Upon death, players are given the option to continue. No pressure, by the way, but your character is tied to a board, surrounded by demons, and there’s a literal buzzsaw being slowly lowered into your chest.
When it’s a game over, you gotta know it’s a game over, ya know? If you don’t have a buzzsaw being lowered into your chest how are the kids going to know the game’s finished? It’s the classic, bombastic, intensity fuelled fury early arcade games are famous for, and captured the spirit of the generation of brilliantly ridiculous classic game overs.