Hello!

What are some of your favourite/most hated game over screens? It doesn't sound like much at first, but if you play a game long enough, that screen is something that sticks with you for years, maybe even the rest of your life.

Friday the 13th (NES): my personal favourite. It's a black screen with white text that says "you and your friends are dead". It's hilariously blunt; especially when you consider this was a time when Nintendo had to water down violent content/language to get around angry parents. It's also going to do a number on your confidence (if you're a kid). Sometimes I use this as my desktop wallpaper.

Halo (series): not a different screen...per se. When you drop dead the enemies acknowledge your death in some way. Sometimes they keep shooting you. They usually throw in random lines. "Get up! Why won't you get up!", "the demon is dead. I killed it!", "HAHAHAHA!!!".

Manhunt: similar to above. When you die the baddies keep pummeling your corpse.

Mass Effect: comes with a little tune. I sometimes hear this when I fail at something in real life.

Super Mario Bros: The first game I played. Can't go wrong with the classics.

Metal Gear: Snake? Snake?! SNAAAAAAAAKE?! I heard this plenty of times. I kind of miss it, is that weird?

Edit: thanks for the replies!

Favorite: Under A Killing Moon death screens sarcastically commented by James Earl Jones.

I don't know... I think I have a thing for depressing/poetic ones...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LlXYei_H0I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVEUNA_mBT0 Me too, I'd say...
But not always: https://youtu.be/IIyfUVMBXZU?t=347

The SOTN game over is always a favorite classic for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r41X4jMLBxA

Right, sorry, it's from Battle Brothers.

For worst, I remember disliking Final Fantasy 7 having an "in your face" game over screen, when previous games in the series didn't do that.

On the other hand, some of the earlier Final Fantasy games, particularly 1 and 2, have some nice game over music, while not using the phrase "Game Over". 3 and 5 are decent (though for 3 you have to wait a bit to get to the interesting part of the theme). 4, on the other hand, has no game over music at all!

Dragon Quest games also have some decent game over music.

Speaking of Dragon Quest, the original DQ1 did something interesting: If an enemy kills you with an attack, the screen will flash red, even before the game tells you what happened. At this point, you know that you're dead, even though the game hasn't technically said "Thou art dead." yet.

SaGa 2 (Final Fantasy Legend 2) has a cutscene that happens when you die, in which your party ends up in Valhalla, and talks to Odin, who offers to give you another chance, provided you agree to fight him later. (If you say "yes", the battle you died in restarts; if you say "no", you're taken back to the title screen.)

Thanks.

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne also has that issue.

On the other hand, some precision platformers (Super Meat Boy and Celeste come to mind) have taken the approach where, on death, you immediately respawn, so you can try again right away. Modern Super Mario World hacks (especially kaizo hacks) have adopted a similar quick respawn feature.)

Then there's Wario Land 3.

Redacted

Don't see any need for it. The original didn't age a day, and the version that was available free from Blizzard already worked perfectly fine.

Hello J Lo!

The first and my favourite game over screens I am thinking of are from an old Zx Spectrum game and its various cross platform releases and remakes (e.g. for MSX2 and especially much later for Windows).

The game is "Alien 8", one of those (pseudo-)isometric puzzle platformers or adventure games from the 80-ies.
You play a maintenance robot on a cryo-spaceship and have to rescue the hybernating crew members before the spaceship reaches its destination. Of course, the ending animations (bad ending = game over, good ending = win) are quite crude and scarce due to the time and system of release. But I really like the idea behind of those two endings, and find them both charming and funny!

"Alien 8" - ending screens:
- bad ending (game over) on the original Zx Spectrum: 'reprogramming' of our little robot
- good ending (win, saving all) on Zx Spectrum: 'oil bath' for our diligent robot
- Retrospec's remake of "Alien 8" (2008, for Windows) has an interesting take on the 'reprogramming' bad ending, effectively recycling the robot: 'recycling' of our poor robot

Other iconic game over screens that I do remember would be the various death animations from the cinematic platformers, such as "Another World" ("Out of this World"), the original "Flashback", "Heart of Darkness" or "Oddworld's Abe's Oddysee" or the very short FMV scenes in "Fade to Black" (Flashback's original sequel on the Playstation One or MS DOS).

"Fade to Black" - game over FMV's:
- death scenes compilation

From around the same time period, I have also vivid memories of a kind of unique demise of a player character (actually not a general game over screen, but rather a very particular death scene) in the first "Tomb Raider" game from 1997:
- Midas' hand

And an honourable mention for "Batman's Return" on the SNES. It included a couple of digitized photos from the original movie (with Michael Keaton and Denny deVito). And back then, the photo used in the game over screen was a little provocative:
Is the game implying we are the penguin, here?

A second honourable mention to the creativity in the game over screens in the "Metal Gear" series. "Metal Gear Solid" was already mentioned by you, J Lo. But in "Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater" you've got a special pill to fake your own death, including corresponding game over screen during gameplay. And you could cause a 'time paradox' with several non-canon deaths of either Snake or other characters in the game (e.g. from Revolver Ocelot).

Regarding the more hated game over screens, I guess there were two types of candidates: one were those game over screens or animations that simply took way too much time before you could return to the game or even required a reset of the game (or console respectively). The second type I associate less with the actual screen, but instead with the accompanying annoying sound effects or music. Take, for instance, the ones from the original "Legend of Zelda" or worse "Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link" (both on the NES).

Kind regards,
foxgog