Game over

Game over is the ending text of many video games. Used first in arcade games, it was later adopted widely and now is commonly associated with video games in general.

The phrase was originally used at the end of games, whether the player has won the game or not. Most games of today use other ending texts such as "The End," or simply an outro and credits, if the player is successful, with "Game Over" used to signify failure. Some games use "Game Over" not only to indicate the end of the game, but also to indicate that the game is not currently being played.

The way in which the phrase is used varies between games. Some, in particular older games such as Space Invaders, have the phrase "Game Over" as text simply super-imposed on the game screen, while other games, particularly more recent ones, have a separate Game Over screen. These tend to be more elaborate, and the phrase may be animated and accompanied by graphics. Furthermore, some of today's games don't use "Game Over" as the failing ending text. For example, the Resident Evil series for the Nintendo GameCube, Sony Playstation, and the Sony Playstation 2 use the ending text "You Are Dead" or "You Died," in a font that resembles bloody slashes, and the Dark Alliance games for the PlayStation 2 use "Your adventure has ended." Mortal Kombat 4 is famous for its Game Over sequence in which the beaten fighter falls down a chasm into a spike pit if they run out of credits or choose not to continue. The Soul Calibur series uses the phrase for all endings, both successful and unsuccessful (this is quite uncommon today). A similar phrase which is also widely used is "Mission Failed".

Pointlessly or not, some Game Over sequences feature little extras. For example, in The Sands of Time, if the player dies or Farah dies, The Prince will correct himself (for he is telling a story to someone) by saying "No, wait, that didn't happen. May I start again?" or "No, no, she didn't die. I defeated those monsters and moved on. Shall I restart?" And in Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks, The Game Over sequence will show strange, helpful or even downright silly messages like "Kano Transformations" or "Find Mustapha" or even "Which way to the Dead Pool?"

It should be noted that "Game Over" is not the same thing as a "bad ending". A bad ending occurs when the player finishes the game but is not completely successful for some reason. For example, in Paper Mario 2, the game ends before the final fight if you tell the final boss, the Shadow Queen, that you want to join her, earning you a bad ending in which Mario joins the Shadow Queen, and she dominates the world. Most bad endings are earned by being defeated in a certain fight, but this case is more of a glorified Game Over than a bad ending.

Generally speaking, in a "bad ending," the player has reached an end-point of the game, and has technically won, but the victory is incomplete, and, in some cases, isn't much of a victory at all (such as in the bad ending of the Game Gear version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2; during the game, Sonic is trying to rescue his friend Tails from the clutches of Dr. Eggman. If Sonic has 5 Chaos Emeralds by the time he defeats Silver Sonic, Silver Sonic will then yield the 6th emerald without any further dispute. If not, he cannot continue on and must abandon his quest. In the credits, Tails is presumed to be dead.)

Some games take advantage of the Game Over screen to add depth to the game itself, sometimes at the expense of the fourth wall. The Metal Gear series is particularly notorious for this. Sons of Liberty, for example, during the course of the game, the player has to upload a computer virus into Arsenal Gear's computer system, the player is to believe the virus infected their game as well, uses a false Game Over screen to trick the player into believing that he has suddenly lost (this has led to the phrase "Fission Mailed" which was displayed on the fake game over screen), when in fact the game is continuing in a small window in the corner, which otherwise showing the result of player's death, such as explosions and messed up rooms (player accidentally destroys huge explosion, and gets descimated as well), water ripples (drowning), as well as showing the ingame coordinates where the player met their demise, and (in Virual Reality missions), how many mission targets/bombs the player has interacted with, and how many times they died... Campbell often codecs the player, to appeal to them, with random and strange phrases such as "The mission has failed, TURN THE CONSOLE OFF NOW!" and "Playing the game this long can damage your eyes, you should rest". Snake Eater contains a "fake death pill" that creates a fake Game Over, which is identical to the REAL Game Over screen, except that the player is able to access an item menu to administer a "reviere from death" serum concealed in Snake's molar. screen for the duration of the fake death, as well as a boss that can only be defeated by negotiating out of a Game Over screen after the player's character dies. Both fake and real Game Over screens show the phrase "SNAKE IS DEAD" morphing to the phrase "TIME PARADOX", then inverting the screen colour (as MGS 3 took place forty years before the other Metal Gears. Meaning the death of this Snake, means Solid, Liquid and Solidus Snake had never existed.

The phrase "Game Over" also has taken on relevance outside of gaming. It is sometimes used to signify an abrupt (and nasty) end, similar to the one a player might meet in a video game. In the 1986 film Aliens, Bill Paxton's character Hudson uses the phrase to indicate what he thinks is a hopeless situation: "... Game over, man! Game over!". This phrase, shortened to "Game over, man!", was later used as part of the Game Over screen of the SNES game Alien³, based on the film of the same name.

Often in films, "Game Over" signifies the end to the film or a character's struggle, or impending death. In the 2004 film Saw, the film concludes with Tobin Bell's character locking Leigh Whannell's in a bathroom to die and saying "Game over."

Japanese "Pink film" director Hisayasu Sato often concludes his films abruptly with the use of the legend GAME OVER and a surge of white noise, infering the ambiguous nature of the reality of his films.

WWE Superstar Triple H (who calls himself "The Game") often uses the phrase "Game Over" in his promos and even has a shirt that on the front says: "Game Over?!". (On the back, it continues the phrase by saying "You're Damn Right I'm Over!")

This phrase "Game Over" can also be attributed to Los Angeles Dodgers closer (baseball), Éric Gagné . Gagné won Major League Baseball's Cy Young Award in 2003. When he enters the game during the 8th or 9th inning, scoreboards flash "Game Over!" and the team sells merchandise with this phrase, in reference to Gagné.

A flashing Game Over message was also displayed after the end credits of the UK gaming TV series Gamesmaster.

The phrase does not necessarily appear if the player has died. Often, the player will get a certain number of turns (often described as "lives" in games where the player loses when his/her character dies), but when these are used up, the player is in a "Game Over" situation.

However, it is sometimes possible for play to go on even after this, if the player has continues (or "credits"), which are additional sets of lives available, or a previously saved game exists. In arcade games, continues, when they exist, typically only require the insertion of the appropriate amount of money (coins) within a time limit, and are otherwise unlimited. In console or PC games, the player may have to collect certain amount of items or points to acquire extra continues. Or there may be an infinite amount of continues, so the player will not have to replay the game up until that point. (Usually after using a continue, the player is restarted at the beginning of the level he or she was playing, instead of from the last checkpoint within that level when a life is used.)

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