Content Warning: Violence and Gore, Flashing Lights and Colors
Some games intentionally utilize the horror genre to great effect. But other games outside of the genre occasionally foist unexpected, and unwelcome, surprises and situations upon the audience. So much so, that they become what the game is best known for. What examples can we come up with here?
The World of Drakkhen Hates and Really Wants to Kill You, No Matter How Disturbing It Has to Get
Drakkhen is a clunky medieval RPG that originated on PC and Amiga, and was then ported to the venerable Super NES early on its life cycle. Looking at the game’s box art and some of its screen shots, it appears generic and unremarkable. But the game is like a mullet of sorts; clichèd fantasy in the front, unspeakable horror and weirdness in the back. Part of this is owed to its day-night cycle, ambitious for a title of its age. However, it used its powers to menace and confound players. Even Wikipdia cites:
“Drakkhen’s gameplay is colored by its early-game brutality and surreal enemy encounters, the former especially in the SNES version. One special enemy is relegated solely to appearing when the player kicks one of the many urns in the ground. Upon doing so, a black, stationary canine head rises from beneath the floor to shoot bolts from its eyes. These encounters are quickly fatal to new players who don’t know any better.”
There is also the deadly and invincible Shadow Man, AKA the Shade of Doom, who lives up to his name by appearing as a tall and lanky black silhouette with a red symbol in his chest (though some posit that this is not a completely random monster design, but rather a fine art reference); Some of the constellations in the game will form monsters to menace your party; There is a strange encounter with an “unburnt”, indescribable monster in a fireplace in one area that does immense damage to the party while making strange noises, almost like a frog ribbiting; And then… then there’s the “I Love You” monster in the Fire Area. Clearly an eldritch abomination of pure evil, it looks like a human silhouette that dances on a loop. What really makes it unsettling is what it says: “I Love You” over and over, with the pitch changing up and down randomly. This is only in the PC version, however; in the SNES port, it just… moans, which some say is even worse.
Perhaps the developers of Drakkhen missed their calling in horror, but they later made a spiritual successor called Dragon View to more acclaim. This screenshot LP is pretty positive.
Ninja Gaiden (Arcade) Brutally Murders the Protagonist If You Don’t Continue
The continue screen features the hero strapped to a table with a buzzsaw looming over him (apparently, this is unofficially The Horrors of Buzzsaws article). As the screen counts down, the buzzsaw lowers. When the countdown runs out, the screen turns red and the hero moans. The monsters gathered around to watch the hero’s horrible homicide aren’t exactly cheerful sights, either. The point of arcade games is to generate revenue, but jeez
Similarly, Final Fight 2 and 3 threaten to drown the tied-up hero/heroine or impale them with a spiked ceiling, respectively. Yikes. I conclude that this is a sub-trope of arcade game continue screens. Continue… OR ELSE
A Beavis and Butt-Head Game Has One Murder the Other in an Easter Egg
Does Beavis and Butt-Head count as an edgy and violent adult animated series? Sure, but not compared to modern fare like Rick and Morty… right? Well, that’s not the case in the PC game Beavis and Butt-Head in Virtual Stupidity, which has a secret death that puts the graphic in graphic adventure. I recall watching a video saying that this Easter egg went undiscovered for several years due to the obscurity of the steps involved. The scene shows Butt-Head, apropos of nothing, whipping out a shotgun and saying “Fuck you, Beavis!” before blowing him away.
Note that the F-bomb isn’t bleeped out or anything, and the game was initially rated T for Teen. Series creator Mike Judge must have approved of it because he voiced Butt-Head for the clip.
Wolverine: Adamantium Rage Kills Wolverine with a Little Girl Robot
This is a really personal pick that bothered me a lot as a kid. In this game, there’s an invisible timer counting down to when Elsie-Dee finds Wolverine. The thing about Elsie-Dee is that she’s actually a robot with a bomb inside of her. She was designed specifically to kill him, which should still be pretty difficult considering his mutant healing factor. Realistically, she should only be able to inconvenience him at most until he patches himself back up again. This game over isn’t even gory or anything, but the idea of Elsie-Dee coming from anywhere to kill Logan was still very disturbing to me. Maybe it’s the idea of a kid being able to seriously hurt or even kill someone else.
Eternal Champions: Challengers from the Dark Side Challenges Your Gore Tolerance
Eternal Champions was a fighting game series from Sega’s western branch in the ‘90s. It was influenced by the incredible success of Mortal Kombat at the time, but the fatalities of the first game weren’t very memorable. The fatalities in the semi-sequel on the ill-fated Sega CD, however… are nine levels of messed up. There are little flourishes that disturb me more than the fatalities in the recent MK games, particularly the one where the loser winds up in a chamber that messes with their body until it explodes. Or the one where a lady in a ticket booth unloads on the loser with a ton of firepower, culminating in an explosive headshot via a high-powered shotgun. Or the one where the loser is thrown down a shaft filled with buzzsaws that utterly mangle them until just their skull is left. Or the sheer amount of fatalities where the heart is still beating, even when it’s the only thing left of the loser.
(Be forewarned that a fatality late in this compilation where a nuke is launched looks like it could bother photosensitive people)
I’m pretty desensitized when it comes to fictional violence, and this game doesn’t even hit any of my particularly squeamish points (like violence done to nails – eek!), but for my money, CftDS could have the most disturbing fatalities of any 2D fighter. And they’re a lot less silly than Mortal Kombat 3’s infamously overdone fatalities with the amount of bones littering the screen, despite some of the finishers having just a touch of dark comedy, like the one that references Godzilla.
EC’s time in the sun was short-lived, partially because Sega of Japan didn’t want it to compete with the 3D Virtua Fighter (what tale of Sega’s is complete without their own worst enemy, Sega?). And as we all know, no game companies have more than one successful series in a genre at a time. Then again, the panned spinoffs Chicago Enforcer and X-Perts didn’t really help the series’ case. But who knows where the developers’ sick and twisted imaginations would have taken them in the planned third game?
(Psst! I have an idea to do an article reviewing fatalities in fighting games. Let me know if you’re interested, because oh, I have thoughts)
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