Questions were exactly identical as i purchased!
SCP-500 exam papers | SCP-500 study guide | SCP-500 cheat sheet
| SCP-500 test exam | SCP-500 past bar exams - bigdiscountsales.com
SCP-500 - SolarWinds Certified Professional - Dump Information
Never miss these SCP-500 questions before you go for test.
On the off chance that you are searching for SCP-500
Practice Test containing Real Test Questions, you are at correct place.
We have accumulated database of questions from Actual Exams with a
specific end goal to enable you to plan and pass your exam on the
primary endeavor. All preparation materials on the site are Up To Date
and confirmed by our specialists.
Killexams.com give most recent and refreshed Practice Test with Actual
Exam Questions and Answers for new syllabus of SUN SCP-500 Exam.
Practice our Real Questions and Answers to Improve your insight and pass
your exam with High Marks. We guarantee your accomplishment in the Test
Center, covering every one of the points of exam and construct your
Knowledge of the SCP-500 exam. Pass beyond any doubt with our precise
questions.
Our SCP-500 Exam PDF contains Complete Pool of Questions and Answers and
Brain dumps checked and confirmed including references and
clarifications (where relevant). Our objective to gather the Questions
and Answers isn't just to pass the exam at first endeavor however Really
Improve Your Knowledge about the SCP-500 exam points.
SCP-500 exam Questions and Answers are Printable in High Quality Study
Guide that you can download in your Computer or some other gadget and
begin setting up your SCP-500 exam. Print Complete SCP-500 Study Guide,
convey with you when you are at Vacations or Traveling and Enjoy your
Exam Prep. You can get to refreshed SCP-500 Exam Q&A from your
online record whenever.
Killexams.com Huge Discount Coupons and Promo Codes are as under;
WC2017 : 60% Discount Coupon for all exams on website
PROF17 : 10% Discount Coupon for Orders greater than $69
DEAL17 : 15% Discount Coupon for Orders greater than $99
DECSPECIAL : 10% Special Discount Coupon for All Orders
Download your SolarWinds Certified Professional Study Guide instantly
subsequent to purchasing and Start Preparing Your Exam Prep Right Now!
SCP-500 Discount Coupon, SCP-500 Promo Code, SCP-500 vce,
Free SCP-500 vce, Download Free SCP-500 dumps, Free SCP-500 braindumps,
pass4sure SCP-500, SCP-500 practice test, SCP-500 practice exam,
killexams.com SCP-500, SCP-500 real questions, SCP-500 actual test,
SCP-500 PDF download, Pass4sure SCP-500 Download, SCP-500 help, SCP-500
examcollection, Passleader SCP-500, exam-labs SCP-500, Justcertify
SCP-500, certqueen SCP-500, SCP-500 testking
These SCP-500 Questions and Answers provide good exam knowledge.
i have earned better ratings in SCP-500 certification with the
assist of pretty low-priced merchandise. I got SCP-500 examination
engine to take away hard concepts of this certification. I had bought
SCP-500 examination braindump to have brilliant grades within the
certification. It become top decision because those products are
designed in line with my mind-set. It helped me to get read in fifteen
days and after this short time I had scored exact with the assist of
these realistic merchandise consequently i'm writing to say way to all
of you for your exquisite offerings.
am i able to find real exam Q & A of SCP-500 exam?
It clarified the subjects in a rearranged manner. In the true exam,
I scored a 81% without much hardship, finishing the SCP-500 exam in 75
minutes I additionally read a great deal of fascinating books and it
served to pass well. My achievement in the exam was the commitment of
the killexams.com dumps. I could without much of a stretch finish its
decently arranged substance inside 2 week time. Much obliged to you.
It is right place to find SCP-500 Actual Questions paper.
Killexams.com SCP-500 braindump works. All questions are genuine
and the solutions are accurate. it is well worth the cash. I handed my
SCP-500 examination last week.
right understanding and look at with the SCP-500 Q&A and Dumps! What a mixture!
I exceeded each the SCP-500 first try itself with eighty% and 73%
resp. thanks plenty for your help. The question financial institution
certainly helped. i am grateful to killexams.com for helping plenty with
so many papers with answers to paintings on if now not understood. They
have been extremely useful. Thankyou.
Use authentic SCP-500 dumps. brain unload high-quality and popularity does remember.
yes, very beneficial and i was capable of score eighty two% in the
SCP-500 examination with 5 days coaching. particularly the facility of
downloading as PDF documents for your package gave me an amazing room
for effective practice coupled with on line tests - no constrained tries
limit. solutions given to each question by way of you is a hundred%
accurate. thanksloads.
right location to find SCP-500 actual Questions paper.
The Dumps provided with the aid of the killexams.com became simply
some thing first rate. just 300 out of 500 is notablysufficient for the
examination, but I secured ninety two% marks within the real SCP-500
examination. All credit score goes to you human beings best. it's miles
tough to imagine that if I used every other product for my examination.
it's far tough to get an super product like this ever. thanks for the
whole thing you supplied to me. i'm able to sincerely recommend it to
all.
Belive me or not! This resource of SCP-500 questions is authentic.
i've cleared the SCP-500 examination in the first attempt. I could
reap this fulfillment because of killexams.com queryfinancial
institution. It helped me to use my paintings ebook know-how within the
question & solution layout. I solved those query papers with
examination simulator and got complete idea of the examination paper. So
I would love to thank killexams.
blessings of SCP-500 certification.
killexams.com gave me an extremely good practise device. I used it
for my SCP-500 exam and got a most rating. i love the waykillexams.com
does their exam instruction. basically, this is a unload, so you get
questions which are used at the real SCP-500 exams. but the trying out
engine and the exercise exam format help you memorize all of it very
well, so you grow to belearning matters, and will be able to draw upon
this understanding within the future. very good satisfactory, and the
testing engine could be very mild and person pleasant. I didnt encounter
any troubles, so this is notable value for cash.
worried for SCP-500 exam? Get this SCP-500 question bank.
I passed this examination SCP-500 nowadays with a ninety two%
score. killexams.com became my major guidance resource, so in case you
plan to take this examination, you may totally expect this SCP-500
questions supply. All information is applicable, the SCP-500 questions
are correct. i'm very glad with Killexams.com. that is the primary time I
used it, but now Im confident unwell come lower back to this internet
site for all my SCP-500 certification checks
Pleased to hear that Latest dumps of SCP-500 exam are available here.
hi! i'm julia from spain. need to bypass the SCP-500 exam. however.
My English may be very bad. The language is easy and lines are quick .
No trouble in mugging. It helped me wrap up the guidance in 3 weeks and i
surpassed wilh 88% marks. now not capable of crack the books. lengthy
strains and difficult words make me sleepy. needed an clean manual badly
and finally observed one with the killexams.com mind dumps. I were
given all query and answer . first rate, killexams! You made my day.
See more SUN dumps
310-083 |
310-043 |
310-044 |
310-610 |
310-876 |
212-065 |
310-330 |
310-230 |
310-053 |
310-625 |
310-600 |
310-203 |
310-019 |
310-812 |
310-091 |
310-101 |
310-084 |
310-152 |
310-052 |
310-100 |
310-056 |
310-105 |
310-036 |
310-092 |
310-102 |
310-202 |
310-879 |
310-302 |
311-232 |
310-231 |
310-301 |
310-013 |
310-400 |
310-110 |
310-878 |
310-012 |
310-540 |
310-150 |
310-035 |
310-502 |
310-066 |
310-200 |
310-880 |
310-015 |
310-620 |
310-065 |
310-811 |
310-220 |
SCP-500 |
310-011 |
Latest Exams added on bigdiscountsales
1Z0-453 |
210-250 |
300-210 |
500-205 |
500-210 |
70-765 |
9A0-409 |
C2010-555 |
C2090-136 |
C9010-260 |
C9010-262 |
C9020-560 |
C9020-568 |
C9050-042 |
C9050-548 |
C9050-549 |
C9510-819 |
C9520-911 |
C9520-923 |
C9520-928 |
C9520-929 |
C9550-512 |
CPIM-BSP |
C_TADM70_73 |
C_TB1200_92 |
C_TBW60_74 |
C_TPLM22_64 |
C_TPLM50_95 |
DNDNS-200 |
DSDPS-200 |
E20-562 |
E20-624 |
E_HANABW151 |
E_HANAINS151 |
JN0-1330 |
JN0-346 |
JN0-661 |
MA0-104 |
MB2-711 |
NSE6 |
OMG-OCRES-A300 |
P5050-031 |
See more dumps on bigdiscountsales
000-M40 |
132-S-900.6 |
M2080-713 |
NYSTCE |
1Z1-450 |
MOS-AXP |
HP0-621 |
FINRA |
310-043 |
00M-609 |
M9560-231 |
E20-330 |
3M0-300 |
1Z0-146 |
MTEL |
000-276 |
000-332 |
1Z0-042 |
ARDMS |
SABE501V3-0 |
000-713 |
CTAL-TM-UK |
FN0-125 |
350-024 |
HP3-C32 |
1Y0-371 |
190-620 |
70-569-VB |
HP0-S36 |
000-M42 |
000-463 |
1Z0-965 |
C2150-199 |
IBQH001 |
C5050-287 |
600-511 |
00M-604 |
GB0-363 |
EX0-117 |
JN0-340 |
040-444 |
LOT-920 |
FM0-307 |
190-738 |
190-982 |
HP0-Y21 |
050-634 |
HP0-S31 |
000-719 |
000-544 |
SCP-500 Questions and Answers
firewall rules
Windows services
polling frequency
bandwidth utilization
Answer: B
QUESTION: 137
What wouldcause an NOC user's accountto stay logged in indefinitely?
using Account Manager to give administrator rights to the NOC user
using Orion Web Console settings to increase timeout on the NOC user
using Account Manager to disable timeout on the NOC user
using theOrion NPM settings to change the default timeout
Answer: C
QUESTION: 138
The
Orion NPMadministrator wants users to see a different node details page
for all Extreme Network switches. How should the administrator
implement this change globally for all accounts?
use the Account Manager and select the new node details page for each account
use the Views by Device Type to change theview to the new nodes page
use the Manage Views and limit the new Nodes Details view
use the Account Views to assign the view to the guest account
Answer: B
QUESTION: 139
AnOrion
NPM administrator enables audible alerts through the Orion Web ConsolE.
Assuming you are on a view that shows alerts, when will the audible
alert be triggered?
every 10 minutesif there is an active alert
whenever your view includes NodesWith Problems
whenever a new alert has appeared since the last refresh
when you first log in to the Web Console
Answer: C
QUESTION: 140
The
Orion NPM administrator needs to create an NOC view that hasonly a
summary page. Which Orion component should you use to accomplish this?
Account Limitation Builder
Custom Property Editor
Customize Menu Bars
System Manager
Answer: C
QUESTION: 141
The
Orion NPM administrator wants to add the company ticketing website as a
menu item within the Web Console. What is the most time-efficient way
toaccomplish this goal for all user accounts?
add a custom html resource to the Summary view
add user-defined links to the Menu bar
add a custom link to the Modules bar
add an external website to the Menu bar
Answer: D
QUESTION: 142
The
NOC team wants to add asimplemap within Orion NPM that showsthe United
States and theedge routerstatusfor each of the company sites. Which two
operationsare required to set up this map? (Choose two.)
modifybackgroundimage
drag and drophyperlinks onto map
drag anddropstatus icons onto map
associate network interfaces with map lines
dragand drop interfaces onto map
Answer: A, C
QUESTION: 143
Which two stepsare required tocreate a nested map using Orion NPM? (Choose two.)
create asingle map that includes both site overview and site details
add a hyperlink from the site details map tothe site overview
select "Enable Nested Maps" onthe site details map
drag and dropthe site details maponto thesite overviewmap
create asiteoverviewmap and a separate site details map
Answer: D, E
QUESTION: 144
Network
engineers want the ability tosee a custom propertywhen the cursor
hovers over a node on the map. How do you enable this functionality in
Orion NPM?
addcustom property labelsto the nodes in the map
enable the custom property for map display
set up a drill-down text box for nodes in the map
configure a custom tool tip for the nodes in the map
Answer: D
QUESTION: 145
A
network engineerusing Orion NPM notices that a node on a top level map
is green, even though half of the items in the associated nested map are
down. What is the most likely cause of this issue?
Availability thresholds for devices have been set to above 50%.
Map status thresholds have been set to above 50%.
Map status thresholds have been set to below 50%.
Availability thresholds for deviceshave been set to below 50%.
Answer: C
SUN SCP-500 Exam (SolarWinds Certified Professional) Detailed Information
Non-Standard Game Over
"YOU embody Jeearr; you are cursed by ten thousand generations of
victims; your face adorns the idols. And worst of all, you remain awake
and aware, a witness to horror, never sleeping, and never, ever to
escape. Your score is -99 of a possible 400, in 805 moves. This puts you
in the class of Menace to Society."
In most games, players see the dreaded Game Over screen when the Player
Character is defeated in some way. Maybe you fell down too many
Bottomless Pits and lost all your lives, lost all your Hit Points to a
particularly vicious Demonic Spider. Failed a story important mission or
lost a critical Non-Player Character during an Escort Mission. You
might have been caught or captured during a Stealth-Based Mission. Or,
maybe you just forgot to pause the game while reading the walkthrough
you pulled from GameFAQs and the game's timer ran out — you get the
idea. These are all standard failings, usually treated with a simple,
default message: "Game Over." But, there are a few games that give
unique sequences or even a full cutscene to particularly noteworthy
player screw-ups. These are non-standard game overs. There are a few
variations on this theme:
This page is about the unusual, context-sensitive methods by which
players trigger a Game Over screen. It doesn't include the times when
the game tries to trick you into thinking that the game has ended. For
games where every death is accompanied by a special message, see Have a
Nice Death. For games where every death has a special animation, see The
Many Deaths of You. For games where all bad endings contain extended
narrations or demonstrations about the consequences of your actions, see
It's a Wonderful Failure. For standard Game Overs that result from an
instant-kill attack, see One-Hit Kill. For the game ending early due to a
non-standard victory condition, see Instant-Win Condition.
Examples:
openclose all folders
Action Adventure
Alone In The Dark 1992: The normal Game Over shows a zombie
dragging your dead body to the altar of Pregzt, where it shows the text
"The End". Nonstandard game-overs occur if you die in or near the final
boss room, get eaten by the giant plant guarding the front door, or
happen to read "De Vermis Mysteriis", in which case it just says "The
End" on the screen where you died.
The Legend of Zelda:
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask has two game over types; the
standard death, and the ending that occurs if you let the moon fall on
Termina. There's also an extension of the moon falling Game Over: If the
guardians are called with the Oath to Order when even one of them isn't
free, the free ones' attempt to stop the moon will turn out to be not
working, at which point the player gets one minute (real time) left to
play the Song of Time to escape. If the player opts to let time run out
here, he or she will see a scene where the guardians fall over and the
moon continues to fall. Then it continues to the normal scene of this
Game Over variant. The Nintendo 3DS remake further extends this
slightly: Whilst in the original game, "You've met with a terrible fate,
haven't you?" appears on a black screen after the Moon falls, the
remake adds some text telling you "And so the angry moon fell from the
sky, annihilating this world and its many inhabitants", in between the
moon hitting and the "terrible fate" line. The original game had some
degree of ambiguity to its game over, but the remake straight up tells
you that you were too slow and everyone died.
A more obscure Zelda Bad End can be found in The Legend of
Zelda: The Minish Cap. As you fight through the last few enemies, Ezlo
warns you that Vaati will be done draining the light force out of Zelda
(fatally) by the time the bell rings three times. This can happen. The
first two rings are scripted, but the bell will ring again if you take
too long to beat the Darknuts.
In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, you accidentally set
fire to Barnes' bomb storehouse and if you fail to Outrun the Fireball
in time you're treated to a short cutscene of the building exploding
around you and a Game Over screen. Similar situations occur if you fail
to extinguish the flames on Prince Ralis' carriage quickly enough or
jump off the burning Great Bridge of Hylia in time.
In The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, when you're travelling
with a character, a Pirate tank (or ship) may invade your train. When
this happens, lots of Miniblins (and later a Big Blin) will try to
kidnap your passenger. If they succeed, you can still rescue the
character when going to the Pirate Hideout island, so this wouldn't be a
big deal. But if that place hasn't been unlocked yet (and it isn't yet
by the time you're taking Carben, a plot-critical character, with you),
you have no way to rescue the character, and you get an automatic Game
Over.
In The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, The Imprisoned triggers
this if it manages to arrive at the Sealed Temple before Link can reseal
it. The Imprisoned requires Hylia's soul (read: ZELDA'S) in order to
reclaim its true form and power, and it's in the temple where he can
find it.
Metroid:
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption has one: Stay in Hyper Mode for too
long, and you see a cutscene of Samus turning into Dark Samus, followed
by a modified death screen.note Normally, the game over screen has a
red splatter appear, presumably blood. If you get this Nonstandard
screen, there's this dark blue blotch (Phazon) that grows on the screen,
and the words "Terminal Corruption" appear This outcome can also happen
through a different means during the travel to the Very Definitely
Final Dungeon: since Samus is already on a near-terminal stage of
corruption, her PED Suit vents all of the Phazon out of her body, but at
the cost of any further protection, so any Phazon damage will affect a
yellow bar that replaces the standard energy meter (and as time passes,
the atmosphere of Phazon will slowly fill it up anyway). If this yellow
bar completes, Samus will reach total corruption and the Terminal
Corruption scene will trigger.
Metroid: Fusion has exactly three Non-Standard Game Overs, all
of which involve a timed mission. The first occurs when the X figure out
how to hack the computer and order the engines' boiler to explode; the
second when an SA-X discovers and attacks a secret Metroid breeding
facility; the third occurs at the very end of the game, when Samus is
forced to destroy the entire space station. If you run out of time
during any of these timed segments, you will see the same cutscene you'd
see if you successfully completed the mission — except that you don't
survive. Of course, initiating said cutscenes are Instant-Win Condition
type, so you can literally wait until the last possible second.
Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness:
If you take too long in Madame Carvier's apartment, the police arrest Lara and the game resets to the title screen.
Being too much of a jerkass to Bouchard during your first
conversation with him will end with him pulling out a gun and shooting
Lara dead on the spot.
In Tomb Raider (and loyally copied into its remake, Tomb
Raider: Anniversary), if Lara makes the mistake of touching the magic
hand of the Midas statue, she herself turns to solid gold, just
painfully slowly enough for her to be able to realize what her mistake
has cost her before she actually dies. Many players consider this to be
the coolest death of the franchise.
In [PROTOTYPE], if you fail a normal mission, MISSION FAILED is
displayed on the screen. If you fail the last mission, you see a
nuclear bomb destroy Manhattan.
In The Matrix: Path of Neo, taking the blue pill.
If you fail most missions in LEGO Island, the Infomaniac will
simply tell you so. If you fail to catch the Brickster, though...
In Mercenary II, also known as Damocles, death is normally a
slap on the wrist, since you can use a safe quit option that will
resurrect you and teleport to space in a cool ship that you can fly.
However, you can activate non-standard Game Overs
failing to prevent the comet Damocles from colliding with the planet Eris (the president of Eris will then insult you)
destroying Eris instead of Damocles (the president will ask you if you understood the mission)
destroying one of two other unrelated planets (a newsflash will
report the destruction of the planet and inform you that you are now
wanted by the police)
destroying the author's computer, on which the game itself
supposedly runs (all planets in the system will explode one by one, and
your on-board computer will question your actions, telling you to reset
the game. If you do not, your on-board computer will tell you that he is
surprised you haven't left yet, informing you that "THERE'S NOTHING
LEFT - IT'S ALL GONE - BLOWN UP". That phrase will remain on the screen
until you reset the game.)
The 2003 Bionicle game has three, two of which are in Kopaka's rail-shooter level against the Bohrok.
First, when you fight against Gahlok, if you take too long to
fight him, he will reach the Kini he is heading towards and will proceed
to attack it.
Second, when you fight against Tahnok, if you take too long to
fight him, the chase will end with him calling upon multiple Bohrok to
beat the ever-loving crap out of you.
In the game's final level, in Tahu Nuva's racingrail-shooter
level against the Rahkshi, Kurahk. If Kurahk gets to Ta-Koro before you
do, it's game over.
Batman: Arkham Knight has a few Game Overs that are different from those of the previous games.
Occasionally you'll receive a comforting send-off from Alfred
or Robin, guaranteeing that Gotham will remember you and they'll keep
fighting the good fight.
If you fail during one of the Poison Ivy missions, she'll
lament the destruction of her plant, saying that there's no way she can
save Gotham now.
A rather terrifying example comes if you fail during the GCPD
defense mission. You get a cutscene of Barbara and the cops in the
lockup room, when suddenly the elevator opens and a minigunner starts
firing, complete with audible screams.
Action Game
God of War Series:
During the final battle in God of War, Kratos is hurled back to
the moment his family died by his hand, only to find them alive...
whereupon Ares conjures up an army of Kratos clones. The family has
their own health bar in the following battle; should it run out, a
cutscene starts, showing Kratos collapsing in abject despair and sorrow,
murmuring, "Not again..." The Kratos clones then gang up and chop him
apart.
During one of the last battles in God of War II, Kratos is
hurled back to the moment that he defeated Ares. The boss, Atropos, was
going to destroy the giant sword you originally used in the first game
to slay the god of war, which would lead to your retroactive death. If
you failed to defeat Atropos before she could destroy the sword, you get
a cutscene of past Kratos kneeling in defeat and getting stabbed by
Ares, which causes present Kratos to wretch in pain and fall over, dead.
In Dante's Inferno, failing the Quick Time Event with Cleopatra
when she starts fondling Dante results in him being seduced and a game
over. Which is only natural, seeing as he's in Hell trying to save
Beatrice.
In Paperboy, if you lose all your customers, the game over
screen says "Paperboy Fired" instead of the usual "Paperboy Calls It
Quits".
In Contra: Hard Corps, choosing to join Colonel Bahamut in one
of the game's alternate routes will show an ending in which Bahamut
conquers the world with the player character as his lackey. However, the
player will be then taken to the Game Over screen and be asked to
continue (if he has any credits left).
A mission in the later parts of Mafia II has you in a house
trying to hide somewhere while hoping not to be seen by a hitman. If you
decide to hide in the shower, you will be treated to an extra cutscene
of the hitman shooting you through the curtains, and then you get your
"You got killed"-screen. Another one will take place if you drive too
recklessly while transporting a bomb, resulting in a massive fireball.
In North America's release of Custom Robo, the protagonist is
freely given the option to not go on the final mission near the end of
the game. If you decide not to go, the protagonist's partner, Harry,
will beseech him — repeatedly — to reconsider. By steadfastly refusing
to go, the rest of the team will go without him. The next day, the Big
Bad arrives in the city, having killed off the others, and proceeds to
destroy everything. And Harry chastises you for letting him die. After
an ellipse, the game will return the player to the previous day where
Harry insists that they all go.
In the Sega CD version of Spider-Man vs. the Kingpin, losing to
the Kingpin (the final boss) results in a sad ending sequence in which
the Kingpin triumphs over the defeated Spider-Man. He then lowers both
Spider-Man and Mary Jane into the vat of deadly ooze, after which they
are never seen again. In the Genesis version of the game, the bad ending
consists of Mary Jane being lowered into a vat of acid, Spidey falling
to his knees in despair, and "GAME OVER".
If you beat the final boss but fail to rescue all the animals
in Rolo to the Rescue, the game tells you that it will "remain on your
conscience" and "you will never truly be happy again". This is followed
by the words "GAME OVER".
In Contra: Shattered Soldier, completing Stage 5 with too low a
rank results in the archipelago being destroyed via Kill Sat, taking
the heroes with it.
In the NES game Cowboy Kid, if the player accepts the bosses'
deal to join the Mad Brothers, they will say that Sam became one of the
villains who then did bad things and ended up getting hanged by the new
sheriff of the town. After this, it shows the words "GAME OVER".
In the arcade game Magic Sword, choosing to accept the orb
which drops when you defeat the final boss makes you the new final boss,
with a caption asking who's going to save the world now.
Zone of the Enders has one that doubles as a bad ending: fail
all SOS missions by getting an E rank (all building destroyed and no
survivors), and Thunderheart will be abruptly and suddenly killed by an
explosion shortly after he's introduced. ADA will confirm that Jehuty
severing some of the colony's lifelines is what caused the explosion,
and berate Leo for letting it happen. This is almost impossible to
achieve unless one goes out of their way to do so, however.
In Bayonetta, Cereza gets captured by a Joy at one point. If
you take too long to get to them, the Joy will fly away with Cereza in
her arms, then the game over screen will show Cereza's discarded doll
instead of the usual Bayonetta's corpse.
Adventure Game
The normal Game Over sequence in King's Quest VI is a very
short cutscene in Hades. There are three Non-Standard Game Overs: a
Deader Than Dead Game Over (Alexander's skeleton in tattered clothing
collapses on a black background), a Baleful Polymorph Game Over ("Was
that the beast you could do?"), and another non-deadly Game Over where
Alexander gets captured and locked in the castle dungeon right before
the wedding ("'Tis a noble thing to have a means of escape, and 'tis a
far, far better thing to never get caught at all!")
King's Quest IV had a couple. Rosella could, in theory,
complete all the victory conditions...except getting the magic fruit she
came to get for the ailing Graham. What plays is most of the happy
ending, but when she gets to Daventry, she has to admit failure and
watch her father die. Another one was either failing to escape the tower
cell or getting caught by Lolotte's guards, which ended with her forced
to marry Edgar note Mind you, Rosella does marry Edgar several games
later, but it prevents her from killing Lolotte, rescuing Graham and
Genesta, restoring Edgar to his true form, and reuniting him with his
real parents.
Shadowgate: All the myriad deaths cut to a glowing-eyed Reaper
against a sunset with the caption, "It's a sad thing that your
adventures have ended here!!", except (at least) jumping into a massive
chasm, which brings, "The Reaper Man stands below, waiting to catch you"
instead. If that doesn't seem scary, you lack the childhood trauma.
In the original Leisure Suit Larry, anything that resulted in a
"normal" dead body would trigger a cut-scene of Larry's corpse being
lowered into a laboratory, which then creates a new Larry to be raised
to the opening scene for the soon-to-be-restarted game. (Interestingly
enough, getting killed in an alley would result in one of the techs
saying Larry screwed up again, but this never happened anywhere else.)
More obscurely, if the player took too long to reach the end game, Larry
sees the sun rising, and then shoots himself in the head in despair
over still being (technically) a virgin.
Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers has the
option, at one point, to access an in-game computer and "delete" the
files for Space Quest IV. Doing so automatically quits the game, with no
warning. A similar thing happens if you type "cheat" in the second and
third installments of Leisure Suit Larry. It's also possible to do this
in Space Quest II, although it results in a different ending.
Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist quits to DOS if you shoot yourself.
In an Older Than the NES example, many old text adventures
(Interactive Fiction) games allow you to easily recover from death
(sometimes by simply "walking out" of the afterlife, sometimes with an
"undo" command) but have some exceptions where that doesn't work if you
really screw up, such as by wiping yourself from existence through
Temporal Paradox.
Example: The original Zork trilogy always cut to a prompt
allowing you to "RESTART, RESTORE, or QUIT" upon death. The notable
exception was if you died in Zork 3 while using the time machine to
travel to the past — the game simply and immediately quit to the system
command prompt, due to the historical paradox making your character
cease to have ever existed entirely. This becomes particularly jarring
for people playing the games on emulators on modern systems.
The notoriously cruel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text
adventure also does this if you, as Ford Prefect, negate the events of
the game by not saving Arthur Dent from the Earth's destruction in the
first place. It is particularly notable for causing chaos and
consternation among players by actually quitting the game in
MID-SENTENCE.
Quitting the game became a less acceptable option over time at
Infocom, but the Enchanter Trilogy, sequel to the Zork Trilogy, kept up
the tradition of having special ways to die. In all three games, it is
possible to take actions that not only cause you to fail your mission,
but make the world substantially worse off than it was before. Thus,
your score displayed at the game over prompt, which normally would be
some score taken out of a total (100 out of 400, say) and give you a
rank dependent on your score (from "Charlatan" to "Enchanter" to
"Sorcerer" to "Archmage"), would instead become a score of -100 and your
rank would be "Menace to Society". In the original game, Enchanter, one
earned this rank for releasing a powerful Lovecraftian demon upon the
land; in the sequel, Sorcerer, one earned this rank for successfully
tracking down your demon-possessed mentor and allowing the demon to
transfer itself to your far more powerful body; and in the finale,
Spellbreaker, it was revealed that the entire plot of the game was a
cunning trap and that actually succeeding in your goal would grant you
this rank if you didn't see the ruse in time.
In the computer game version of Frederick Forsyth's The Fourth
Protocol (in 1984), you have to uncover a Soviet plot to explode a
nuclear bomb near a US Air Force base in Britain, to influence the
upcoming British elections and lead to the election of an anti-NATO,
anti-American, anti-nuclear, pro-Soviet government. Usually, if you take
too long or don't get anywhere with the plot, you get a memo telling
you you're being reassigned to The Falkland Islands, until you get far
enough. When you find the bomb you have to defuse it, and if you mess it
up you are told the plan succeeded: Britain fell to the Soviets, and
they started working on Europe from two fronts. But sometimes a
different ending appears: the bomb leads to a limited nuclear war,
destroying both sides and making the northern hemisphere uninhabitable.
This comes "From the annals of the Australio-Indonesian Empire..."
Failure during the finale of any Quest for Glory installment
from Trial by Fire through Dragon Fire will lead not only to the hero's
death, but a scene of the resident Sealed Evil in a Can breaking free to
lay waste to the world.
This can happen several times in the second game, Trial by
Fire. The main city is beset by four elementals over the course of the
story, and three days after they individually show up, if they haven't
been defeated, then you get a cutscene of them destroying the city. In
addition, the final portion of the game, after the Big Bad gets the
sealed evil but before it is released, any failure or waste of time will
result in the above mentioned non-standard game over.
In the third game, the Fighter must become initiated into the
Simbani tribe as part of the plot, and this means competing against your
new friend and the chief's son Yesufu at the Initiation Ceremony. The
competition includes a number of events, including running, which Yesufu
will always automatically beat you at until a pre-scripted moment where
he is injured. If you leave him there, the Simbani, who rely on
complete trust and cooperation within the tribe to survive in a harsh
environment, will be horrified by your selfishness and refuse to
initiate you, leading to a game over.
In Shadow of Destiny, when you die, you are generally given a
couple of hints, and automatically continue; without the option to game
over. However, it is possible in at least the first chapter to meet
yourself — by coming into contact with yourself, you create a time
paradox which erases you from existence. It also fails back to the title
screen. You also unlock one of the Multiple Endings by inducing someone
else to do it.
The Interactive Fiction Game, Anchorhead, has a large number of
grisly ways to die, but the character can go insane in true Call of
Cthulhu fashion by either fully reading the black tome in the church or
by attacking and killing your husband during the game's finale. The
character can also suffer "Endless Torment" by being sucked into the
womb at any point.
Return To Zork: In most deaths, a three-note song plays (the
notes are from the game's opening theme), an evil guy laughs at you, and
a temple screen is shown. However:
In the very first death of the game (getting attacked by a vulture), a longer song plays.
In any death relating to water, a different three-note song plays.
In any death relating to explosions, there is no song and no evil laugh.
In one death (walking over a pile of leaves and getting sprung
in a trap that also turns you upside-down), the temple screen is also
upside-down.
Two final special game overs, related to the Protection
quizzes. One just exits out to DOS normally if you get the questions
wrong, but in the other one, later on in the game, you are "blown" back
to DOS by a double barrel hunting shotgun.
Typing "click heels" in the old The Wonderful Wizard of Oz text
adventure would lead to a black screen and state that while it did get
Dorothy home safely, it leaves her friends fending for themselves, and
that Dorothy will spend the rest of her life wondering about the
adventures she missed out on.
In Myst, if you try to enter either the red book or the blue
book, the brother inside will keep you trapped inside the book by
tearing out all the pages. If you enter the green book without the final
page, you're trapped. In the nice ending, you put the white pages into
the green book with Atrus in it. Then you get to wander the entire game
world as a reward. Other entries in the series also offer multiple
endings.
Normal game overs in Ghost Trick are caused by being unable to
save your subject's life before time runs out. However, there are two
instances where you can actively cause the subject's death.
If you recline the seat while the van-driver is driving, he will lose control of the vehicle and crash anyway.
If you replace the bullet with the hard-hat, rather than the
soft knit hat, it will still crash into Cabanela's face and crush his
skull (even more brutally than the bullet would have). His ghost isn't
very pleased, but it's hilarious to watch.
Another instance (in the same chapter as the second example) occurs if you try manipulating objects in view of the killer.
In the video game version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail,
you play most of the game as King Arthur, but the "Knights in Kombat"
mini-game allows you to play as Arthur or the Black Knight. If you play
as the Black Knight and win, the game immediately cuts to the Game Over
screen.
the white chamber has a full eight endings. Four are standard
Have a Nice Death you get by getting killed before completing the story
(end up in outer space, get electrocuted, die from toxic air, or decide
to stay in a quarantine bay until you expire). Completing the story nets
you an ending depending on how many points you've gained by certain
deeds until then: five points nets you the Redemption ending, in which
you leave the station. Less, you get the Damned ending in which you have
to do everything all over again since you didn't learn. Zero points
nets you the Tormented ending, in which you're essentially dumped into
HELL. Oh, and scoring six points (difficult unless you go out of your
way to do everything right) lands the Comedy ending, which is weird.
In one of Homestuck's flash "walkarounds" (Past Karkat: Wake
Up), Karkat specifically tells you not to fall asleep — that doing so
would be fatal, given the dream worlds' annihilation. Later on, Nepeta
shows you to an Easter Egg room with a bed and lots of treasure chests.
Guess what you can do.
At the end of Beneath a Steel Sky, you can get one either by
having Rob voluntarily plug himself into LINC, or waiting until LINC
itself grabs him. Rob struggles for a while, then has his mind wiped and
replaced with that of LINC.
All of the endings in the Atlantis series are non-standard, and
depend entirely on what wrong choice you made to bring them about.
In Sword Of Shannara if you attack the Warlock Lord instead of
the book controlling him, you get a text-only ending where the main
character is the new Warlock Lord.
Trying to enable cheat codes in The Stanley Parable results in
Stanley being trapped in "the serious room", leaving the player no
choice but to restore or restart.
The PC game Hell Cab, despite having a
three-strikes-and-you're-out life system, has a few instant-death
consequences depending on your morals. Early examples include telling
Nero you want to throw the ladies to the lions, and choosing to kill
your opponent during the gladiator match.
In The Dead Case, shortly before the very last part of the
game, the killer runs into the house of the protagonist's fiance,
pursued by the ghost of his wife. The dead wife goes to set the house on
fire, and the player is given the choice between stopping her and
letting her go ahead. The correct option is to stop her (which will lead
to the two going inside the house, stopping the killer, and saving the
fiance), but letting the ghost burn the house down will result in a game
over, informing the player that the fiance died and the killer escaped.
In the bonus chapter of Nevertales: The Beauty Within, failing
the test of character results in the main character's husband being
crushed to death while she waits fruitlessly forever for his return.
In Super Adventure Rockman, the default Game Over screen is
Roll dying. However, there are some battles that can cause a Game Over
for you.
Losing to Shadow Man will cause Shadow Man to kill Mega Man off screen, and give out a Evil Laugh.
Losing to Gemini Man will cause Gemini Man to comment on Mega
Man's loss before finishing off Mega Man with his Gemini Laser and
giving out a Evil Laugh. The screen fades to black with no option of
continuing.
Losing to the final boss will cause a Game Over where Ra-Moon
kills everyone and takes over the world. There is a option to retry the
final boss, luckily.
Another example from Zork. If you are in the forest, in just
the right spot, and throw the knife or golden egg at a tree, it bounces
back, hitting you in the face and killing you instantly. The game then
tells you that you seem like a good guy so it will give you another
chance and automatically restarts for you. You then appear, alive, in
the forest, right where you were before, but without any of your
belongings. In front of you, whatever you used to kill yourself will be
right in front of you. You pick it up, throw it at the tree again, it
hits you in the face again, killing you again. The third or fourth time
you do this - or kill yourself in any way three or four times in a row -
the game gives you the message "You are obviously unstable" and gives
you the game over message.
Beat 'em Up
Fable Heroes normally does not allow the player to lose;
even if all Player Characters in the party are killed, they can complete
the level as ghosts, receiving fewer resources. The normal end screen
shows the party members standing on a championship platform. However, if
the game is set to the highest difficulty level and all the PCs die,
the game cuts to the same platform but with all of the top 3 spaces
occupied by monsters, with the heading "The Creatures Win!"
In Undercover Cops, failing to stop Dr. Crayborn from dropping
the atomic bomb on the city will result in a bad ending in which the
city is destroyed by the bomb and the three city sweepers are forced to
quit their jobs, followed by the Game Over screen.
In Anarchy Reigns, during the boss fight against the Blacker
Baron, once you weaken him to about 25% of his life, you'll be warned of
an impending plane crash on your position. After weakening him further,
you'll then have about 20 seconds to finish the fight, or else the
plane will crash, killing you both and causing a Mission Failure.
Fighting Game
In the arcade version of Street Fighter Alpha 3, losing the
final CPU match against M. Bison does not allow you to continue.
Instead, you'll get an alternate ending in which M. Bison uses your
character's body as an energy source for his Psycho Drive. And if you
lose to Ryu playing as M. Bison, it will play Ryu's ending instead.
Normally, losing a fight in the first Fatal Fury leads to a
taunting quote from your opponent and a "Continue?" screen showing your
fighter's battered picture. Losing to Geese, the last boss, however,
gives you a cutscene where he kicks you off of Geese Tower. The
"Continue?" screen likewise shows your character plummeting to his
death.
Given that using a Continue would place you back at the same
battle again, one imagines a giant trampoline placed directly under the
window...
In Marvel vs. Capcom 3, you can watch a unique ending sequence
if you lose to the final boss and opt not to continue. In Ultimate
Marvel vs Capcom 3, said ending became unlockable by beating the newly
added Galactus Mode.
In Bushido Blade, you must fight your opponents honorably in
Story mode. Use dishonorable tactics and the game abruptly ends after a
certain point, with a usually random message berating you, such as "None
are more contemptible than those who defile the way of the Bushido."
In Tekken 5, if you lose to Jinpachi and let the "Continue"
timer run out, you'll get an extended Game Over. Instead of just a plain
"Game Over" appearing, a cutscene plays first. Jinpachi laments that no
one was able to stop him, cries Tears of Blood, and goes One-Winged
Angel one last time before rocketing himself into the sky. The screen
fades to black, and a message comes up saying "Jinpachi's mind is
consumed by the devil as he reaches his final transformation. The world
will never be the same."
In the Arcana Heart series, should you time out during the
final boss battles, the bad endings show either the Elemental World and
human world merging in the first game or Japan getting destroyed by
Ragnarok in the third.
In the original Virtual-ON and the sequel Oratorio Tangram,
attempting to defeat the final boss by time over will result in a bad
ending (due to a Wave Motion Gun on the moon powering up in the first
game, or a Reality Warper super-computer activating in the sequel).
In the Virtual Boy game Teleroboxer, there is a "Title Defense"
mode which can only be played if you defeat all of your robot
opponents, including the "Legendary Champ". If you lose even one match
in the "Title Defense" mode, it will say that you are no longer the
champion and you must now retire. Depending on which save file that you
played on, it will say "CHAMPION RETIRED" on it, which means you cannot
play on that same save file ever again.
First Person Shooter
In Time Shift, if you block or otherwise interfere with
certain movable objects while using your Time Reversal power, you get a
non-standard Game Over due to Time Paradox.
System Shock's normal game over is you serving SHODAN well, as a
cyborg. You get a non-standard game over when you fire the mining laser
into Earth. The game ends with a frantic Cyberspace battle where the
player crashes an AI who in turn hacks the player's mind. The latter is
represented by a storm of pixels slowly filling the screen. If the AI
wins, the pixels fill the screen to form a picture of her empty,
emotionless, Gigeresque face.
If you die in Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, you will usually
just watch Kyle die in a slow motion sequence. However on one level, you
are required to be stealthy. If an enemy raises the alarm, you will see
a cutscene of Kyle in prison just before being tortured.
America's Army:
If you shoot an instructor, the screen goes black and then transports your character to a prison cell in Leavenworth.
If you shoot people on your own team too many times in online
play, the game will kick you out of the server and give you the
Leavenworth scene as well.
Half-Life has several of these, usually taking the form of a black screen with white text:
When using the teleporter "gun" in Opposing Force, there are
places where you can translocate into nothingness, giving you an unusual
Game Over screen.
And if you try to chase Freeman to Xen, you will lose due to creating a Temporal Paradox.
And similar to the America's Army example above, you can
attackkill an instructor during the tutorial and get yourself
court-martialed.
In the Opposing Force Chapter "Friendly Fire", you can damage
the rocket the nuke that will eventually blow up Black Mesa came in, to
the point where it explodes!
Similar to the Opposing Force tutorial example mentioned above,
this can also occur at the start of Blue Shift before you officially
report for duty. You're given a pistol at the practice-firing range,
loads of comrade security guards are around, no need to guess what
happens if you decide to shoot someone.
Refusing the G-Man's offer at the end of Half-Life might be a
case of this, or a case of Multiple Endings. He expresses his regrets,
and then it's not pretty.
There's also a much earlier Half-Life non-standard game over
during the Questionable Ethics level where you need to bring one of the
three hiding scientists to the eye scanner to unlock the front door of
the building. If you decide to kill all three of the scientists, get
them killed by the malfunctioning surgery saws, or otherwise let them
die before the door is unlocked, you end up trapping yourself. The game
will then fade out like the G-Man endings after the last remaining
scientist dies.
In Half-Life 2, crashing a vehicle into a location that the
player will not be able to recover will result in you getting terminated
for "failure to preserve mission-critical resources".
Jumping off the cliffs on Highway 17 will fade to black with the note that you "demonstrated exceedingly poor judgement".
In Episode Two, the G-Man's endgame reports have been replaced
with Vortessent messages, the most amusing of which comments that "the
Magnusson's misgivings about the Freeman were completely justified" if
the player fails to protect the base.
In Red Faction, if Griffin dies, you will get a special message
saying "Your failure to protect Griffin doomed the rebellion, etc'',
followed by just "Game Over" instead of "You Have Died". A similar thing
happens if Capek kills Eos during his boss battle.
In Tron 2.0, if you kill any non-hostile andor "Civilian"
Programs (like Ma3a, Byte, or any character that you can talk to), you
hear a voice say "Illegal program termination." Five seconds later, you
get a screen with the same message.
If Ma3a is killed during her Protection Missions or a stray
shot takes out Alan when you're running your Escort Mission with him in
the latter part of the game, the message is "You failed to protect Ma3a
your father." Ma3a proves difficult to defend; Alan (being possibly the
most rational character in that universe) has the good sense to duck
when the discs start flying.
In the final mission of Target Terror, if you directly shoot
the final terrorist instead of the Dead Man Switch he's holding, the
plane blows up. If you run out of lives during the "no continues" part
of the mission, the plane is shown crashing into the White House.
Call of Duty: "You are a traitor to the motherland!" if you
kill a Commissar in the Russian campaign, "Friendly fire will not be
tolerated", if you shoot a friendly elsewhere, or "You were killed by a
grenade, exploding vehicle, lethal pocket of radiation, etc."
If you fail the helicopter jump in Modern Warfare, you get
"Nobody makes their first Jump...". If you miss your shot in the
flashback level "One Shot, One Kill", "Zakhaev escaped unharmed".
In Modern Warfare 2, in the early mission "Team Player", if the
player chooses to run in on foot rather than go into the convoy, you
are promptly taken down by sniper fire with the notice "It would
probably be safer to ride in the convoy."
Failing to move past certain events in recent installments will
replace the quotes with whatever you are supposed to do. One is
reminded to "Hold on for dear life" after falling to death while ice
climbing.
Dying to an attack dog in Modern Warfare or a Banzai charger in
World at War has the game tell you when to press the melee buttonkey to
save yourself.
In Call of Duty 2, there are two instances, one in "Red Army
Training", and one (appropriately enough) in "Prisoners of War", where
the game will display the message "Killing prisoners of war will not be
tolerated" if the player attacks captured German soldiers.
Operation Wolf: Aside from "sustaining a lethal injury", the
game will also end if you run out of bullets and grenades ("Since you
have no ammunition left, you must join the hostages."). Strangely
enough, you still have to run out of health before that happens.
In the Xbox 360 version of Secret Service, shooting the
President results in a game over... and unlocks a zero gamerscore
achievement entitled 'The Exact Opposite Of Your Job'.
Halo: Combat Evolved:
If Captain Keyes dies in the mission "Truth and
Reconciliation", where you have to rescue him, the camera cuts to him
falling, and Cortana says "No! Without the Captain, the Covenant have
already won".
If you run out of time during the Escape Sequence on the final
level, the game displays a cutscene of the Pillar Of Autumn exploding
with you still onboard.
Typically one can friendly fire your fellow marines and still
complete the level even if they turn on you and try to kill you. The ONE
exception to this is if you kill one of the bridge crew on the first
level, "The Pillar Of Autumn". Doing this causes the room exit to be
locked and invincible marines to attack you. You can't complete the
level and you WILL die eventually.
In Rise of the Triad, failing to catch all of El Oscuro's (the
final boss and villain of the series) spawn will give you a seemingly
standard ending... but twenty years later, one of his spawn rises to
power and explodes the Earth. But nice work, anyway. You then get a
voice telling you that "Youuuuuuuuuuuuuu suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck."
In Strife:
The first Soldier of Fortune has a number of these for failed
mission objectives, such as running out of time to stop the missile
launch in Siberia.
In the first Stealth-Based Mission of Soldier of Fortune II, if
a guard spots you, Dr. Ivanovich is immediately captured and you get a
slightly different Game Over screen. In the level where you are
escorting a team of soldiers, disobeying orders or accidentally shooting
one of them results in them executing you on the spot.
In the original Time Crisis, running out of time caused an instant game over, unlike the sequels.
Left 4 Dead has a non-standard game over in the finale of The
Sacrifice. There has to be a minimum of 2 survivors alive to perform the
sacrifice; one survivor has to jump off the bridge and restart the
generator to get the bridge up and the other survivor has to be on the
bridge to get away from the zombies once it is raised. If 3 survivors
are killed or are incapacitated on the bridge and the survivor
sacrificing themselves is off the bridge, it counts as a failure and you
will have to redo the finale. This is coming from a game where the only
way to lose is everyone dying.
Quake IV has a Nonstandard Game Over that can be activated at
two distinct points, both of those points happening when an ally you're
supposed to protect is killed.
Usually in SWAT 3 and SWAT 4, failing objectives does not end
the entire mission in failure, with Mission Control instead asking if
you want to continue and try to salvage what you can of the mission. A
few missions, however, have objectives that, if failed, result in an
immediate game over (i.e., letting the plane take off in SWAT 3's "Rapid
Deployment, Airport" mission), complete with an FMV showing what
happens afterwards.
In Return to Castle Wolfenstein, in the Rocket Base mission,
there is a German operator counting down the time left before the rocket
you have to destroy will take off. If you fail to destroy the rocket in
time, the game will fade to black as the rocket takes off and you will
have to start again.
In the Marathon game mod Gemini Station, if you kill Jack
Melville in the penultimate level, you are charged with his murder and
sent to an Oubliette, where the only way out is suicide by crushing
trap.
Nosferatu The Wrath Of Malachi: If you get killed by the Count
or Malachi, you get a special cutscene saying that you were the last
sacrifice needed to restore Malachi's powers, and now you will be
absorbed into him as he is released to destroy the world.
Far Cry 4 has one right at the start of the game. If you do
what the horrifying, Affably Evil psychopath Pagan Min says and simply
wait around until he comes back, he returns and starts up a pleasant
conversation about Ajay's mother, revealing several key plot points in
the process, then puts Ajay on a helicopter and takes him to Lakshmana
so he can honour his mother's dying wish, then rounds up by asking Ajay
if he wants to go do something fun before the credits roll. Probably one
of the most egregious, anti-climatic, and humorous examples of We Could
Have Avoided All This in modern fiction.
Light Gun Game
Zorton Brothers has an example of this; besides the
undertaker burying you if you lose all of your lives, the fight against
the Zorton Brothers is this; you only have two bullets to kill the
Zorton Brothers. If you miss a single bullet, you will be shot, and you
will be treated to a scene with the undertaker commenting on your loss
against the Zorton Brothers. Afterwards, your remaining lives are
ignored, and you do not get to continue, meaning that it's back to the
beginning of the game for you.
H-Game
RPG eroge made by Eushully tend to have this. Even losing
in battles that should be somewhat easy will result in a slightly
extended ending. For example, losing against an assassin in Reiki has
the main character talk with said assassin before going to the game over
screen.
Typical H-Game fandom has a GOR (Game Over Rape) subgenre, which is all about this trope.
This is typically averted in Corruption Of Champions, where no
matter how badly you've gotten your ass kicked by an enemy you are
guaranteed to "come to your senses in 8 hours, missing some gems". Most
players die their first time by abusing transformation items which if
used too much can leave you as a wild horse or a mindless puddle of
slime to name a couple, though it is actually possible to get a Game
Over by losing to enemies during specific scenarios.
MMORPG
In World of Warcraft, a Total Party Kill during the Madness
of Deathwing encounter will result in him activating the titular
ability "Cataclysm". Doing so causes the entire screen to temporarily go
black as he just destroyed the planet.
The same thing used to happen if the countdown ran out for Algalon the Raid Destroyer, for the same reason.
In EVE Online, getting your ship destroyed or running out of
scan probes in wormhole space after the wormhole you use to get there
collapses results in you becoming stranded in an unknown solar system.
It's not technically a 'game over' since you can hire other pilots to
come find and rescue you, but if nobody does, it is.
The fight against Bismarck in Final Fantasy XIV occurs on a
floating island being pull along by an airship. Periodically Bismarck
will ram the island and weaken its integrity, which is represented by a
special bar. Should this bar reach 0% you are treated to a lovely
cut-scene in which Bismarck rises up a swallows whats left of the island
whole. With your character still on it.
Party Game
In Getter Love!!, the game normally ends when you or one of
your opponents declares your love to one of the girls. If someone other
than you wins the game, you're treated to a word from everyone
involved, and that's it. If two game-weeks pass by and no one wins,
you'll be treated to a scene where Reika, fucking, MARRIES YOU, as her
equally butt-ugly family attends her wedding ceremony.
Pinball
Platforming Game
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards has a Boss Rush mini-game.
When you lose all your lives, you fall down one last time as if there's a
hole. And instead of "Try Again" and "Quit", you get "Accept Defeat".
Conker's Bad Fur Day involves a fabled Panther King seeking a
red squirrel with which to replace his broken table leg, so as to
prevent him from spilling his milk on said table. The standard game over
has Conker, the protagonist, tied and gagged to the king's table leg.
Depending on the circumstances of the player's death, the game's
nonstandard endings include the Panther King's minions turning Conker in
as either a bag of soggy squirrel (drowning or otherwise dying
underwater), bloodied chunks (gibbed), or black char (burned or
electrocuted), or just a shot of Conker's Face on a Milk Carton (falling
down a bottomless pit). In the final stage of the game (after the
Panther King dies), they do away with the cutscene entirely, only
showing you "GAME OVER" on a black screen.
In the first two Banjo-Kazooie games, as well as Donkey Kong
64, just quitting the game triggers a Game Over banner, as if the
developers of the games (Rare) wanted the player to beat the whole
campaigns in one session. In both DK64 and the first BK, the Game Over
includes a scene showing the potential outcome that would result if the
protagonists failed to twart the plans of the villains; like in Conker's
Bad Fur Day, however, once the player gets past the foil of the evil
plans, and all that remains is the final battle, no scene is shown, as
the game just puts the Game Over banner before returning to the title
screen (this is also true for the entirety of Banjo-Tooie, which doesn't
have any Game Over cutscenes whatsoever).
Castlevania:
In Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, normally Richter dies in a Rain
of Blood (being the first Castlevania protagonist to suffer this), but
getting ambushed by a living portrait ends up with Richter being trapped
in a picture within the picture — which the figure in the portrait
proceeds to tear up. It's the only unique death animation in the game.
That said, this isn't really a Game Over (unless you were on your last
life).
Losing to the True Final Boss in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
results in Soma being taken over by Dracula completely, and you get a
short scene where Julius Belmont is implied to make good on the I Cannot
Self-Terminate promise he made with Soma earlier. The DS sequel one-ups
this even more: getting the Non-Standard Game Over unlocks a new game
mode where the other characters team up to take down the now Face Heel
Turned protagonist.
In Kya: Dark Lineage, standard Game Overs show a screen saying
"Game Over". However, near the game's end, if you're hit by traitor
Aton's Wolfen Gun, you can see a sequence where Kya slowly transforms
into a scary, female Wolfen. And that's The End.
Rayman 2 has exactly one of these. There's a quest in which you
have to locate a healing elixir in the Cave of Bad Dreams. After
completing the cave's obstacle course, you are offered massive sums of
cash. If you accept this, you will find yourself sitting on a luxury
yacht with a pile of cash the size of a small building. The implication
is that Rayman lets his greed get the best of him and decides to simply
let the pirates enslave everybody while he lies around enjoying his
money. The game snaps you back immediately instead of ending the game
though, and will cycle through until you pick the right option. In some
ports of the game, Rayman just takes the potion automatically, though.
Cave Story:
After the standard Critical Existence Failure, the gameover
screen reads "You have died. Would you like to try again?" If your
Oxygen Meter runs out underwater, the screen changes to "You have
drowned." If you fall into either of the two Bottomless Pits in the
game, it reads "You were never seen again..."
The worst of the game's Multiple Endings borders on a
non-standard game over. Notably, the music that plays ("Hero's End") is
different from that in the better endings ("The Way Back Home"), and
this is the only ending that lacks the ending credits.
In Sonic the Hedgehog CD, waiting idle for 3 minutes will cause
Sonic to lose his patience with you, and with an "I'm outta here!",
leave the game, giving you a Game Over.
In SegaSonic the Hedgehog, failing to escape from Eggman's Tower in time will cause a Game Over with no option to continue.
Sonic the Fighters. Not beating Robotnik in 15 seconds or less also results in this.
Plenty of 'em in I Wanna Be the Guy.
Inverted in The New Zealand Story. If, after clearing World 1,
you lose your last life by getting hit by an arrow (or similar) attack,
instead of the standard game over screen, you instead go to "heaven",
and have a chance to escape in order to continue the game. If you make
it to the end of this "hidden" stage, however, the game ends for real.
You have to find a hidden exit in order to get out of this "nonstandard"
game over. Escape and you have one last chance. Lose that, and you're
taken to Hell for another Nonstandard Game Over.
In Drawn to Life, you can choose not to help the Raposas. Mari,
the only one hearing from "you" at that point, loses hope, and the game
ends.
In Mega Man Legends 2, if you mess up during the time you're
defending Nino island from the Birdbots and they blow through the gate,
the scene switches to the Guildmaster going nuts and hitting the
self-destruct button, blowing up the island and everything in it.
In Mario's Time Machine, if you either lose all of your lives
or run out of time rescuing all of the artifacts from Bowser, then the
game will show a cutscene where Bowser successfully activates his time
machine and escapes to a tropical island. If you rescue all of the
artifacts but get them back in the wrong time period, then Bowser's time
machine will overload, and as a result he is sent back to the
Cretaceous period all dazed and confused-looking. If you get everything
right, then Bowser's time machine will still overload, and as a result
he is sent back to the Cretaceous again, only to be crushed to death by a
giant dinosaur foot.
In the second episode (game) of Commander Keen, there are
Tantalus Ray Cannons you must destroy in order to save Earth. There are
eight of them, but if you press a switch on the side of any of them, a
Tantalus Ray shot will destroy the planet and your game is over
instantly.
The classic Sonic the Hedgehog fan game Sonic Robo-Blast had a
stage set in a volcano that would erupt in five minutes, real time. The
eruption was an instant Game Over, ignoring lives.
Running out of time on the Dam level in Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles causes the bombs to detonate. This causes a game over, no matter
how many turtles you had remaining.
In the arcade game Elevator Action II (Elevator Action Returns
in Japan), if you run out of time near the end of the final stage (the
nuclear missile silo), the missile will be launched and a picture of an
erupting mushroom cloud is shown, followed by a message on the computer
screen that says "YOUR MISSION IS OVER".
In The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants, losing your last
life in the final level rewards you with a look at the aliens' ultimate
weapon: an army of Homer Simpson clones.
In the Oddworld series, there are horrible consequences if you
fail to complete the in-game tasks to a high enough standard. In Abe's
Oddysee, if you fail to save over 50 Mudokons, Abe will be sliced and
diced through a meat saw in Rupture Farms. In Abe's Exoddus, again,
failing to save enough Mudokons, will leave Abe in the hands of the
Brewmaster, who will strap him down and pass electricity through his
body to extract his tears. Eventually, the electricity gets turned up
too high and he will be electrocuted. In Munch's Oddysee, failing to
obtain a certain level of Quarma will leave both Munch and Abe to be
mauled by Fuzzles, who also alert the Vykkers as to their whereabouts.
Abe will be killed and his head hung on a wall. Munch has an even worse
fate. He is strapped down, while his lungs are forcibly removed while he
is still fully conscious so that they can be given to the ailing
Glukkon queen.
The Famicom Star Wars game had a cutscene of the Death Star destroying Yavin IV if you ran out of lives on the last level.
The Sega game adaptation of Tom & Jerry: The Movie has one
where, if Tom is idle for too long, Jerry simply runs off the screen,
taking you to the Game OverContinue screen.
The indie PC game Iji includes a specific death sequence for
being slain through overkill. Ordinary deaths in the game, through small
arms fire, electric shock, or even a nuclear explosion, result in the
protagonist shrieking, flying backwards, and exploding, cracking the
camera as the game over screen plays. However, getting killed by the
ultimate attack of the final boss, who wields a Phantom Hammer, normally
mounted on space ships to exterminate all life on a planet, instead
results in Iji being obliterated before she can scream, wiping her stats
to zero, with nothing but silence left where she once stood.
In Mystery Quest, losing all of your Hit Points gave you a
normal Game Over screen with Hao standing in place and crying. However,
if he should die by jumping into deep water without an SOS raft, the
Game Over screen will show Hao crying against a watery background while
displaying the words "Hao Can Not Swim; Game Over".
Wario Land 3 has a strange variation, where the Game Over is
non-standard because there is only one way to die. Normally enemies can
only inflict Amusing Injuries on Wario (like getting Squashed Flat or
set on fire, and some of these even allow him to reach new areas, but
during the Final Boss fight Rudy the clown will occasionally try to grab
Wario. Let this attack connect and you receive the ONLY Game Over in
the whole game.
Puzzle Game
One question in The Impossible Quiz 2 asks "Click Yes to
exit." Clicking "Yes" will take you back to the title screen, without
the Game Over screen.
In the computer version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire??:
If, on the Fastest Finger portion of the game, no one gets it
right after several attempts, Regis Philbin comes on, mocks you for
being stupid, and says "That's it, I'm out of here." Then the game
quits.
This also happens as early as the select mode screen. note It
gives you the option of either going straight to the game or playing
Fastest Finger first. If you do nothing, Regis will make a comment once
every few seconds, growing increasingly impatient each time, before he
finally throws in the towel and quits the game for you, kicking you back
to your desktop.
In almost all You Don't Know Jack games, the following will
happen when the contestants respond with "fuck you" on Gibberish
Questions three times in a single game: the first time, you lose a very
large sum of money, and depending on the mood, the host will take even
more and possibly even rename you into something insulting. The second
time, nothing happens to the score because he doesn't find it funny or
creative enough to warrant the punishment a second time. The third time,
he just gives up and closes the game, and he'll make it known you can't
pause or press a key to get out of this if you tried.
Antichamber: Killing yourself in-game (namely by crushing yourself with blocks) will crash the game engine.
LIT gives you a unique punishment if you use too much
electricity at one time; the generator breaks and the screen undergoes a
Fade to White, leaving Jake and Rachael at the mercy of the creatures
in the darkness.
Racing Game
Real Time Strategy
Rise of Nations:
The game has two kinds of Game Over: the normal defeat, when
your opponent simply wins, and the Armageddon defeat, which happens if
you drop too many nukes, and basically means everybody loses. Similarly,
the Cold War campaign has two Game Overs: the normal defeat, where the
opposing side wins, and the Nuclear Holocaust ending, where everybody
fires Mnogo Nukes.
Theatre Europe. Notably, you can't win as Warsaw Pact under the
hardest difficulty, as NATO will, as a desperate measure, launch a
major nuclear attack against you, leading to an End of the World as We
Know It.note Oddly, this tracks actual historical NATO and Soviet
doctrine: the US and NATO merely had a no-offensive-use policy—that is,
we'll use nukes first, but only if they attacked conventionally
first—but not a no-first-use policy. The US and NATO several times
considered and rejected proposals to move to no-first-use (most recently
in 1999 on a motion by Germany). In contrast, the USSR actually did
have a no-first-use policy from time to time (although they never
announced it). This shows in their respective targeting: US missiles
were targeted counterforce (aimed at known Soviet missile sites) while
Soviet missiles were targeted countervalue (aimed at US and other NATO
cities and sites of economic value). (Conversely, when playing as NATO,
your goal is to defend yourself for a requisite number of turns; if you
ever enter the Warsaw Pact territory, the enemy will start a global
nuclear war. You can also trigger it deliberately, or by provoking the
enemy by launching one too many nuclear missiles against them.)
The old MS-DOS Real-Time Strategy game Command HQ features a
nonstandard game over by nuclear winter. Normally, allowing your capital
to be overrun results in the status bar stating "We captured the
enemy's capital!" or "The enemy captured our capital!", along with a
catchy tune and a bit of flashing. However, if you use too many nuclear
strikes in a scenario, it exits straight to DOS with the message "SIC
TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI" (Latin for "Thus passes the glory of the world.")
Failing the storyline stage battles in Brütal Legend leads to a Type A cutscene where they gloat over you.
Battle Zone 1998 includes several missions that avert Take Your
Time despite the absence of a mission timer. On Mars, General Collins
orders you to scan Cthonian ruins for a flight data log; continue to
ignore his orders, and he will transfer Grizzly One's command to
Lieutenant Corbin before ordering Grizzly One to be court-martialed.
Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom has several special game overs depending on the campaign objectives and storyline.
After brainwashing Tea, Scott Irvine makes her attempt a
forbidden spell that will destroy the world, with herself as the tribute
for it. If you wait until the mission timer runs out, she succeeds.
If you win the second brainwashed Joey fight with anyone but
Mai, he fails to break free of the mind control. Scott sets him up to
sacrifice himself via a hypnotic suggestion, and Yugi and friends can't
even take revenge on Scott since he appears as a hologram.
Your second encounter with Yami Bakura has him threatening to
burn Jakhud to the ground. If you fail to stop him from reaching the
city, he does burn it down, and you get a special cutscene of Fizdis
crying out for her parents.
Rhythm Game
In the Groove:
The first game has a slightly different Game Over screen for
its hardest song, "Pandemonium." After the usual "LIFE DEPLETEDROUND
FAILED" screens, a skull appears afterwards.
In the Groove 2 features something similar if you fail
"Vertex^2," you get the usual "LIFE DEPLETEDROUND FAILED" screens, and
then a power of two pops up next to "FAILED," turning it into "ROUND
FAILED^2."
Rhythm Heaven (GBAAC) and Rhythm Heaven Fever offer two ways to
fail "Night Walk": Either fail to hit enough notes, which is the
"standard" way, or fall into a Bottomless Pit.
You fell in a hole.
Reflec Beat typically lets the current song run to the end,
unless you are playing the iOS port, in which you can pause the game and
quit or restart the current song. However, in Reflec Beat colette -All
Seasons-, the Pastel Wonder Traveler event puts you on a Life Meter,
which decreases whenever you get a Good or a Miss. If your HP hits zero,
the song ends immediately in failure.
Normally, a Game Over in beatmania IIDX results from finishing a
song with less than 80% Groove Gauge. However, if you miss 50 notes in a
row, or have one of several different "survival" gauges and that gauge
hits 0%, the "STAGE FAILED" shutters—which never pop up on a "finish
with <80%" fail—will pop up and the song will immediately end.
Roguelike
Rogue: "R.I.P.: Software Pirate. Killed by Copy Protection Mafia.", if you die while playing an illegal copy.
In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity, you can actually
refuse to come back to the Pokémon world after your partner makes it
possible with a wish. This results in being sent back to the main menu
after a brief narration that you never returned and were missed terribly
by your friends, and upon loading your save, the game will treat it as
though you had been defeated in the dungeon prior to the event.
FTL: Faster Than Light:
Video Game{{868-Hack}} will give you a special death cause if you manage to make yourself stuck with no possible move.
While dying in weird ways is pretty standard in ADOM, there's
also the non-dying way to end the game by having your character just
walk off the game map by the same path they took to get in, never to
return. It's definitely the easiest way to avoid actually dying, aside
from the fact that the backstory implies the forces of Chaos will then
probably consume the world.
In The Awakened Fate Ultimatum, if you choose to have Shin not
try to save Eri after she is kidnapped by devils, he receives a package
containing her severed head. This causes him to go full monster, killing
everyone around him, destroying Celestia and then the devils that come
to investigate the carnage. You are then dumped to the game's title
screen.
Role Playing Game
Shoot 'em Up
Sega's 1981 Astro Blaster can have you lose the entire game
if you crash into the mothership during the docking sequence at the end
of every level.
Space Invaders: Perhaps one of the earliest video game
examples; allowing even one of the eponymous alien ships to reach the
bottom of the playfield results in an instant game over, no matter how
many lives you have left. This is retained in Return of the Invaders but
averted in Super Space Invaders '91 because of the difficulty of the
differing formations in each wave: you simply die and the playfield is
reset, minus any Invaders you destroyed previously.
In the Strike series of Helicopter games:
Simply getting yourself blown up would earn a normal game over.
Failing a mission or otherwise rendering the level Unwinnable, however,
would result in your being recalled to base for a dressing-down from
your commanding officer which changed according to what you did wrong.
(From Jungle Strike's first level, if you tried some Monumental Damage
of your own: "You redecorated the White House, Beruit style!")
In Nuclear Strike, it is possible to have a nonstandard game
over piled on top of a nonstandard game over. If you tried to refuel
thrice after being told to return to base because of a SNAFU, General
Earle orders your (literal) termination for going rogue.
In Hellsinker, if you time out
Rex Cavalier and only have one life left, you get a very strange
sequence referred to as the "spirit overload" ending. The boss, with
its last remaining bits of energy, downloads its memories into the
character's mind and drives them insane. Over time, the game over text
implies, your (human) character is reshaped into an utterly inhuman
Prayer.
SPIRIT OVERLOAD.YOU GOT INSANITY.YOU MUST RESHAPE ONESELF FOR ONCOMING ASPIRANTS.
In Devastators, not only does this happen if you run out of time, but it actually tells you straight out before each mission:
"IF YOU FAIL TO COMPLETE,YOU WILL PERISH!"
In Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters:
The Ur-Quan, being the reasonable people they are, will allow
you to surrender to them and offer to spare the lives of your crew in
exchange. They're not going to let you live, of course, and even if they
did, you wouldn't have your plot-necessary Cool Spaceship anymore, so
if you accept, the conversation cuts directly to a Game Over screen.
Still, quite a magnanimous offer considering that everyone on your ship
is currently engaged in fully voluntary rebellion.
The game has a time limit, in that eventually the Ur-Quan
Kohr-Ah who have an agenda of total genocide will triumph over the green
Ur-Quan and begin moving to exterminate all sentient life in the
galaxy. You can monitor their progress on the galactic map as they move
from species to species. Eventually, they will head for Earth, and if
they arrive before you eliminate their flagship and halt their advance,
the population of Earth is eradicated and it's game over.
Star Control III can end abruptly if you allow the Eternal Ones
to feed on the galaxy without improving their process to be survivable
to the natives. You also get a game over if you're too trusting of the
Orz, Arilou, or Ploxis, or commit enough war crimes (or bad enough war
crimes) to be fired from your leadership position.
Running out of lives on the last mission of Star Wars: Rebel
Assault results in a cutscene of the Death Star destroying Yavin IV,
with the narrator announcing "The alliance was defeated".
In NAM-1975, should you lose to the final boss, Dr. R. Muckly,
he will be heard boasting that the world is now his, and the world is
then shown exploding. He is then heard laughing evilly and it cuts to
the Game Over screen.
Einhänder, Stage 6: Fail to destroy the space shuttle's
thrusters in time and your craft plummets to earth, where it is
immediately set upon by German forces. The game ends here even if you
have extra lives remaining.
Galaga: You can get your ship captured by an enemy, then shoot
down said enemy to obtain the double ship. However, if the captured ship
is your last ship, the game will end instead, as if you had been shot
down.
Confidential Mission: If you and your CPU partner—or the other
player in a two-player game—don't both lock the Kill Sat onto the
submarine and then fire, the Big Bad gets away and the island that
you're on blows up. Part Downer Ending, part Game Over since the
"MISSION INCOMPLETE" screen shows up.
Fantasy Zone: The second game's PS2 remake has three endings,
and in the worst of them, Opa-Opa turns evil and spreads chaos
throughout the Fantasy Zone. It doubles as a non-standard game over, as
it is the only ending that doesn't lead to a New Game+, and downright
says Game Over.
Star Wars Rogue Squadron:
If you shoot too many friendly ships or escorts in the first
game, Rieekan will contact Luke to return to base so he can "discuss
[Skywalker's]... tactics... in private."
In the first mission of Rogue Leader, you have a limited amount
of torpedoes, and must save at least one of them to complete an
objective later. Waste them all and the mission abruptly ends in
failure, with a cutscene of Yavin IV going kaboom.
The unreleased Star Fox 2 has an alternate Game Over screen.
Let Corneria take too much damage, and you'll get a cutscene that shows
it being destroyed by Andross's forces. The Game Over screen will show
Andross grinning like normal, but will read "Corneria fell".
Simulation Game
In the late-80s jet combat simulator Jet Fighter II:
Advanced Tactical Fighter, a successful ejection would result in the
message: "Successful bailout! Rescue copter is on its way! Isn't
simulating stimulating?"
Harvest Moon
There are three non-standard Game Overs in Harvest Moon DS and two or three in Harvest Moon DS Cute.
The first is during the opening sequence, when Mayor Thomas
from Mineral Town annoys your character into attacking him. The dog will
then become angry. You'll have the option to call your dog back.
Refuse, and Thomas will scream and the screen fades to white as the dog
attacks him. The credits roll, and you're taken back to the title
screen.
This next one takes a very long time to get...you have to grow a
Level 100 Toadstool, then submit it at the Harvest Festival. The entire
town (including you) will grow sick. The credits roll, and you're taken
back to the title screen.
If you turn on HMDS with Harvest Moon Friends Of Mineral Town
in the GBA slot (or HMDSC with Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral
Town), villagers from Mineral Town will start to visit Forget-Me-Not
Valley. You only have to do this once to make them keep coming back
forever. The Mineral Town girls in DS are marriage candidates... but
marrying any of them will take you back to the title screen and revert
back to your last save file. This is changed in DS Cute, though,
allowing you to continue the game with a Mineral Town husband.
In the English version of Harvest Moon: Magical Melody,
marrying your rival, Jamie, will cause the game to end as they weren't
marriageable in the Japanese version, and thus nothing was written for
them post-marriage.
In the Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life subseries, your game ends
if you are not married by the end of the first year.note Though this is
more a Earn Your Bad Ending scenario, as the game will have the
bachelor(ette) with the highest affection level propose to you, and you
have to turn them down to get the game over In later chapters, allowing
your farm and shipment levels to fall by the wayside can cause your wife
to leave you. In the PS2 special edition, you can end the game in the
first cutscene by simply telling Takakura you don't want the farm.
In Harvest Moon SNES, if your farm is in bad enough condition
by the time your parents visit the first time (about six months in)
you'll be booted from the farm and, most likely, have to re-start the
game. Though since it takes so little to make your farm acceptable, this
becomes an Earn Your Bad Ending scenario.
Wing Commander:
In the first game, if the Tiger's Claw is destroyed, you get a
message saying "With your carrier destroyed, you drift endlessly through
the void..."
In Wing Commander IV, if you repeatedly screw up your early
missions, say, by immediately ejecting on launch for every mission you
get, Tolwyn hands you your pink slip in a hysterically dark cut scene.
In Wing Commander III, screwing up critical missions results in
the fleet jumping back to Proxima and then making a Last Stand at Sol.
This mission is unwinnable even with godmode, and drops you into another
cutscene where you can decide how you die. This is quite possibly the
Nonstandard Game Over that's drawn out the longest. If it is possible to
save before the mission, pray you didn't save it over your previous
save game.
Ace Combat:
In the final mission of Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, if you
fail to destroy the SOLG (loaded with a nuke) in time, you're treated to
a short cutscene of it detonating over Oured.
If you don't destroy the last missile in the Megalith mission
in Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies, you get to see that very missile
launch from its silo and win the war for Erusea.
Trauma Center:
Under the Knife and Second Opinion, Episode 4: Fail the bomb
"operation" and instead of a depressing Game Over in which Derek quits
his job, you hear an explosion as the screen simply goes white.
New Blood, Episode 5: Run out of time on the lock-picking
mission, and instead of "Your skills were not up to the task — Operation
Failed", you hear the sound of water filling up as the screen fades to
white.
Trauma Team also gets one. If you fail on Naomi's final case,
instead of the normal messagesuicide note, you get a recording of
Rosalia talking about Albert and the Rosalia Virus.
In the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series, failing a critical
mission objective will cause the mission to end (even if you are still
intact), followed by a "MISSION FAILED" screen (instead of "GAME OVER")
with a description of what triggered mission failure. Also, if you shoot
down alliesconvoysthings you're supposed to be protecting you get a
warning or two - "Skywalker, what are you doing?!" — and then Rieekan
calls you back with "Commander Skywalker, return to base. We'll discuss
your... tactics... in private." In Rogue Leader, it's possible to get a
unique game over by running out of torpedoes in the attack on the Death
Star. Cue Yavin IV getting blown the hell up.
In the 1985 game Balance of Power, pushing too hard in
international negotiations would result in an immediate end to the game,
with a black screen displaying the message: "You have ignited a nuclear
war. And no, there is no animated display of a mushroom cloud with
parts of bodies flying through the air. We do not reward failure."
In FA-18 Hornet, if you land or eject in enemy territory, you
get captured and are listed as "Missing in Action". If you cause any
collateral damage, you are "Court Martialed".
In X Wing Vs Tie Fighter, if you fail at a mission (rather than
just dying, ejecting, or hyperspacing out of there before the mission's
done), you'll be treated to some tragic music. Depending on how well
you did, you might be the sole survivor, or your enemy might curb stomp
you.
The Oregon Trail II: "You're Fired!" (kicked out of the wagon train), if you're a trail guide and morale gets too low.
Sports Game
Super Bases Loaded for the SNES. In this particular sports
game, you end up getting the Non-Standard Game Over screen, should the
CPU completely blow you out by getting 9 runs straight. It will not even
wait for you to make it to 9 innings. Instead, it will briefly freeze,
then show someone from your team kneeling in defeat, with the word
"Blowout" over their head, with some sad music. From there, it will go
to the scoreboard, and the words "Blowout Game" will appear. From there,
it will promptly go back to the title screen.
Baseball Stars uses a similar "mercy rule", ending the game if
either team is ahead by ten or more runs at any point. So did Sega's
Sports Talk Baseball for the Genesis. It was explicitly called a "10-run
Rule", and the talking commentator would say the team won "by
domination".
Mario Superstar Baseball and Mario Super Sluggers have a rule
(which can be disabled in normal game modes, but is always active in
story mode) where being 10 runs ahead at the end of an inning ends the
game; however, if the visiting team is 10 runs ahead in the top of the
inning, the home team still gets the bottom of the inning to even the
score before it kicks in.
In Blitz: The League 2, getting Franchise injured in Prison
Ball will end the game, as you have ruined your career. Unlike in other
modes of the game, Prison Ball will not let you perform triage if an
injury occurs.
Stealth-Based Game
In Splinter Cell: Double Agent, if you fail the final
minigame-for-a-boss, you are treated to a very disturbingly realistic
portrayal of emergency services and news helicopters flying over
Manhattan as a smoking ruin after a nuclear blast.
In the first Splinter Cell game, you are on a training
facility, and at a certain point you get a gun. If you turn back and
kill an officer, you get fired. You also get fired if you attack
Grimsdottir in the beginning of the level. Same for any level with
friendlies or other NPC's you are required to keep alive.
Metal Gear:
The original Metal Gear Solid used the Nonstandard Game Over as
a plot device on one occasion, being told before a possibly-fatal
Minigame that "there are no continues, my friend...". And, of course,
dying results in a non-standard game over screen — with no CONTINUE
option. A player would have to quit the game and reload before they
could try again. The game can go even further to psych out the player
here. If you haven't saved in a while, the game will detect this and
call you out on it. "Do you really want to lose all of your progress?"
In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, during the Tanker
chapter, if Snake gets caught sneaking around in the holds during the
Commandant's speech, the player is shown the soldiers in whatever room
he's in taking Snake into custody before "Game Over" is displayed.
MGS2 uses a completely different "Game Over" screen for the
solo Raiden missions that's unlike the "Game Over" screen when playing
as Snake or even as SnakeRaiden later in the game. Around the time both
characters join forces, the player learns why this is.
In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which is a prequel, you
meet a young version of Ocelot from the previous games. He's supposed to
survive the events of the game, but in one occasion you can kill him
after he's been knocked out in a cutscene. If you do so, you'll have
Colonel Campbell, from the 'future', shout "Snake, what have you done?
You changed the future! You've created a time paradox!", and the words
"OCELOT IS DEAD" will appear, instead of the usual game over text. This
also applies to other characters whose actions affect the rest of the
series, but Ocelot is the most notable. You even get a achievement for
this in the HD Version.
There's a few cases in Metal Gear Solid and its sequel, in
particular, where you get a wildly different Informal Eulogy depending
on the circumstances. Crash into the tripwires surrounding Baker, and
Ocelot will call you an idiotfool depending on if you're playing the
remake or not. Fail the torture, and not only will your CONTINUE option
be missing, but you'll get to hear Liquid yell at Ocelot for getting
carried away and botching another interrogation. Die during the final
battle in Metal Gear Solid 2 after your "support" team has dropped their
façade, and they'll laugh at your failure.
In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, die during the
final battle & you will be given the choice to "Continue" or
"Exist". Choose the latter, and you will hear Ocelot tell you "It's not
over yet, Snake!" and you will have to choose again, only "Exist" will
have returned to the traditional "Exit".
If, in the VR missions centered around Gurlugon, you get hit by
one of its Eye Beams while wearing the BDU, you get possibly the most
bizarre game over sequence in the entire series .
Rather than Snake dying, there are other ways you can get a
Game Over. If, for example, you kill Johnny in MGS4, Otacon will shout
"Snake, what did you just do? Have you lost your mind?!", and as soon as
the Game Over screen appears, Otacon says "Oh no! What are we going to
do now, Snake?"
There's a few ways to get one of these in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
If Ishmael dies in the tutorial level, you'll get a "Time Paradox" message Foreshadowing the fact that he's the real Big Boss.
You'll also get one of these if you kill one of your own men
while on Mother Base by throwing them into the ocean, where Miller
screams "Have you lost your mind?!".
In Mission 1, where you have to rescue Miller, Ocelot tells you
he only has about 3 days to live. If you wait 3 days, either by using
the Phantom Cigar or simply by taking too long, he will be unresponsive
when you trigger his cutscene, and when Snake lets go of his face, it
will stiffly lull to a downward position, causing Snake to scream in
agony and Ocelot to solemnly inform you that Miller has died from
extensive blood loss due to his severed limbs. This also results in a
"Time Paradox" message.
Killing any child soldiers in Africa causes the screen to flash
red and the camera to focus on the corpse before going to the normal
game over screen.
Killing Eli in Mission 23 will also result in a Time Paradox message. This is because he is Liquid Snake.
Games based on Batman:
In Dishonored:
Two of them as death cutscenes in Hitman: Blood Money. The
first is in You Better Watch Out... where an unknown Franchise assassin
disguised as one of the strippers stabs 47 in the neck with a nail file.
The second is in A Dance with the Devil; the singer is actually a
Franchise assassin named Eve, who will try to seduce you. Should you
follow her and wait for too long, she will stab 47 repeatedly.
Survival Horror
In Silent Hill 3, if you die a certain way or in a certain
place, Valtiel is shown carrying away Heather's body. And if Heather
shoots Claudia, Heather "births" the god and dies in a rather gruesome
cutscene, where Claudia says "Oh God, bring us salvation".
In Fatal Frame II, if you decide to use the secret passage to
escape from the haunted village without your twin sister Mayu, you'll
get a scene and then one of these. It could actually qualify as a bad
ending, since it's a viable conclusion to the story and even suckier
than the already depressing regular (and canonical!) ending.
Five Nights at Freddy's:
Freddy has two killscreens and is the only animatronic to have
as such. One when the power runs out and another when he enters the
office during normal play.
Golden Freddy. When you look at the poster at the end of the
West Hall while it displays his face, he appears in your office. You
will then hear robotic murmurs and hallucinations just before he
instantly kills you and crashes the game, but only if you don't pull up
your monitor and switch to another camera.
In Five Nights at Freddy's 2 both Shadow Freddy and Shadow Bonnie crash the game instead of killing you.
In Five Nights at Freddy's 4 Nightmare is slightly more
benevolent: he merely resets the game. Nightmarionne takes that role in
the Halloween Edition.
Resident Evil 4:
If Ashley gets captured, a cutscene is shown of the Ganado
carrying her off and the game over screen says "Mission Failed" instead
of "You are Dead". This also occurs if she is killed, either by an enemy
or your bad aim.
Also, in an early scene, where you defend a cabin with Luis, if
you shoot him too many times, you're treated to a cutscene where he
gets sick of it and guns you down.
Resident Evil 5 also has one. If Chris kills a brainwashed Jill
in the middle of the fight, you're treated to a death cutscene and a
screen that says "Your Partner Died" like you would get for any of
Sheva's deaths.
In Slender: The Arrival, if you somehow manage to find your way
out of the map's boundaries (either by mistake or by purposefully
trying to glitch out of bounds), you will eventually end up falling
through the map and get the standard Game Over screen, except there will
be an additional message overlayed on the screen in messy-looking text,
presumably said by Slenderman: "Even a glitch in this game can't save
you from me."
In Dead Rising 2: Off The Record, Frank needs to take a dose of
Zombrex once every 24 hours. If Frank doesn't get his shot by 8AM, he
will drop dead on the spot.
In SCP - Containment Breach, refusing to cooperate with the
guards will have you terminated before the containment breach even
occurs.
Haunting Ground has several special cutscene deaths that the
unsuspecting player can incur, mainly for failing at certain puzzles,
but some are very obvious (did you really think hiding in an iron maiden
was a good idea?).
Idle for too long in Spooky's House of Jump Scares and Specimen
9 comes out of nowhere and kills you, resulting in an instant Game
Over.
Night Trap has a Game Over that
can occur if you don't push start during the opening scene, effectively
ending the game before it even starts.
Commander Simms: "You're wasting time, get over there now!" (Beat)
"Looks like you're not up for this mission...breaking contact."SCAT
System Disconnect
Third Person Shooter
Army Men: Sarge's Heroes has one in the ice level where you
free prisoners. If you manage to get yourself locked in a cell, Plastro
himself comes out of nowhere to mock you followed by a game over.
Sarge's Heroes 2 has a hilarious one. The tutorial has you
follow orders from Colonel Grimm, a.k.a. Vikki's father. You can choose
to kill him and simply finish the tutorial yourself, but at the end,
instead of Vikki's usual "Congratulations" when you open the last door,
she will immediately shoot you with a bazooka as soon as the door opens.
Even if you somehow dodge, you still fail.
The second game and Toys In Space also have various failure
cutscenes for missions, ranging from being melted by a magnifying glass
to being torn apart by zombies in a hospital.
F.A.K.K.2 would give you game overs if you managed to kill yourself.
Kid Icarus: Uprising has several, with what causes them ranging from "failing a critical goal" to "missing a quick-time event".
During the flying segment of Chapter 12, you have to make a
detour to destroy a falling Reset Bomb that Viridi deployed as you
approached the Reset Bomb Depot. It's a Time-Limit Boss, as with most
other aerial boss fights; however, unlike all those other fights,
there's not a special event that wins the fight for you if you take too
long. If you don't destroy the Reset Bomb in time, then you get a game
over because Pit isn't lucky enough to be outside the blast range this
time.
Most of Chapter 17 takes place on a platform being held up by
Centurions high above the ground. You're being attacked constantly, and
the Centurions aren't invincible; they will die if you don't kill the
attacking enemies quickly enough. Palutena has an extra set if you let
the first two die, but that's it; if you let that set die, then you get
some unique dialogue before you get a game over and restart at the last
checkpoint.
Chapter 20 ends with a fight against a possessed Palutena.
However, the goal is not to attack the boss, but rather to attack the
Chaos Kin, which is controlling her. However, it's pretty easy to hit
Palutena, and if you do so too many times... game over.
The more minor non-standard game overs include; failing to line
up with a target while falling at certain points in Chapters 17, 21,
and 25, failing to shoot the Chaos Kin near the end of Chapter 21's
flight segment, getting hit by the Great Sacred Treasure's
arena-wrecking laser blast in Chapter 24, and failing to keep your
reticle on Hades so that Medusa can interrupt his attempt to finish you
off in Chapter 25.
Spec Ops: The Line:
If Walker dies before making it to the destroyed helicopter in
"Adams", a special loading screen will play where Konrad's silhouette
will shake his head at you with the faint voice of "Stop, just fucking
stop!" being yelled in the background.
Dying to the hallucinatory Lugo in the next chapter will give
the player another one of the White Phosphorous scene, with "Twinkle,
Twinkle Little Star" being hummed in the background. The game then
rewinds to the beginning of the fight — except with a Heavy Trooper in
Lugo's place.
Turn Based Strategy
The Disgaea series tends to give you often humorous endings
for being beaten by the games' Goldfish Poop Gang, or one of the main
team members before they've joined the group. Most of them are treated
like endings (particularly in 3 and 4, which add lengthy narratives to
them), causing the credits to roll, and in some cases, allowing you to
start a New Game+ earlier then normal.
In Disgaea 2, a multitude of characters propose bills to be the
main character in the Dark Assembly. Should they be passed (and there's
a very high chance they will without any intervention on your part),
you immediately get a game over. Also, winning the Hopeless Boss Fight
against Laharl, or the one against Etna, nets a Non-Standard Game Over
as well.
Revisiting the final level of the first chapter in Disgaea 3
and winning the battle there before a certain point in the story also
results in a humorous ending where Mao and Almaz openly acknowledge that
they've screwed up the plot and the only option is to reset the game.
In Makai Kingdom postgame, you can trigger an encounter with
Zetta himself, who turns out to be Overlord Baal possessing Zetta's lost
body. Winning the fight nets you the body as a playable character.
However, if you've previously shanghaied Laharl and use him as the
active character when initiating the encounter, and then winning the
fight, results in Laharl claiming the victory instead of Zetta, followed
by him destroying the body and ending Zetta's reign.
Waerjak in Heroes of Might and Magic IV can trigger one of
these when he meets the Boar's Hoof tribe. Waerjak is given the option
of attacking them and claiming their garrison; if he does so, his
followers will turn on him, proclaiming his philosophy of community to
be a lie.
This is a recurring element throughout the campaigns, made
easier by the fact that all events are narrated instead of animated,
resulting in various different scenarios that you wouldn't normally see
in a game. If Lysander, for example, were to attack Glen Garrison to
rescue the Big Bad's mother (instead of finding a way around it), the
commander would notify him that he sent his men to execute her. If Elwyn
takes the red ship instead of the blue one, Shaera would commit
suicide, believing that he died (granted, this is an unnecessary
complication of the gameplay, since Harke will bribe the crew to switch
the sails, and Elwyn arrives just in time to save the girl anyway,
making the outcome pretty much the same).
Might and Magic VI has a special ending video if you complete
the end-game dungeon without getting the Ritual of the Void. You are
warned that if you destroy the Kreegan Hive's reactor without powerful
magic to keep it contained, it will destroy the world. Ignore the
advice, and you get to see exactly that happen.
Another way to get this in Might and Magic is in VII, but you'd
have to be pretty stupid for it to happen. For one quest in the main
storyline, you end up working for two nobles simultaneously, and your
actions during the quest require you to betray them both. Treason is a
crime punishable by death, and that might make you worried. However, in
each case, there are no witnesses and no evidence pointing to you, so
neither of them would even suspect you unless you actually confessed.
Believe it or not, there's an option that lets you do that when you
finish the quest and report back to them. Long story short, if you
confess to one of them, you won't live long enough to tell the other.
Blaze Union: Although the game over conditions are normal,
losing the battlefield where your female characters are cornered by a
gang while shopping leads to a unique scene, where it's explained said
party members, one of them in her teens, were so deeply traumatized by
the rape the revolution had to be put on hold indefinitely.
Visual Novel
Many of the Ace Attorney games have those, usually in the final cases:
In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, in the fifth case, there is a
piece of evidence that appears to point to one person, but the place
where it was found points to the real murderer. If you present it too
early, i.e. before the real murderer admits that he was hiding it,
you're told that the trial was unwinnable from that point onward, and
the word "Guilty" appears on a black background.
Similarly, in Justice for All, right near the end of the 4th
case, you're given a chance to show a particular piece of evidence to a
particular person. Pick the wrong thing or person, and the villain goes
free, an innocent person is convicted, and Phoenix quits being a lawyer.
"The miracle never happen..."
Also, in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, you actually get to pick
the verdict at the end, thanks to the jury. If you pick guilty, it
results in a hung jury, and the defendant dies in the hospital.
In Ace Attorney Investigations 2, you can refuse to help a
mentally unstable and profoundly broken Sebastian Debeste and instead
tell him that he's "a failure as a human being". Doing so finally puts
him over the edge and ends the case immediately, as he's the only one
who can find the evidence his father got rid of.
The final case of Dual Destinies provides unique game over sequences during its sole trial day, which double as bad endings:
Fail to prove Simon Blackquill's innocence after he's admitted
his guilt, and watch as things spiral go From Bad to Worse: Blackquill
is executed the next day as scheduled for a crime he didn't commit, his
sister Aura leaves with the hostages she took, including Trucy, and they
are never heard from again, Athena leaves the office, Apollo is so
broken he stops smiling, and Phoenix gives up on being a lawyer.
Lose during one of the forced questions in the chapter
"Remembering the Killer", and Aura Blackquill kidnaps Athena, with
Phoenix never seeing her again.
Lose during the final testimony given by the Big Bad and while
Athena and Simon Blackquill are let off the hook, the phantom walks away
scot-free, and the dark age of the law keeps growing ever darker.
In Spirit of Justice, the final case has multiple outcomes
depending on when you lose the case. Lose during the first trial day of
the final case and the villainous sleazy politician walks away
scott-free with the Founder's Orb, and Apollo and Phoenix's relationship
goes down the crapper. In the final trial, losing the case after
getting Dhruke acquitted has the real killer's identity remains unknown
forever while the revolution completely falls apart due to Dhruke's
death. Failure to provide proof that the Queen is the real killer ends
with her siccing her guards on Apollo, forcing him to go into hiding
with him deciding to join the revolution to overthrow the Queen.
In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, nonstandard game overs
are actually plot-critical. If you try to get the True Ending on your
first playthrough, instead you get the Coffin Ending. You need to find
the Safe Ending first... Eventually you find that you are actually
playing from the perspective of the protagonist's friend in the past.
The fact that you know it would be impossible for Junpei to know at the
time is because she (you) actually ran through these scenarios where
Junpei made this or that decision, gleaning more information about the
best way to proceed each time.
This persists in the sequel Virtue's Last Reward. You will be
running into a lot of different endings, several of which are 'To Be
Continued' path locks that require secret knowledge from other paths to
get past.
Virtue's Last Reward normally has fairly standard Game Over
conditions: Sigma loses the Nonary Game and either dies or becomes
trapped in the facility. But some other Game Overs, which do not even
appear on the game's provided flowchart, arise in circumstances where a
plot thread is impossibly damaged; for example, if the player managed to
annoy Alice enough to alienate her by repeatedly failing to decode a
message, the game ends instantly, even though nothing has happened to
Sigma.
Zero Time Dilemma has an inversion if you win the coin flip at
the beginning of the game. True to his word, Zero releases all of you.
Game over. Credits roll. You win. Ten minutes flat.
As a combination Visual NovelRPG, FateEXTRA has one of these
for pretty much every defeat by another Master, as well as a number of
ways to lose by making a wrong dialog choice. (DEAD END, indeed.)
Fatestay night has Multiple Endings which are tagged with a
descriptive note, with all game-overs being tagged "Dead End" if Shirou
dies and "Bad End" in all other cases. The odd ending out is the
"Superhero" ending, where Shirou decides to kill Sakura and likely Rin
and Ilya as well in order to prevent a disaster. Despite being a very
harsh bad ending, it is referred to only as an "End", the only ending
with this note.
Kara no Shoujo has a few, but some are difficult to distinguish
from the good endings, such as they are. In one in particular, Reiji
will end the game locked in a mental ward if he disembowels his best
friend Shugo for the key to escape a trap.
Should you fail the bomb diffusing sequence at the end of Act 2
of Policenauts, the bomb will explode on Beyond Coast in the Game Over
screen.
Lux-Pain:
Using Sigma carries a gauge with it, which depletes as you
probe their mind more and more. If it falls to zero, Ray Platiere will
tell you that you basically destroyed their mind and you get a Game
Over. "You're no telepath."
Every time you let a Silent infectee get away, intentionally or
otherwise, the Hazard percentage at the corner of the map increases. If
it reaches 100%, you get another call from Ray that says that it's too
late, and there's nothing left to do for the city but send in The Tigers
and destroy them all mentally to stop Silent spreading any further.
Failing to find Yayoi before too long when she goes missing
will get you told that it's too late, and that she killed herself due to
Silent's infection before you could save her.
Wide Open Sandbox
Fallout:
Fallout has several, narrated like the HaveANiceDeaths by Ron
Perlman. If you choose to reveal Vault 13's location to the Lieutenant, a
cinematic plays where your character is dipped in the vats, becoming a
Super Mutant, Vault 13's citizens are captured to befall a similar fate,
and the Overseer is violently killed by mutant invaders.
Fallout and Fallout 2 both have a built-in time limit — if this
is ever reached, a small cinematic with the words "THE END" plays and
the game quits back to the title screen. It takes about thirteen years
of game time though, so it's really no bother unless you're actively
seeking it out.
Fallout 3 allows you to tell Colonel Autumn the activation code
for the water purifier. He thanks you, then shoots you. Also, if you
fail to activate the purifier in time, it explodes, terminating your
game regardless of whether Broken Steel is installed, since without the
purifier, the events of the epilogue can't take place, and the main
characters are probably killed in the explosion anyways.
In the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Dead Money, if you agree to work
with Elijah at the end, as opposed to killing him, the game ends and a
cutscene explains how the Courier and Elijah spread the toxic cloud
across the entirety of the Mojave, turning it into an uninhabitable
wasteland. There's another one where examining a computer message
specifically meant for Dean Domino in the Sierra Madre Vault will lock
the Courier in there. After she eventually dies, a hologram of himher is
created.
The Fallout: New Vegas DLC Old World Blues had one, but it was
cut from the final game. The Courier would have the option to surrender
their brain to the Think Tanks and be helpless to stop them from
performing their crazy experiments on the Mojave. Goodsprings is
destroyed by falling blocks, the Jacobstown Super Mutants are driven mad
by a satellite, Black Mountain is overrun by giant, man-eating mutant
cows, and the Legion and NCR are brainwashed into thinking they're
respectively living in ancient Rome (on the moon) and Pre-War America.
Fallout 4 will come to an abrupt end if, during the pre-war
segment of the game at the very beginning, you take too long to get to
the Vault and escape the nuclear explosion.
Choosing to suicide or shoot Forrest Kaysen over shooting Emily
to end her suffering in Deadly Premonition results in York telling Zach
he made the wrong choice, while showing a shriveled up Emily in the Red
Room, and allowing the choice to try again.
While playing Vangers, at one point you may discover a special
artifact Mechanical Messiah. It has a number of dangerous functions and
is considered to be cursed. One of its functions is named Lucky: try to
activate it and the fourth wall will be destroyed, with the game stating
that you, the Vanger, have failed the test and will be utilized. This
becomes understandable if you played the game before and know the
ending(s).
In X: Beyond the Frontier, if you shoot at the Terran
mothership during the Justified Tutorial, you'll get the usual "cut it
out" remarks from the flight controller. If you keep doing it past the
part where he threatens you with Reassigned to Antarctica, he'll
actually do it.
In Saints Row IV, at one point you're are offered a choice to
either keep fighting or take a deal with the aliens to save the world by
dying. If you take the deal, you get a game over screen telling you
that you shouldn't have trusted them.
In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, during the mission
"Stowaway", you can jump out the plane without a parachute, which leads
into a cutscene showing CJ crashing into a parked car at a drive-in.
In Shenmue, or just the first game at least, it's impossible
for Ryo to actually get himself killed - failing a Quick Time Event or
losing a fight results in Ryo taking a dirtnap. The only exception is
allowing April 15th to roll around, in which case Lan Di comes back to
the dojo asking for the Phoenix Mirror; Ryo challenges him to a fight
and is subsequently wiped out in one move, the same move that Lan Di
used to kill Ryo's father in fact.
In Sleeping Dogs, one mission requires you to succeed in a karaoke minigame. Failure grants the following game-over message:
Early sandbox ZX Spectrum game Skool Daze normally ends the
game when you have accrued 10,000 lines or more; however, there is a
random event where you must avoid contact with another character who has
contracted the mumps. Get touched and you contract the illness too,
whereupon you are immediately sent home.
Examples in non-video game applications:
Card Games
Under some partners rules variants of Spades, getting a
"Boston" run on your team (losing all thirteen tricks) is an automatic
game loss.
In Magic: The Gathering, the standard loss condition occurs
when your opponent brings your life total to zero. However, there are
other ways to lose the game:
If you are forced to draw a card when there are no cards remaining in your library, you are "decked" and lose the game.
Creatures with the Infect ability, rather than dealing life
damage to a player, inflicts that player with poison counters. A player
with ten poison counters loses the game.
Certain cards cause you to win or lose in unusual
circumstances; for instance, the Near-Death Experience card, which
allows you to win if you have exactly 1 life remaining in your upkeep
step.
In Munchkin players win when they reach the 10th level, but
they must do it by defeating a monster - other ways to normally level up
(such as selling items or using "go up a level" cards) aren't allowed.
Except for the card "Divine Intervention" which makes every cleric go up
a level, and explicitly states you can win the game this way.
The Star Trek Customizable Card Game (First Edition) by
Decipher was normally won either by scoring 100 points before the
opponent, or (more rarely) by having the higher score when both players'
draw decks were depleted. A common "nonstandard" game ending involved a
card called Writ of Accountability. If you exceeded any of the limits
outlined by the card, and your opponent activated the card on you, you
instantly lost the game, with a score of 0 (and if only one player
remained—which nearly always was the case—that player scored the full
100 points needed to win). There were a few other cases where you could
lose the game instantly (such as calling "Devidian Door", then being
caught without a Devidian Door in hand when it came time to show it),
but that was perhaps the best known.
Gamebooks
Several Choose Your Own Adventure books feature conclusions punctuated by something other than The End:
The third book in the series, By Balloon to the Sahara, has a
few: A Chilling End for when your character is trapped under an
avalanche, The (BLAT!) End for when aliens disintegrate you with a laser
gun, and even The Beginning, among several others.
The Mystery of Chimney Rock probably plays this trope the straightest:
One ending has you leaving the haunted house after encountering
a ghostly creature who threatens you with his fate if you ever look
back at the house.note Another equally bad ending implies he was a
former inhabitant of the house who died after falling off the roof. If
you don't like that ending, you can choose to look back one last time
anyway, the resulting page of which simply has a bloodcurdling scream
down the page in giant letters followed by a THUNK.
Another ending has your character accidentally breaking the
resident witch's china cat and being cursed to pick up the pieces for
all eternity, complete with There Is No End.
Pipe Down! in the Nintendo Adventure Books sees Mario and Luigi
coming across a Clawgrip, to whom they must give an item to pass. If
they do not have the required item or refuse to give it to him, they try
to run. The Clawgrip gives chase, and they decide to distract him with a
few coins. If you don't have enough, the resulting page is nothing but
the word PINCH! in a huge explosion graphic that fills the entire page,
along with the "GAME OVER".
From The Time Raider of the "Twistaplot" series: "Oh, no!
You're stuck in a time warp! (turn to page -number-, quick!)" *flip*
"Nothing warps the human brain faster than a time warp. (turn to page
-number-)" *flip back* "Oh, no! You're stuck in a time warp! ..."
Game Shows
In game show parlance, the Non-Standard Game Over is, in its broadest
sense, a form of Epic Fail, where a contestant performs so poorly that
he is either disqualified or causes a situation where the winner's score
makes it mathematically impossible for himher to catch up. In several
game shows, the game is ended early, the losing contestant is given his
Consolation Prizes, and the winner plays the bonus game early.
A number of quiz shows from the late 1960s and early 1970s —
including the Who, What or Where Game and the original Sale Of The
Century — had rules where falling below zero at any time immediately
eliminated that player from further play. These games spotted the
players a small bankroll ($20 for $otC, $125 for the betting-type 3 Ws)
and, like Jeopardy!, money was deducted for incorrect answers. But
enough incorrect answers meant falling to or below $0 and, per the
rules, meant they were eliminated immediately. The "$0 means goodbye"
rule was eliminated for the more familiar 1983 $otC and the 3 Ws 1990
remake The Challengers. (With the earlier incarnations, the standard
"game over" is at the end of the front game of $otC (we've just played
the last question, here's the scores, here's our champion) or, on the 3
Ws, after the day's final category is played with all three contestants
participating.
Blockbusters: The Bonus Round, called "Gold Rush" (or "Gold
Run"), required players to make a side-to-side chain on a game board by
answering questions within a 60-second time limit; an incorrect answer
blocked the progress and required the contestant to work hisher way
around. The trope kicked into effect for just the first few weeks of the
series' run –- if, because of enough wrong answers, there was no longer
a way to make a side-to-side connection before the 60-second time limit
expired, the game ended early. The trope no longer was in effect after
the bonus round was tweaked; the contestant could still win consolation
cash by continuing to answer questions until the time limit expired.
The Bonus Round on Body Language, a charades game show, was
broken down into two parts. The first had a contestant guessing up to
ten words at $100 per word in 60 seconds, followed by another 20-second
round with three words played for 10 times the amount the contestant won
previously. Giving an illegal clue (talking or using a prop) in the
second part immediately ended the round in failure even if any words
were left over; the bonus round was also not played if, by rare
happenstance, the contestant failed to guess even one word in the first
part.
On Card Sharks, the Money Cards Bonus Round automatically ended
prior to the Big Bet card if, while on the second row, the contestant
busted -– i.e., bet everything on an incorrect hunch. (On the NBC
version, this was marked by a harsh buzzer followed by a truncated
version of The Price is Right losing horns). Quite a few times, there
were players who "two-card busted" (meaning they blew everything on the
first card, then -– with the card moved immediately to the second row
and the player given a new bankroll -– immediately lost everything on
their next call of the cards). This was also originally possible if the
next card was of the same value as the previous one; it was originally
ruled as a loss, but on later episodes, the next card being of the same
value resulted in neither a gain nor a loss (referred to in-show as a
"push").
Jeopardy!:
In its broadest sense, any player who has $0 or a negative cash
score at the end of the "Double Jeopardy!" round ends his participation
in the show early (i.e., he's not around for "Final Jeopardy!").
However, at least once on the original NBC series -– the late 1960s, by
most accounts -– the trope truly kicked into full effect when all three
players had negative cash scores and thus were ineligible for "Final
Jeopardy!" No "Final Jeopardy!" was played that day, and Art Fleming
spent the rest of the time talking with the contestants and the
audience. The standard "game over" is with all three players
participating in "Final Jeopardy!"
A twist on the "nonstandard game over" trope is the "lock game"
scenario, where the leading contestant's score at the end of "Double
Jeopardy!" is more than double that of the second-place contestant ...
assuming, of course, heshe does not bet more than what he'd be left with
if he were incorrect and the second-place player was correct and bet
enough. In this case, a standard "game over" is a competitive game,
where the second-place contestant can still win if certain things go
right (e.g., a correct answer and a wise bet, vs. the champion being
wrong and forced to bet enough to cover the second-place player's
wager).
Match Game: The 1970s version's two-part Super Match — the
Audience Match followed by the Head-to-Head Match — required the
contestant to match at least one of the top three answers in the
Audience Match portion of the game to play the Head-to-Head portion;
failure to do so ended this bonus round early. While not uncommon during
the and daily syndicated run, only one time did it happen on Match
Game PM (where two Audience Matches were played back-to-back prior to
the Head-to-Head round), forcing a modified front-game question to be
played in place of that show's Head-to-Head match; the contestant won.
Averted with later versions: The 2016 ABC primetime version instead
gives a Consolation Prize of $1,000 for the Head-to-Head round, which
can be multiplied to $5,000; and when the show was married to The
Hollywood Squares in 1983-1984, the contestant was given $100 and could
turn it into up to $3,000.
Name That Tune: Most game shows' bonus rounds that were
quiz-based allowed for incorrect answers; the game would still proceed
and allow the contestant a chance to achieve the stated goal (guess 10
correct answers in 60 seconds to win). This game was one of the
exceptions: With only seven songs to be guessed (in a 30-second time
period), the contestant had to guess all seven songs correctly to win
the day's top prize and be invited back to a grand prize tournament.
This meant that even one wrong answer stops the game immediately and the
player is left to take home consolation prizes. The standard game
overs, then, come if the player guesses all seven songs or the time
limit expires before all seven songs are guessed.
The Price Is Right: Several pricing games – those involving the
pricing of groceries or small items – have this clause if the
contestant is wrong with all questions or fails to meet any conditions
on hisher given choices (usually three), and the contestant had to earn
all picks. A few examples:
Bullseye: In this game involving pricing of groceries, the
objective was to pick an item and tell how many was needed to – when
multiplied by the price of the item – reach a target score of $10-12,
which was an Instant-Win Condition. If the actual total wasn't within
$10-12 but at least $2 and not more than $12, the contestant earned a
mark on the board resembling an archery target, meaning they could still
win if that item concealed a hidden bullseye; up to three turns were
given. The trope kicks in, then, if the contestant fails to at least get
one mark on the board – that is, he was below $2 or above $12 on every
one of his three picks, meaning the hidden bullseye is out of play and
cannot help; despite the instant early loss condition, the host often
will still show the audience which grocery item had the hidden bullseye.
5 Price If the contestant is wrong on all four true-false
pricing questions. At least one correct answer was needed to be able to
pick from one of the price tags they thought was the correct price.
Master Key: If the contestant is wrong on both either-or
pricing questions, meaning no pick of which one of the five keys. The
contestant needed one or both correct answers to try to pick the right
key and (attempt to) win at least something.
Rat Race: If the contestant is wrong on all three pricing
questions, meaning no selection of the rats (although the rodents may
run anyway just for fun). At least one was needed for the contestant to
have a stake in the race.
Shell Game: If the contestant is wrong on all four higher-lower
pricing questions, meaning no chips on the table; they had to have at
least one correct to place a chip beside the shell they thought
concealed the ball.
Bonus Game: Like Shell Game, if the contestant is wrong on all
four higher-lower pricing questions, meaning they won't have control
over any windows, including the Bonus window; they had to have at least
one correct to have a chance of controlling the Bonus window.
Punch-A-Bunch (also known as the Punchboard): If the contestant
is wrong on all four higher-lower pricing questions, meaning no punches
to use on the board; at least one was needed to punch a hole and win
something.
Secret X: If the contestant is wrong on both small item prices,
meaning no extra Xs to go with the first one they receive, at least 2
Xs are needed to be able to make a tic-tac-toe with the Secret X in the
middle column.
One Away: If the contestant is wrong on all five (previously
four) numbers the first time; note This rule exists because if the
contestant gets all five numbers wrong, then it would become clear that
the 5 numbers the contestant didn't flip to were the correct ones,
meaning changing to the other numbers would reveal the correct price.
This scenario only happened once, in 1989, with the audience and Bob
jeering the contestant for it one correct number was necessary to
attempt a second try. A nonstandard win occurs if the contestant gets
all five numbers right on the first try.
Originally the case with Pass The Buck on its first three or
four playings, where three pairs of grocery items were used and no free
pick was given, meaning a Non-Standard Game Over for the contestant if
they were wrong on all three pairs, since it would result in no picks on
the board. This was changed afterward to give the contestant a free
pick, as well as reduce the pairs from three to two and the board spaces
from eight to six (losing $2,000 and leaving two Lose Everythings
instead of three.)
Retired Games:
Hit Me: A la Blackjack, if the contestant picked grocery items
with cards that brought their score to 22 or higher, meaning THEY bust
and forfeit the game regardless of the house's score.
Joker: If the contestant was wrong on all four small prizes,
meaning they can't discard any cards, including the target Joker; at
least one was needed for the contestant to have a chance of discarding
the Joker, which was the goal of the game.
Phone Home Game: If the home viewer on the phone accidentally
read the product names instead of the prices on all three grocery items
that they were allowed to play for, because the goal of the game was for
the stage contestant to guess what product held the price that the home
viewer selected. This would mean they forfeited the game, and it
happened at least once.
Super Ball! If the contestant was wrong on all four balls (the
last of which was the Super Ball), meaning they had no balls to play the
skee ball game with; at least one was needed to play and win.
Telephone Gamenote A rare game that was only played a few
times, and had the misfortune of mostly appearing on episodes with fur
coat prizes; these episodes were excluded from being rerun when
then-host Bob Barker became a vegetarian and began his pet population
campaign : A one time form of the trope; if the contestant spent more
that 90 cents of the dollar they were provided in the pricing round of
this game, meaning they didn't have enough money to make a call in the
second round; at least 10 cents (a dime) was required to make a phone
call in the second round for the contestant to win.
Pyramid:
In the front game, after the first four categories are played,
the fifth category is selected by the team that is trailing. If, after
that fifth category, the team's score is still behind that of their
opponents, the game is automatically ended (unless the remaining box is
the 711 or Mystery 7, thus allowing for at least a chance at it). More
than once, because the trailing team was behind by more than eight
points (categories only have seven words, meaning a maximum of seven
points possible per round), the game was ended after the fourth
category. The standard game over, then, comes with the sixth category
(either the winning team scores enough points to win, or if the trailing
team is still behind when time expires). Theoretically, the earliest a
Pyramid front game could end is during the playing of the first word of
the fourth category; that is, the losing team is trailing 14-0 and they
immediately get disqualified on the first word. Not enough words would
be available to help the trailing team at least tie.
This could also happen in the Winner's Circle. If all six
subjects are guessed in 60 seconds or less, the contestant wins the
large bonus. Giving an illegal clue on a category puts it out of play
and the contestant forfeits the chance at the jackpot. However, if any
categories are left, play continues until the rest are guessed or time
runs out. If the former happens, the Winner's Circle just ends with no
music and no flashing board indicating a bonus round win. You just see
the lights come back on and the host explaining what went wrong. In this
case, the standard game over is either getting all six in 60 seconds or
time running out.
Password:
Password Plus and Super Password have an end game example
similar to the above. The bonus round consists of ten passwords which
must be communicated in order to win a large bonus. The standard game
over is guessing all ten in 60 seconds or time running out. An illegal
clue or accidentally reading a password or part of a password would put
the password out of play and end the chance for the contestant to win
the large bonus. If any passwords are left, the end game continues until
the remaining are guessed or time runs out. In the case of the former,
the round ends early with no celebration.
For Super Password's Cashword, giving an illegal clue ended the
segment in a loss right away, regardless of how many chances the
contestants have left (up to 3). This happened at least twice.
Trashed featured a Pyramid-esque bonus round in which each of
the two contestants had to guess the artists in three separate music
videos via clues given by his or her teammate. Giving an illegal clue
(such as a part of the artist or band's name, the title of the song,
etc.) eliminated that video from play and forfeited the chance to win
the grand prize.
Good News Week: Several episodes of the Australian
current-affairs comedy have ended with both teams losing to the studio
audience. On one particularly memorable occasion during the show's
original 90's run, the show was won by hostscorerumpire Paul McDermott.
The Weakest Link has been known to do this a few times; while
there is no unusual way to lose the game other than being voted off or
losing the final round, contestants occasionally show such a lack of
intelligence that Anne sends them off without even saying "You are the
Weakest Link, goodbye!"
Lingo:
The series had this happen twice in the Bonus Round during
Season 1. At the time, the round consisted of guessing a string of
five-letter words in two minutes with the first letter and another
random letter revealed, with a ball awarded for each correct word. After
time expired, the team was given a Bingo board with 13 of the 25 spots
already covered in such a way that a 5-in-a-row could be achieved in as
few as two draws, and the grand prize was won for completing said
5-in-a-row "Lingo" at any time; a standard game over was either winning
the prize package, or running out of balls and receiving a consolation
prize. However, one team in Season 1 won only one ball (which was drawn
anyway even though it was useless) and another somehow failed to guess
any words in the two minutes, note It doesn't help that their last word
was "Kazoo" with the K & A showing, and they first misspelled
"Khaki" as "Kahki", and followed that with Chuck's favorite, "Kazaa".
Since these spellings resulted in fake words, no help regarding the
letters was provided, and they ran out of time on the third chance. thus
winning zero balls and zero dollars; they left with the same
consolation prizes that the losing team in the main game won, and the
Bonus Lingo board didn't even appear.
Another example came after the tweaking began in Season 2. From
that point onward, the teams were now given a few "bonus letters" that
they could add to the words at any time if they got stuck; also, the
board had only 12 spots covered, but a Lingo could now be made in only
one draw, with a larger prize (either a trip or a Progressive Jackpot)
for completing the Lingo in only one draw, and a smaller prize for doing
it in two or more draws. A standard game over was still the consolation
prize for failing to complete a Lingo before all the earned balls were
used up. The non-standard came when a team who won 7 balls failed to
make a Lingo in all 7 draws; host Chuck Woolery, incredulous over what
just happened, reached into the hopper himself to draw another ball and,
against 99.9% odds, drew the only number that still didn't make a
Lingo.
In both scenarios, there's a non-standard win condition, which
is in play if a team is able to win 10 balls; this is the max amount of
pulls allowed and the spelling game ends immediately if it happens.
While this allegedly guarantees $1,000, it actually guaranteed the
$5,000 standard bonus prize because the team will have enough picks to
eventually get a Lingo regardless of what order the balls are drawn.
Sports
The penalty shootout occurs in many sports games, where the
players or teams are tied after a certain amount of regulation play,
getting alternate turns shooting or trying to score from a set situation
and the team who scores the most wins.
The most widely known example is in Association Football, where
teams get a number of shots from the penalty spot with the team who
score the most winning. 5 kicks is the standard practice. If tied they
keep going until one team misses while the other scores. Field Hockey
shares the same style of shootout.
Ice Hockey has a form where one player takes the puck from the
halfway line, skates towards the goal and has to try and score in a
one-one one with the goalkeeper. The North American Soccer League
introduced a variation of penalty kicks that took inspiration from Ice
Hockey, where the player would start 25 yards away from the goal and
have to dribble towards the penalty box and shoot past the keeper. The
majority of these attempts failed due to the strict time 5 second shot
clock which stopped players from getting anywhere past the start of the
penalty box and thus a long way from goal.
At the high school level and below –- and in some cases, the
collegiate level and some non-major league level sports leagues –- there
is a "mercy rule," which serves to either end a game after a prescribed
point in the game or kick into effect a rule that hastens the end of
the game once the winning team's margin reaches a defined point. This is
as opposed to playing out a one-sided game to its natural conclusion
under normal rules. Common applications:
Baseball and softball:
Virtually all state high school associations have rules which
end games after a prescribed lead after a certain number of innings have
been played. In both sports, the rule is usually 10 runs after five
innings; it differs by sport if the winning team builds a larger lead
even earlier; for instance, in baseball, the common rule is 15 runs
after four innings, while in softball teams need only to have a 12-run
lead after three innings. College contests have variations of this rule,
but since baseball games at this level sometimes go the full nine
innings, the 10-run rule doesn't usually kick in until the seventh
inning. Softball rules are typically similar to high school's "10 after
five" rule.
Child-based and junior high level baseball and softball, and
some semi-professional leagues often have variations of the "mercy
rule." For instance, a townball league for children may even have a rule
where a team that builds a huge lead — say, 30-0 — after just one
inning is no longer is allowed to bat, and the trailing team is given
more than the standard three outs (usually six, or if they are the home
team and haven't batted yet, nine) to give everyone at least one at-bat,
with the game continuing only if in the game manager's judgement the
losing team has sufficiently caught up.
Football:
Most states have a "continuous clock" rule, which means that if
a team has a certain lead after halftime (it varies from 35-50 points),
the clock runs continuously, not stopping on plays where the clock
normally would be stopped, such as an incomplete pass or a play going
out of bounds (although the clock does stop for quarter breaks, time
outs, and any scoring). The clock continues to run in these games until
the scoring difference falls below the prescribed margin (normal timing
rules once again take effect), but then kick back in if the winning team
once again exceeds the margin.
Prior to the advent of "continuous clock" rules, some states
had rules whereby the game would end at halftime or any time after if
the winning team has a certain lead (usually, 50 points or more). In
Kansas, an eight-man football game (or six-man game in Texas) stops once
a team gets a lead of at least 45 points by halftime or at any point
after that (The entire first half must be played out). This rule came
into effect during the 1980s, when some games featured mismatches so
great, the winning team was easily scoring 90 or, on some rare
occasions, 100 points.
In the NFL, most overtime games end with a field goal or
touchdown, but on three occasions, they have ended in a safety (a
defensive play where the defense stops the offense inside their own end
zone).
Basketball: Much like football, state high school athletic
associations have implemented "continuous clock" timing rules if the
winning team is ahead by a certain margin (usually 30 points) after
halftime. There are currently no known states that end a game before the
end of the fourth quarter if an even higher point difference is
reached.
Soccer:
The NCAA (particularly in football and basketball) and
professional leagues such as the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball do
not have mercy rules, meaning they could score an unlimited number of
points, runs, etc., without having special rules kick into effect to
hasten the end of the game. Meaning unfortunate teams on the losing end
would have no choice but to continue playing and trying to reduce the
margin. (Which is not very fun for the loser.) That said, a continuous
clock was used on at least three occasions in NCAA Division I football
games, where the winning team ran up a large lead by halftime and agreed
to a continuous clock for the entire second half; the winning team in
all cases at least maintained the lead, with two of them increasing the
lead. Aside from that, teams that have a very large lead over their
opponents, especially a decidedly weaker one, will typically play
reserves, run plays designed to take time off the clock (such as in
football, run the ball up the middle and rarely if ever pass), use pinch
hitters (in baseball, said roles going to non-starters andor reserves)
with low batting averages, or shoot the ball conservatively (in
basketball).
Boxing: At all levels, a boxer can be knocked down only so many
times before he will be declared the loser by TKO — that is, a
"technical knockout." It is also an automatic "game over" — that is,
match over — if one boxer fails to answer a 10 count (that is,
sufficiently get up in the referee's judgement) to continue the match.
At some levels (though rarely at high-level bouts, since it rarely
happens), the match automatically ends if a boxer is knocked down three
times in a round.
In the "8-Ball" variant of pocket billards, you win if you
legally sink the 8-ball (no other balls of your pattern remaining,
calling the pocket you're going to sink the 8-ball in and then legally
sinking the 8-ball there) before your opponent does. However, it is
possible to lose on your turn instead, in the following ways:
Sinking the 8-ball when you haven't sunk every ball of your pattern yet.
When you are allowed to sink the 8-ball:
Sinking the 8-ball in a pocket you did not call.
Sinking the 8-ball in the correct pocket, but making a foul in
the process (e.g. a scratch, hitting an opponent's ball first).note Note
that if you foul up, but don't sink the 8, the usual foul rules apply
instead of an instant loss.
Knocking the 8-ball off the table, although this is generally rare.
In Association Football, apart from the usual results of a win
or draw over 90 minutes, or the 120 minutes of extra time, there are a
handful of other ways to win or lose a game.
In a two match tie (used in knock-out competitions), the away
goals rule, if the aggregate score is tied, then whoever scored the most
goals in their match away from home wins.
Most leagues have a statue in the laws that says when a team
cannot field a certain number of players, (most often a team being down
to 6 from a team of 11), the game is abandoned, although depending on
the score or the laws of the league the game can still be awarded to the
team with enough players.
Numerous sports have what is termed "Sudden Death", "Golden
Goal" or "Golden Point" where after a draw, the game continues to be
played in extra time, with the first team to score a point of any kind
is immediately the winner. It was introduced for Association Football in
1993 but removed by 2004.
A bizarre variation of the Golden Goal rule as part of the 1994
Caribbean Cup Qualification football tournament was that any goal
scored in Golden Goal extra time counted as double for the league ladder
in addition to winning the match itself. The final match for Barbados
required them to defeat Grenada by 2 goals to qualify in first place and
go through to the tournament itself. Barbados were winning the match
2-1, but were unable to score a goal to make the game 3-1. They decided
to score an own goal which would tie the match and send it to extra
time, hopefully allowing them to score a golden goal, worth double, to
finish first. With only a handful of minutes left, the Grenada players
cottoned onto the plan, and realised that they would finish first if
they could score a goal at either end of the field. This resulted in
Barbados defending both ends of the field and they succeeded in bringing
the game to extra time and then scored a winning golden goal, winning
the match 4-2 (despite only scoring 3 goals), and then qualifying in
first place.
Another development across word sports was the "Silver Goal"
(although other sports use different terminology). It is a variation of
Golden Goal where the instant win condition of scoring any point in
extra time is removed to allow the opposition team a certain amount of
time or plays to equal or better the opposition. In Association Football
this Silver Goal period was one half of extra time. When used in
American Football, the team who have been scored on get one drive to
match or better their opposition result, which can lead to a team
scoring a field goal, then losing because their opposition scored a
touchdown.
In Sumo Wrestling, if a wrestler's loin cloth falls off, they
lose instantly. For obvious reasons, this infraction is extremely rare.
Cricket test matches has 3 standard endings after the 5 days of
play, with 2 innings per team, comes to a close: A team may either win,
lose, or drawnote aka. No result was reached at the end of the match
the match. The non-standard ending is the tie, where the scores are
exactly level once the team batting fourth and last has lost all of
their batsmen. This has only happened twice in more than 2100 test
matches. Should not be confused with the scores being level as the
allotted time runs out, in which case it's a "We flippin' murdered
'em"-draw.
Tabletop Games
Chess: Resigning before you're put into checkmate. Often
symbolized by deliberately knocking over your own king's piece, though
this is not required. Both players may also choose to agree to a draw if
they realize that neither of them can reasonably checkmate the other.
Any tabletop RPG set in more modern times can have a
non-standard game over in probably the most mundane way possible: Your
character gets arrested. This is more likely in settings where the
Player Characters are just normal humans, and can be especially
prominent when they are fighting any Eldritch Abomination that looks (or
turns back into a) human after its dead. You may have been fighting to
save the world, but to the police a corpse is a corpse after all, and
while your character might get out on bail, or have their case thrown
out due to lack of evidence, for all practical purposes you are out of
the game for at least a little while until your bail hearing, the case
has been to court etc. Hunter: The Vigil specifically mentions this as a
danger hunters of any level face, and games like Call of Cthulhu which
feature the players fighting wholly mortal servants of some monster
often at least imply this.
Seeing as it is based on comic books, Sentinels of the
Multiverse features a few ways to cause the players to get a
Non-Standard Game Over (the standard way of winning is to reduce the
Villain to 0 HP)
If Baron Blade has 15 or more cards in his trash (i.e. discard
pile) at the start of his turn, his Tractor Beam plunges the moon into
the Earth, and everyone dies.
Evil Alien Overlord Grand Warlord Voss takes over the Earth if he has 10 or more Minions in play at the start of his turn.
The Dreamer turns the Standard win condition listed above into
the lose condition in battles against her: If she dies, the heroes lose.
Justified, for two reasons: 1) The Dreamer is the child version of the
hero Visionary, who time traveled to the present to save her younger
self from a government project, so if Dreamer dies, Visionary dies. 2)
the Dreamer's psychic powers overloaded during a nightmare and the
nightmares themselves but be destroyed to wake her up. In short, the
battle is one big Hostage Situation.
This is Inverted with Gloomweaver. If the heroes manage to get
all three of his Relicsnote The Pouch of Bones, the Drum of Despair, and
the Grimore of Curses into his trash before he can flip, the heroes
succeed in preventing his summoning to Earth, and Gloomweaver
automatically loses.
The environments also have Non-Standard Game Overs
occasionally. The most prominent is the Self Destruct Sequence in the
Wager Mars Base. If the Sequence completes itself, the base blows up and
everyone dies.
Silver Gulch, 1993, has Lost In the Past. If there are no cards
in the Environment's trash by the end of it's turn, the time portal the
heroes used to get to Silver Gulch closes and thus, the heroes lose.
The Mobile Defense Platform has the Propulsion Systems. If it
loses all of it's 10 HP, the Platform blows up and everyone dies. Note
that it can be removed or destroyed in other ways without invoking the
everyone dying part.
As of the last couple of editions of Warhammer 40,000, if a
game turn ends with one player having no models at all on the board,
they are "tabled" and immediately lose. Doesn't matter if they have
enough Victory Points in the bag to wipe the floor with their opponent,
or if they have their entire army in reserve ready to drop in at the
start of the next turn - if you get tabled, you lose everything.
Fluxx has Goal cards — if someone meets the conditions on an
active Goal card, they win. It also has Ungoals — if the conditions on
an active Ungoal card are met, everyone loses.
The Game of Life - in the classic (1960-1990) version, if you
didn't think you had enough money to win the game outright by having the
most money at retirement, you could attempt to become a "Millionaire
Tycoon" by calling one number on the wheel and spinning. Landing on that
number resulted in an Instant-Win Condition (and thus a NSGO for your
opponents); any other number resulted in the loss of everything you
owned and your banishment to the Bankrupt space (thus a NSGO for
yourself).
In the dice game Pass the Pigs (which uses special pig-shaped
dice), if you somehow manage to roll the dice so that one pig is
standing upright on the ground, and the other is standing upright on the
first pig's back (a virtually impossible feat), you instantly lose the
game.
The standard Chrononauts has this occur if there are thirteen
temporal paradoxes on the field at one time. An expansion included a
character who actually had a temporal paradox as his own win condition.
Real time fault tolerant transaction processing system
This application is a continuation of application Ser. No. 07125,463, filed Nov. 25, 1987, now abandoned.
BACKGROUND OF THE DISCLOSURE
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a real time fault tolerant transaction
processing system and particularly one suited for use in a service
control point.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Currently, many computer controlled systems, particularly those
used in transaction processing, must operate at extremely high levels of
reliability. Unfortunately, a computer which controls such a system,
due to the complexity of the computer hardware and attendant software,
is oftentimes the least reliable component in the system and is
frequently a main cause of system failure. Therefore, in an effort to
provide increased reliability, the art has turned to so-called fault
tolerant computers for use in transaction processing systems. However,
computers of this type possess serious drawbacks which, as discussed in
detail below, severely limit their utility. As a result, such computers
can not be used to impart increased reliability to a variety of computer
based transaction processing systems.
One specific transaction processing system that must operate at
an extremely high level of reliability is a service control point
("SCP") that controls routing of telephone calls, within the telephone
network, that require special handling, such as 800 and calling
("credit") card calls. In particular, whenever a telephone subscriber
dials such a call, this call is first routed to an equal access switch,
located either at a local office or elsewhere, which has service
switching point capability (such a switch will hereinafter be referred
to as an "SSP"). Primarily, the SSP processes calls that require remote
data base translation. Now, whenever the SSP recognizes an incoming a
call as one that requires special handling, the SSP suspends normal call
processing, launches a message over a common channel signalling ("CCS")
network to an SCP to determine how the call is to be routed, and
finally upon receipt of a return message from the SCP, routes the call
in a manner specified by the return message.
Specifically, whenever a subscriber places a call to an 800
number, the local switch routes the call to an SSP. The SSP fabricates
an query in the form of a packet. This packet contains the 800 called
number and a request for a destination routing number associated with
the 800 number and, additionally, identification of a particular long
distance (inter-exchange) carrier over which the call is to be routed.
This packet is then routed over a common channel signalling line in a
CCS network to a particular one of several geographically separated
signalling transfer points (STPs). Specifically, the CCS network
typically consists of a multi-level hierarchy of STPs, wherein each STP
is a primarily a packet switch. The first STP to receive the packet,
i.e. the "originating" STP, then routes the packet, over an available
link to an SCP for processing or, via a specified link, to another STP
for eventual routing to an SCP. To perform this routing correctly, each
STP that routes this packet examines a routing field located in the
packet and, in response, determines where the packet should be routed.
In particular, for an 800 call, the first six digits of the dialed 800
number specify the appropriate SCP that is to receive a corresponding
packet from an SSP.
The SCP itself is a fault tolerant transaction processing system
that contains various databases that collectively provide desired call
routing information. These databases contain a "customer record" which
specifies how each 800 call is to be routed. This record frequently
contains one or more destination routing numbers associated with a
particular 800 number and specifies the manner in which one of these
destination routing numbers is to be selected, e.g. in accordance with
the time of day, day of month, originating numbering plan area of the
caller or other pre-defined method. The SCP is a transaction processor
in which a transaction involves the receipt of a packet and the
generation of a corresponding response. In particular, whenever a query
is received, via an incoming packet, the SCP performs associated
database access operations to obtain a necessary destination routing
number and an inter-exchange carrier identification for the
corresponding 800 call. The resulting information is then transmitted,
as a packet, over the CCS network by the SCP, via one or more STPs, back
to an "originating" SSP which generated the corresponding query. Once a
packet containing the destination routing number and inter-exchange
carrier selection is received, the originating SSP appropriately routes
the 800 call to the destination routing number. If the destination
routing number is within the local access and transport area (LATA)
served by the local telephone company, then the 800 call is routed by
the SSP, via switching and transport facilities provided by that
telephone company, directly to the destination routing number.
Alternatively, if the destination routing number is outside the LATA
served by the local telephone company, then the SSP routes the 800 call
to the identified inter-exchange carrier with specific instructions
(e.g. the destination routing number) for routing the call to its final
destination.
To ensure that 800 service is reliably provided all the time, an
SCP must operate with minimal down time, preferably less than three
minutes per year. Two techniques are often used in the art to impart a
high degree of fault tolerance to the SCP: use of redundant link
connections from the CCS network to an SCP and use of fault tolerant
processors within the SCP.
First, each SSP is connected, by separate links, to two different
STPs, each of which, in turn, is connected by separate links to two
different SCPs. In the event one of these links fails, then traffic
destined to a particular SCP is re-routed thereto via another link or a
different STP.
Second, the art teaches that each processor used within the SCP
must be fault tolerant. Generally, SCPs known in the art contain two
front end processors, two back end processors and a fault tolerant mass
memory device, such as a dual ported disk drive. Each front end
processor is connected to both incoming links that terminate at the SCP.
Each back end processor is connected to both front end processors.
Also, each back end processor is connected to the disk drive through one
of its dual ports. In operation, one of the front end processors
formulates a database query in response to each packet appearing on
either link. One of the back end processors receives a query from the
front end processor and, in response, performs various database look-up
operations, through one of the ports of the disk drive, to obtain the
desired information. The front and back end processors are both fault
tolerant. Specifically, the fault tolerant processors, as is typically
taught in the art, operate in a hotstandby configuration in which one
processor (the "hot" processor) is actively processing packets or
queries while the other (the "standby" processor) remains in a standby
condition ready to take over processing in the event the hot processor
fails. A typical example of such a processor is shown in U.S. Pat. No.
4,484,275 (issued Nov. 20, 1984 to J. Katzman et al and hereinafter
referred to as the '275 patent).
Fault tolerant processors known in the art possess serious drawbacks which substantially limit their utility in an SCP.
First, fault tolerant processors are very expensive. While a
non-fault tolerant minicomputer having sufficient throughput for use in
an SCP may cost upwards of $20,000, a fault tolerant processor of the
same capacity may cost in the range of $100,000 or more. The additional
cost is incurred as the direct result of highly specialized hardware and
very sophisticated software, particularly for fault detection and
recovery, needed in these processors to provide an acceptable degree of
fault tolerance. Specifically, the software used in fault tolerant
processors is often of such complexity that it accounts for upwards of
65% of the total cost of the processor. Thusfar, the art has failed to
provide any "off the shelf" software that can be purchased and installed
in two relatively low cost commercially available stand alone
processors to provide an acceptable degree of fault tolerant operation
therebetween.
Second, in a traditional fault tolerant processor, such as that
shown in the '275 patent, the hot processor handles the entire
processing load while the standby processor remains idle. Consequently,
in an application, such as the SCP, where queries may occur at a rate in
excess of 200second, the hot processor itself must be capable of
handling all these queries. This mandates that the each processor must
have a sufficiently large throughput which further increases the cost of
these processors. Now, in an attempt to reduce cost, the art teaches,
as shown by the architecture described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,356,546
(issued Oct. 26, 1982 to A. Whiteside et al), that a set of different
tasks can be assigned to and executed by a different processor. In this
manner, each processor is not required to handle the entire processing
load but rather a proportionate share thereof. Consequently, processors
having a reduced capacity can be used to implement a fault tolerant
architecture. Unfortunately, complex hardware and sophisticated and
costly software is needed to monitor the execution of all tasks and, in
the event a processor fails, re-schedule tasks among all active
remaining processors. As a result, the cost savings that may accrue
through the use of smaller processors are more than offset by the added
expense of task monitoring and re-scheduling hardware and its attendant
software.
Third, traditional fault tolerant processors, such as that
described in the above-noted '275 patent, utilize separate processors
that are tightly coupled together through multiple busses.
Unfortunately, inter-connecting processors in this fashion forces each
processor to be somewhat dependent upon the other processors.
Specifically, should one such processor fail, then depending upon the
severity of the failure, e.g. whether a processor inter-connection bus
is taken down as a result, the failed processor may well disrupt the
operation of one or more of the remaining processors and potentially
halt all further processing occurring throughout the fault tolerant
system. Other illustrative fault tolerant architectures that rely on
relatively tight inter-processor coupling are shown, for example, in
U.S. Pat. Nos.: 4,484,273 (issued Nov. 20, 1984 to J. Stiffler et al);
4,421,955 (issued Dec. 20, 1983 to H. Mori et al); and 4,412,281 (issued
Oct. 25, 1983 to G. Works). A similar dependency problem arises in
those fault tolerant processors known in the art which rely on
distributing tasks through a common switch to any one of several
inter-connected processors. Such an arrangement is illustratively shown
in U.S. Pat. No. 4,392,199 (issued July 5, 1983 to E. Schmitter et al).
Here, the overall reliability of the fault tolerant processor is limited
by the reliability of the common switch. Should the switch fail, all
processing will stop.
Fourth, other fault tolerant processors known in the art rely on
simultaneously processing tasks through paired redundant hardware and
comparing the results to isolate faults. For example, in the
architecture described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,453,215 (issued June 5, 1984
to R. Reid), identical tasks are simultaneously processed, on a
synchronous basis, through two identical dual processors. The results
obtained from both processors within a dual processor are compared
against each other to detect any errors (i.e. any differences) occurring
within that dual processor and, should an error be detected, to
immediately take that one of the two dual processors out of service. As a
result, the faulty dual processor is taken out of service before it has
a chance to transfer any possibly erroneous information onward to a
bus. Although this arrangement may, in certain instances, provide an
acceptable level of fault tolerance, substantial expense is incurred for
quadruplicating processing elements.
Thus, a need exists in the art for a transaction processing
system, particularly one suitable for use in a service control point,
that provides a very high degree of fault tolerance without complex
hardware, sophisticated software and the attendant high cost associated
with traditional fault tolerant processing systems.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The above-described drawbacks inherent in the art for providing a
fault tolerant transaction processor, particularly one suitable for use
within a service control point, are advantageously eliminated in
accordance with the teachings of the present invention by a network
based communication system which employs a communication protocol that
adaptively distributes packets on an equal basis over multiple physical
links that connect two points within the network, such as an SCP and a
signalling transfer point (STP), and non-fault tolerant front end and
back end processors that are connected to each physical link for
handling the processing of packets appearing on that link. All the front
and back end processors are loosely coupled together for purposes of
processor synchronization and re-assignment. Through this communication
system, all the physical links simultaneously carry an approximately
equal number of packets which are, in turn, processed by all the
processors connected thereto. In the event any physical link or either a
front or back end processor connected thereto fails, then that link is
declared to be out of service. Consequently, the protocol merely
re-assigns all subsequently occurring packets to the other links until
such time as the fault is cleared. As the result of link re-assignment,
there is advantageously no need to connect a fault tolerant processor to
each physical link. This, in turn, substantially and advantageously
reduces the complexity and cost of the fault tolerant transaction
processing system.
In accordance with a specific embodiment of the present
invention, the inventive system employs "j" sparing in which j
processors (where j is an integer) are used in situations that would
normally require j processors. Specifically, if only three physical
links are sufficient to carry expected traffic, then four physical links
with accompanying front and back end processors would be used in lieu
of three physical links with the protocol providing approximately equal
traffic (packet) distribution among the four links. Since use of an
extra link and an extra set of processors is far less expensive than
completely duplicating the entire system hardware as has been done in
the past to provide fault tolerance, use of "j" sparing results in a
substantially less expensive fault tolerant processing system than has
been taught in the art.
Furthermore, since no processors (either front or back end) are
normally in an idle state but instead all such processors are
productively processing packets, then advantageously little processing
capacity is wasted, at least far less than that associated with
traditional fault tolerant processors that rely on using separate
hotstandby processors. Moreover, since the processors used in the
inventive system are non-fault tolerant and have a smaller processing
capacity than those typically associated with fault tolerant
architectures, use of these non-fault tolerant processors results in a
fault tolerant architecture that is substantially less expensive than
that previously possible. In addition, since the all the front and back
end processors are loosely coupled and a single back end processor can
selectively bring up or take down subsystem (application) processing in
each corresponding frontback end processor pair located within an entire
SCP, the software that co-ordinates all the front and back end
processors in the inventive system is far less sophisticated than that
associated with traditional fault tolerant architectures. This, in turn,
further reduces the cost of providing a fault tolerant real-time
transaction processing system according to the teachings of the present
invention.
Moreover, in accordance with a feature of the invention, the
inventive architecture advantageously bifurcates the software that
provides an application, such as 800 service, from the software used to
implement a fault tolerant communication network. In the past,
application and communications software were frequently intertwined
which slowed and significantly increased the expense of developing new
applications for use in fault tolerant network environments. By
separating the software, many new transaction based applications
destined for use in a fault tolerant network environment can be
advantageously developed without having to modify the associated
communication software. This advantageously shortens the development
cycle substantially and also provides significant attendant cost
savings.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING
The teachings of the present invention can be readily understood
by considering the following detailed description in conjunction with
the accompanying drawing, in which:
FIG. 1 is a simplified diagram of a prior art architecture of a telephone signalling network that utilizes signalling system 6;
FIG. 2 is a block diagram of prior art service control point (SCP) 200 shown in FIG. 1;
FIG. 3 graphically depicts the hierarchy of the various levels of
signalling system 7 (SS7) associated with a node on the common channel
signalling (CCS) network and the message and control flow that occur
among these levels;
FIG. 4 is a simplified diagram of the architecture of the
telephone signalling network shown in FIG. 1 that has been modified to
utilize SS7;
FIG. 5 shows the correct alignment of the drawing sheets for FIGS. 5A and 5B;
FIGS. 5A and 5B collectively depict a block diagram of a
preferred embodiment of SCP 500 shown in FIG. 4 that incorporates the
teachings of the present invention;
FIG. 6 depicts a block diagram of front end processor 5101 situated within SCP 500 shown in FIGS. 5A and 5B;
FIG. 7 depicts a high level block diagram of several of the
software processes executing within each front endback end processor
pair in SCP 500 shown in FIGS. 4 and 5 and the principal inter-process
communication occurring therein;
FIG. 8 diagrammatically shows the communication occurring between
SCP 500 and STPs 56 and 58 during the handling of a SS7 link failure;
FIG. 9 shows the correct alignment of the drawing sheets for FIGS. 9A and 9B;
FIGS. 9A and 9B diagrammatically show a sequence of inter-process
communications that occur within SCP front end processors 5101 and 5102
shown in FIG. 8 during the handling of a link failure;
FIG. 10 diagrammatically shows a sequence of inter-process
communications that occur within SCP front end processor 5101 and back
end processor 1 for bringing a subsystem executing on back end processor
1 into service;
FIG. 11 diagrammatically shows a sequence of communications that
occur between primary and mate SCPs and an adjacent STP to effectuate a
mate switch operation;
FIG. 12 diagrammatically shows a sequence of inter-process
communications that occur within SCP front end processor 5101 and back
end processor 1 situated within SCP 500 for generating a SS7 subsystem
out of service request (SOR) message in order to invoke a mate switch
operation; and
FIG. 13 diagrammatically shows a sequence of inter-process
communications that occur within SCP front end processor 910 and back
end processor 920 situated within mate SCP 590 in response to an
incoming SS7 SOR message initially issued by SCP 500 as part of a mate
switch operation.
To facilitate understanding, identical reference numerals have
been used to designate identical elements that are common to the
figures.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
The teachings of the present invention are applicable to
implementing a wide variety of real-time fault tolerant transaction
processing systems. For the sake of brevity, the present invention will
be discussed in the context of a real-time fault tolerant transaction
processing system for use in a service control point (SCP) that
processes packets supplied over any link existing within a link set that
connects a signalling transfer point (STP) to the SCP. Clearly, after
reading the following description, those skilled in the art will readily
appreciate how the teachings of the present invention can be
incorporated into other transaction processing systems to provide fault
tolerance.
I. Background
To fully appreciate the teachings of the present invention, the
following discussion will first examine how packets occurring within a
telephone signalling network were traditionally processed and then
address the inventive system.
In particular, FIG. 1 shows a simplified diagram of a prior art
architecture of a telephone signalling network that employs transaction
processing. In general, this network provides special telephone routing
information to support a variety of special calls, such as 800 number
calls and calling card services. This information is obtained through
remote database translations, using caller supplied information such as a
called number or a credit card number, to appropriately access one or
more databases that are embedded within the telephone signalling
network. For illustrative purposes, this network and the invention will
be discussed in the context of processing calls to 800 numbers.
Assume for the moment that a caller dials a call to an 800
number. The caller (not shown) is generally connected to a local switch,
such as local switch 12 or 14. An 800 telephone number is actually a
logical telephone number. To route such a call to its proper
destination, the 800 number must be translated to an appropriate
destination routing number to which the call can be subsequently routed.
The specific destination routing number is specified in a customer
record stored within one or more databases residing within a service
control point (SCP). This record typically contains one and often more
destination routing numbers and associated inter-exchange carrier
selections that are associated with a dialed 800 number and the manner
in which one of these destination routing number and its associated
inter-exchange carrier are to be selected, e.g. time of day, day of
month, originating numbering plan of the caller and the like. An SCP is
an on-line real time fault tolerant transaction processing system that
provides call processing information (responses) in response to
inquiries received via STPs connected within the signalling network.
This call processing information can include call routing instructions,
such as for 800 calls, or other instructions depending upon the
information requested by an SSP. In particular, several different
database applications can be concurrently available on an SCP. The
following discussion addresses one such application, 800 service.
Now, to process an 800 number call, whenever a local switch,
typified by either local switch 12 or 14, receives an 800 call, this
switch routes the call onward, either through trunk 22 or through trunk
24, respectively, to an equal access switch, located either at a local
office or elsewhere, that has service switching point capability (such a
switch will be collectively referred to as an "SSP"), such as SSP 30.
The function of the SSP is to first recognize an incoming call as one
requiring special handling --such as 800 number calls, then suspend
normal call processing for this call, thereafter obtain appropriate
routing instructions through the telephone signalling network and
finally route the call according to the resulting instructions.
Specifically, in response to a call to an 800 number, SSP 30 fabricates a
query in the form of a packet. This query contains the called 800
number and a request for a destination routing number associated with
the dialed 800 number and a designation of a specific inter-exchange
carrier, such as inter-exchange carrier 1 or 2, that is to carry this
call. This packet also contains a network address of the SSP, i.e. SSP
30, that originated the query. Once this packet is generated, it is
transmitted through a regional common channel signalling (CCS) network
50 to an appropriate SCP, such as SCP 200 or SCP 210, which processes
the packet and provides an appropriate response. Every packet received
by an SCP is part of a separate transaction. Every transaction includes
both a packet sent to an SCP from an SSP and a corresponding response
generated thereto by the SCP and sent to the SSP.
The CCS network consists of a multi-level hierarchy of signalling
transfer points (STPs) which primarily act as packet switches to carry a
message, in this case a packet, from an "originating" SSP to a
particular "destination" SCP and to carry a packet containing a response
message (call routing instructions) from that SCP back to the
originating SSP which, in turn, routes the 800 call using the call
routing instructions. As shown, CCS network 50 contains STPs 52, 54, 56
and 58 which are situated at different geographic locations within a
given service region. STPs 52 and 54 receive incoming packets from SSP
30 for subsequent routing through the CCS network. As a result, these
STPs function as "originating" STPs. To ensure continued operation in
the event of a link failure, each originating STP is connected through
two separate bi-directional links, such as links 64 and 72 for STP 52,
and links 66 and 74 for STP 54, to destination STPs 56 and 58. If one of
the links, such as link 64, connecting an originating STP, such as STP
52, fails, then that STP routes packets, via the other link--here link
72, to the other destination STP. Destination STPs 56 and 58 are
inter-connected by bi-directional link 68 to route packets therebetween,
if necessary. Hence, if STP 58 receives a packet destined for STP 56,
the former STP routes the message over link 68 to the latter STP.
Likewise, originating STPs 52 and 54 are inter-connected by
bi-directional link 62 to route packets therebetween in the event of a
link failure. Generally, CCS network 50 contains more than two
originating and two destination STPs, and more than two STP levels
wherein one or more levels of STPs are situated between the originating
and destination STPs to provide packet routing therebetween. Each
individual SSP, STP and SCP that exists within a signalling network is
often referred to as a node.
Now, once SSP 30 formulates an query, this SSP routes the
associated packet that contains this query and appropriate header
information through an available link, such as link 36 or 38, to an
originating STP, i.e. either STP 52 or 54, respectively, located within
CCS network 50. The originating STP determines, using internal global
title translation tables, an address of a particular SCP, such as SCP
200, which contains the appropriate databases necessary to provide the
requested call routing instructions, i.e. the specific SCP which
contains a copy of the customer record for the dialed 800 number. This
address is then inserted as a routing field that forms part of the
header of the packet. Thereafter, the packet is routed from the
originating STP to a destination STP within CCS network 50. Each STP
that receives this packet examines its routing field and routes the
packet accordingly. Once the destination STP receives the packet, it
routes the packet to the particular SCP specified within the header. The
SCP performs associated database look-up operations to formulate the
desired call routing instructions. After this has occurred, the SCP
fabricates a packet that contains the call routing instructions as a
response message and a header that specifies the address of the SSP that
originated the original query. Once the SSP receives this packet, it
routes the dialed 800 call according to the routing instructions, i.e.
the SSP routes the dialed call to the specified destination routing
number via a specified inter-exchange carrier, such as inter-exchange
carrier 1 or 2, via respective trunks 32 or 34.
This signalling network that has just been described and which is
well known in the art utilizes CCITT signalling system 6 (SS6). This
signalling system employs only one physical path for each link that
connects any two components (SSPs, STPs, and SCPs) that reside within or
are connected to the signalling network.
With this in mind, FIG. 2 shows a block diagram of an SCP,
illustratively SCP 200, that forms part of the prior art signalling
network shown in FIG. 1.
As shown, the SCP contains two separate front end processors 220
and 225 each of which is connected to both links 82 and 86 which emanate
from STPs 56 and 58, respectively. Each front end processor receives
incoming packets and executes various software routines that implement a
well-known communication protocol that forms part of SS6. This protocol
provides framing, synchronization, error checking and correction,
destination checking, message transport and other well-known
communication functions. After the protocol has executed in a front end
processor for an incoming packet, this processor sends the query
contained in the incoming packet to a back end processor, such as
processor 260 or 265, to process the query accordingly and provide a
desired response. Query processing typically includes database look-up
operations performed through path 270 or path 275 into a customer record
stored on dual ported fault tolerant disk drive 280. The resulting
response provided by the back end processor is then communicated back to
the front end processor that provided the query. This front end
processor executes the SS6 protocol to fabricate a packet containing the
response and appropriate header information and then subsequently
transmits the packet back to an STP.
Hardware redundancy and link redundancy are used to impart a
necessary degree of reliability to the signalling network. Specifically,
in the event one path fails, another is available; in the event, one
processor fails, another is available. As shown, each SCP is connected,
via two separate links--here links 82 and 86, to two different STPs. In
this manner, CCS network 50 can still communicate with SCP 200 and
process calls even if one of the STPs or links fails. If STP 56 or link
82 fails, then the packets that would otherwise be carried by these
components are routed, via STP 58 and link 86, to the SCP. Also, within
the SCP, both links are connected to both front end processors. Hence,
if one of these processors fails, then the other front end processor can
immediately take over the processing load of the failed processor.
Additionally, each front end processor is connected through separate
data links to both back end processors. In the manner, should either one
of the data paths connecting a front end processor to a back end
processor fail or should a back end processor itself fail, then queries
can be routed through the other data link to a different back end
processor for processing. Specifically, front end processor 220 is
connected through bi-directional data paths 242 and 244 to back end
processors 260 and 265. Likewise, front end processor 225 is connected
through bi-directional data paths 246 and 248 to back end processors 260
and 265.
The art teaches that to provide added reliability, each of the
front end and back end processors must be fault tolerant. Unfortunately,
traditional fault tolerant processors known in the art possess serious
drawbacks that significantly limit their use in an SCP. Specifically,
traditional fault tolerant processors disadvantageously: utilize,
typically in a hotstandby configuration, separate high throughput
processing elements that are quite expensive; utilize complex,
sophisticated and relatively expensive software; andor might, depending
upon the specific fault tolerant processor chosen, employ tight
inter-processor coupling which decreases overall system reliability.
II. Inventive Fault Tolerant Transaction Processing System
Now, in accordance with the teachings of the present invention, a
real-time fault tolerant transaction processing system, particularly
suited for use in an SCP, can be fabricated which substantially
eliminates the drawbacks associated with traditional fault tolerant
systems.
The inventive system relies on using a communication protocol,
illustratively signalling system 7, that adaptively distributes traffic
on an approximately equal basis over multiple physical links that
connect two points, coupled with use of non-fault tolerant front end and
back end processors that are connected to each physical link for
handling the processing of packets appearing on that link, wherein all
the front and back end processors are loosely coupled together for
purposes of processor synchronization and re-assignment. Through this
system, all the physical links simultaneously carry an approximately
equal number of packets which are, in turn, processed by all the
processors connected thereto. In the event any physical link or either a
front or back end processor connected thereto fails, then that link is
declared to be out of service. As a result, the protocol merely
re-assigns all subsequent traffic to the other links until such time as
the fault is cleared. As the result of link re-assignment, there is
advantageously no need to connect a fault tolerant processor to each
physical link.
Moreover, to provide increased fault tolerance, the inventive
system employs "j" sparing in which j processors (where j is an integer)
are used in situations that would normally require j processors.
Specifically, if only three physical links are sufficient to carry
expected traffic, then four physical links with accompanying front and
back end processors would be used in lieu of three physical links with
the protocol providing approximately equal traffic (packet) distribution
among the four links. Since use of an extra link and an extra set of
processors is far less expensive than completely duplicating the entire
system hardware as has been done in the past to provide fault tolerance,
use of "j" sparing results in a substantially less expensive fault
tolerant processing system than has been taught in the art.
Furthermore, since no processors (either front or back end) are
normally in an idle state but instead all such processors are
productively processing packets, then advantageously little processing
capacity is wasted, at least far less than that associated with
traditional fault tolerant processors that rely on using separate
hotstandby processors. Moreover, since the processors used in the
inventive system non-fault tolerant and have a smaller processing
capacity than those typically associated with fault tolerant
architectures, use of these non-fault tolerant processors results in a
fault tolerant architecture that is substantially less expensive than
that previously possible. In addition, since the all the front and back
end processors are loosely coupled together and a single back end
processor can selectively bring up or take down subsystem (application)
processing in each corresponding frontback end processor pair located
within an entire SCP, the software that co-ordinates all the front and
back end processors in the inventive system is far less sophisticated
than that associated with traditional fault tolerant architectures.
This, in turn, further reduces the cost of providing a fault tolerant
real-time transaction processing system according to the teachings of
the present invention.
Inasmuch as the inventive communication system utilizes a
communication protocol along with particular hardware and software, the
discussion will now address the salient properties of the protocol
before proceeding to a detailed examination of the hardware and software
used in the inventive system.
A. Communication Protocol
The protocol used in the inventive communication system provides
point-to-point communication between different nodes--such as between an
SSP and an STP, between separate STPs, and between and STP and an
SCP--existing within CCS network that forms a telecommunications
signalling system. This protocol, hereinafter referred to as signalling
system 7 (SS7), is the ANSI (American National Standards Institute)
implementation, as recommended by the ANSI T1X1.1 Working Group, of the
signalling system 7 standard initially promulgated by CCITT. This
protocol includes mechanisms, such as error detection and correction, to
insure reliable transfer of signalling information, between two points
in a CCS network, in the presence of transmission disturbances or a
network (link or node, e.g. STP or SCP) failure. This protocol, as
described in detail below, connects each pair of nodes with a number of
separate signalling links, specifically up to sixteen separate links,
that collectively form a link set. In the case of a link failure, the
protocol diverts and distributes traffic from a failed link in the set
to and among all the remaining links in the set. The software that
implements SS7 executes in every node within the network in order to
reliably transfer messages therebetween.
One type of transmitted message that appears on the network is a
packet consisting of a message signal unit (MSU) that contains desired
signalling information (application information) followed by various
header and trailing fields. Two other types of messages, i.e. a link
status signal unit (LSSU) and a fill-in signal unit (FISU) can also,
under certain circumstances, be transmitted onto the network by a node
and are discussed below. The structure of an MSU is depicted in Table 1
below. The number in parenthesis in each of the following tables
specifies the associated number of bits in each corresponding field.
TABLE 1______________________________________MESSAGE
SIGNAL UNIT (MSU) STRUCTURE______________________________________
##STR1##______________________________________
where:
F is a message delimiter flag;
CK are check bits;
SIF is a signalling information field;
SIO is a service information octet;
LI is a length indicator field;
FIB is a forward indicator bit;
FSN is a forward sequence number;
BIB is a backward indicator bit; and
BSN is a backward sequence number.
Specifically, each MSU begins and ends with a unique 8-bit
pattern, illustratively "01111110", called a message delimiter flag (F).
Appropriate routines executing at level 2 of the protocol prevent data
from being interpreted as a delimiter flag by stuffing a "0" bit into a
data pattern at the end of any consecutive string of five "1" bits in
that pattern. Sixteen check (CK) bits are provided at the end of every
MSU. For each MSU, the values of these check bits (a cyclic redundancy
code) are generated by a transmitting node by computing a well-known
frame check polynomial on portions of the MSU (flag and check bits
excluded) prior to transmitting that MSU. Upon receipt of that MSU at a
receiving node, the receiving node locally generates the check bits by
computing the same polynomial and then compares the values of the
locally generated check bits against those embedded within the received
MSU. If any discrepancy is found between the values of the received and
locally generated bits, then transmission errors are assumed to exist.
As a result, the receiving node discards the received MSU and provide
either a negative or no acknowledgement of receipt. This causes the
transmitting node to re-transmit this MSU, as discussed below.
The signalling information field (SIF), as described in detail
below in conjunction with Table 2, contains an application message, in
this case for 800 service a query from an SSP to an SCP or a response
therefrom to an SSP, and a routing label. The routing label, as
discussed in detail below in conjunction with Table 2, specifies the
network origination and destination addresses of the MSU along with a
code specifying the specific link within a link set that is to carry the
MSU. The signalling information field contains an integral number of
octets (8-bit groups) greater than or equal to 2 and less than 2722. The
specific format and content of the application message is defined by
the specific application software, i.e. the 800 service software.
The service information octet (SIO) is an 8-bit code used by
level 3 of SS7 to distinguish between different message types and
different label types and thereby assist in routing a message to an
appropriate application.
The length indicator (LI) is a binary number within the range
0-63 which specifies the number of octets that follow the length
indicator bits and precede the check bits.
The forward (FIB) and backward (BIB) indicator bits along with
the forward and backward sequence numbers (FSN and BSN, respectively)
are used to perform sequence control and acknowledgement of transmitted
MSUs. Specifically, each MSU is sequentially numbered in a cyclical
sequence running between 0 and 127. The forward sequence number is the
sequence number of a message contained within the present MSU that is
being transmitted. The backward sequence number is a sequence number
associated with an MSU that has been previously received, by the node
that is now transmitting, from the node that is now receiving and is now
being acknowledged to that receiving node.
As discussed above, the signalling information field (SIF) not
only contains an application message required by the 800 service
application executing within a destination SCP but also contains a
routing label. This label is utilized by the message distribution,
discrimination and routing functions within level 3, as discussed below,
to route, an MSU to a proper application, such as 800 service, that
executes within a specified SCP. The routing label, for use within the
United States CCS network, takes the form shown in Table 2 below:
TABLE 2______________________________________ROUTING LABEL
STRUCTURE______________________________________
##STR2##______________________________________
where:
SLS is a signalling link selection code;
OPC is an originating point code; and
DPC is a destination point code.
The signalling link selection code is a five bit code used in
sharing traffic among two different link sets emanating from a node and
within different links that form each of these link sets. The purpose of
load sharing is to ensure that individual links and STPs do not become
overloaded. All signalling points in a network use the same procedure
for load sharing. Specifically, the least significant bit in the SLS
specifies which of two link sets emanating from a node is to carry the
MSU with the remaining four bits designating the particular link within
the specified set. Prior to transmitting the MSU, the node rotates the
SLS and places the value of the most significant bit into the least
significant bit position. The receiving node then uses the value of the
bit now occupying the most significant bit position to select one of two
link sets with the remaining four bits used to select a specific link
within that set and so on for all subsequent nodes that will receive the
MSU. As a result, information that determines load sharing at any node
in the network is independent of information used at any previous node.
In the event a link in a link set fails, then the protocol load-shares
the traffic (MSUs) that would otherwise be carried by the failed link
over the remaining links in the link set. This is accomplished by
re-assigning the signaling link selection codes that were previously
assigned to the failed link to the remaining links in the link set.
Messages are routed on the network through pre-defined (static) routing
paths that are adaptively changed in the presence of node or link
failures or link congestion, as explained below.
The originating and destination point codes are CCS network
addresses of the origination and destination sites of the associated
MSU. Both CCS network addresses, OPC and DPC, take the form shown in
Table 3 below:
TABLE
3______________________________________ORIGINATIONDESTINATION POINT
CODE(OPCDPC) STRUCTURE______________________________________
##STR3##______________________________________
The network identifier field contains a code that identifies a
specific CCS network to which a DPCOPC belongs. The network cluster
field, when used, defines a cluster of nodes within the specified
network. Lastly, the network cluster member field contains a code that
specifies a specific node within a specific cluster. The network cluster
member code "00000000" is used to address STPs that form any specific
cluster.
A graphical depiction of hierarchy 300 of the various levels of
SS7 existing at each node on the CCS signalling network and the message
and control flow that occurs among these levels is shown in FIG. 3.
Dot-dashed line A represents that a mirror image of hierarchy 300 exists
in a companion node on the CCS network. As shown, SS7 utilizes a number
of distinct levels: signalling data link functions 310 (level 1),
signalling link functions 320 (level 2), signalling network functions
340 (level 3) and user levels 390 (level 4 and higher). The first three
levels form message transfer part 380 which collectively provides a
transport system to reliably transfer MSUs between different nodes andor
different applications, of which 800 service is one such application,
residing at one or more nodes. Here, specifically, a portion of the 800
service which generates queries and processes responses to route calls
to a specific destination routing number, resides within an SSP and the
remainder which performs database access operations resides within an
SCP. An SSP and SCP may, though often do not, reside at the same
geographic site. Since each node in the communications network can
transmit and receive SS7 messages, every node executes identical
software that implements levels 1, 2 and 3 of the SS7 protocol in order
to reliably transfer messages among these nodes.
In essence, level 1, signalling data link 310, defines physical,
electrical and functional characteristics of an actual signalling link,
i.e. transmission channel 303, and a specific transmission method, i.e.
switching functions 307, through which the link is accessed. Level 1
exists between dot-dashed lines A and B. Generally, such a link is a 56
or preferably 64 kbitsecond synchronous digital path. As such, level 1
is implemented in hardware. Each higher level is implemented in software
with each task executing within that level being implemented through
one or more subroutines. The content and organization of each of these
subroutines are readily apparent to those skilled in the art.
Level 2, signalling link functions 320, define various tasks
(that invoke pre-defined functions and procedures) relating to the
transfer of individual MSUs over an individual signalling data link
(transmission channel) that has been defined in level 1. These functions
include: MSU delimitation and MSU alignment, error detection, error
correction, initial alignment, error monitoring and flow control of MSUs
being transmitted through the link. Level 2 exists between dot-dashed
lines B and C. Specifically, based upon the detection of delimiter flags
(F), level 2 tasks determine the beginning and end points of an MSU.
Level 2 tasks also stuff "0" bits into a data stream after the
occurrence of five "1" bits to prevent any data from imitating a
delimiter flag. As set forth above, upon receipt of an MSU, level 2
tasks also locally generate, 16 check bits, through computing the frame
check polynomial, and compares the locally generated bits to the check
bits embedded within the received MSU. If a discrepancy is detected
between these two groups of check bits, then level 2 tasks discard the
received MSU through use of a negative or no acknowledgement messages
which, in turn, cause the transmitting node to re-transmit the discarded
MSU.
Level 2 of SS7 provides non-compelled, positivenegative
acknowledgement with re-transmission error correction. Specifically,
once an MSU has been transmitted over a link, a copy of that MSU is
retained within a re-transmission buffer associated with that link and
situated at a transmitting node until that node receives a positive
acknowledgment (in the form of a backward sequence number) that the
transmitted MSU has been received by a far end node connected to that
link. If however a negative acknowledgement or no acknowledgement
message is received within a prescribed time period, then the
transmitting node ceases to transmit any new MSUs and re-transmits all
MSUs, for which it has not yet received a positive acknowledgement, in
the order these MSUs were first transmitted.
Initial alignment tasks, as described in detail below, are used
in initializing a link, i.e. after a "switch-on" condition, or in
aligning (synchronizing) a link after it has recovered from a link
failure. These tasks utilize a compelled exchange of status information
over the link between two nodes on the network during a pre-defined
"proving" period.
Level 2 tasks also detect link failures by monitoring errors,
specifically rates of signalling errors and losses of alignment on a
link and the length of time during which each loss of alignment occurs.
Flow control of MSUs transmitted down a link is another function
provided by tasks executing within level 2. Specifically, whenever link
congestion (periods of heavy traffic) is detected at a receiving node
connected to a link, the receiving node notifies the transmitting node
connected to that link by an appropriate status code existing within a
link status signal unit (LSSU), as discussed in detail below, and then
withholds acknowledging all MSUs that have been received but not yet
acknowledged. In particular, the LSSU is transmitted by the receiving
node down that link to the transmitting node. In response to the receipt
of this LSSU the transmitting end does not send any further MSUs to the
receiving end over this link. Thereafter, the receiving node
periodically notifies the transmitting node of the condition of the
link. If this congestion continues too long, then the transmitting node
designates this link as having failed and routes traffic to other links
accordingly. Alternatively, if the congestion abates, then the receiving
node resumes acknowledging received MSUs. Lastly, level 2 tasks also
control link recovery.
Signalling network functions 340, which collectively form SS7
level 3, define tasks (here transport functions and corresponding
procedures) that are common to and independent of the operation of
individual signalling links. Level 3 exists between dot-dashed lines C
and D. Level 3 tasks typically fall into two broad categories:
signalling message handling task 350 and signalling network management
task 360.
Specifically, while an MSU is being transferred over the network
from an application executing at an originating node, signal message
handling task 350, in response to the routing label within that MSU,
directs that MSU to an application within SS7 level 4 or higher at a
destination node. The delivery of the MSU is made either through a link
that directly connects the originating and destination nodes or via one
or more intermediate STPs. Signalling message handling task 350 consists
of three sub-tasks: message routing task 352, message discrimination
task 354 and message distribution task 356. Message routing concerns
MSUs that are to be transmitted to other nodes; while message
discrimination and distribution concerns MSUs that have been received.
If an MSU containing an application message is to be sent from an
application executing at level 4 or higher to another node on the
network, then message routing task 352 at the originating node utilizes
the SLS field within the routing label situated in the MSU to determine
an outgoing link on which this MSU should be transmitted onward towards
its destination. Message discrimination task 354 is used at a node to
determine whether or not a received MSU, based upon its routing label,
is destined for this node. If the received message is destined for
another node, then task 354 applies that MSU to message routing task 352
for re-transmission to its eventual destination node. Alternatively, if
the MSU is destined for the present node at which it has been received,
then message discrimination task 354 applies that MSU to message
distribution task 356. This latter task separates the application
message from the received MSU and directs it to the proper application,
here 800 call service, executing at this node such as an SCP.
Signalling network management task 360, based upon pre-defined
data and information regarding the status of the individual links and
nodes that form the network, controls current routing of MSUs appearing
on the network and also the configuration of the network links and
nodes. Should any change occur in the status of the network, such as the
failure of a link or node or congestion of a link, then signalling
network management task 360 re-configures the network to by-pass the
failed or congested link or failed node and thereby preserve
communication over the network by sending messages to all nodes,
particularly STPs, in the network to change routing tables used by
message routing task 352 within each such node. In certain
circumstances, this may entail activating and aligning new links that
connect two nodes to provide signalling capability between these nodes.
When normal operating conditions resume on this link or node, task 360
restores normal MSU transfer capability thereto.
Specifically, signalling network management task 360 contains
three sub-tasks: signalling traffic management 362, signalling route
management 364 and signalling link management 366. Signalling traffic
management task 362 diverts traffic from a link or route and routes it
to one or more different links or routes, respectively, in the event of a
link or node failure or slows traffic entering a given link if
congestion occurs. This sub-task provides the functions of changeover
(diversion of traffic without loss of messages to alternate links),
changeback (acceptance of traffic into a recovered link), forced
re-routing (used when a signalling route becomes unavailable),
controlled re-routing (used to route traffic to a signalling route that
has just become available), management inhibiting (manual instruction,
by e.g. a craftsperson or technician, to the network to inhibit a link)
and signalling traffic flow control. Signalling route management task
364 distributes status information throughout the network in order to
block or unblock specific signalling routes. This information includes
those routes that are transfer-restricted, transfer-prohibited,
transfer-allowed, and transfer-controlled. Signalling link management
task 366 restores failed links andor link sets, activates idle though
not yet aligned links andor link sets, and deactivates aligned links
andor link sets.
As shown in FIG. 3, the different tasks provided at level 3
interact with each other and with various tasks existing at levels 2 and
4. Various standard testing and maintenance tasks 370 also exist which
can be invoked through appropriate level 3 messages to test various
aspects of the network.
Levels 4, user (application) level 390, and above define specific
user applications, such as the 800 service, that utilize information
provided within the SIF field situated in an MSU. The application levels
exist to the left of dot-dashed line D. Hence, levels 1, 2 and 3
collectively define a communication network that here reliably exchanges
information, here transactions specifically queries and responses,
between the same user application, 800 service, typically situated at
different geographic sites. Specifically, levels 1, 2 and 3 define the
network which carries queries from originating SSPs at various sites to
destination SCPs and each resulting response from the destination SCP
back to its corresponding originating SSP. Clearly, by merely changing
the routing label, specifically the value of the service information
octet within the MSU, this network can be used to exchange information
between different user applications executing at one or more sites.
Two additional types of messages, link status signal units
(LSSUs) and fill-in signal units (FISUs), can also be transmitted over a
link. LSSUs indicate status of the link and play a role in aligning a
link to the network and passing failure messages regarding that link to
the network. The organization of an LSSU is shown in Table 4 below.
TABLE 4______________________________________LINK STATUS
SIGNAL UNIT (LSSU) STRUCTURE______________________________________
##STR4##______________________________________
where:
is an 8 or 16 bit status field that contains a code specifying the status of the link.
Specifically, whenever a node, such as an STP or SCP, is fully
operational and therefore ready to be brought into service on the
network, a link connecting this node to the remainder of the network
must undergo alignment. At this point, each node connected to the link
repetitively transmits LSSU messages through the link to the other node
connected thereto. In particular, whenever either node is ready to
undergo alignment, then this node toggles, once a second, the code in
the status field in the LSSU it is repetitively transmitting between a
value indicative of "out of alignment" and a value indicative of "out of
service". Once both nodes have detected a toggling status code
transmitted by the other node, then both nodes begin an alignment
procedure. This procedure, which typically lasts approximately 11.8
seconds, involves sending a pre-defined serial alignment bit stream four
times over this link from each node to the other node. If this stream
is received without any errors by each node, then each node connected to
that link undertakes a level 3 application test, i.e. a so-called
signal link test. This test is typically issued from an STP to an SCP
and at the same time from an SCP to an STP. Specifically, a special
pre-defined MSU is sent by, for example, the STP and contains a pre-set
message and a routing label for a specific destination, such as the
specific SCP. Whenever this SCP receives this message, it must
acknowledge receipt. If the routing label is wrong, typically indicative
of improper network addresses caused by faulty initialization of an STP
or SCP, then no acknowledgement will be sent. In this case, the
receiving node will wait for approximately one second for the
acknowledgment. If such an acknowledgement is not received during this
one second interval, then the receiving node (SCP or STP) will repeat
the test. If the second attempt also fails, then th
Comments
Post a Comment