Guardian Ape – Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Immortality in Sekiro is a curse, something you learn firsthand when dealing with the Guardian Ape. It’s torturous enough with its grabs, slams and dung and you’d think things would end upon severing its head. However, the Guardian Ape resurrects and utilizes the sword embedded in its neck along with Terror to make the fight even more annoying. Stabbing its centipede ends the fight but won’t permanently kill the ape. Instead, when traveling to the Ashina Depths, you fight the Headless Ape again, only this time it receives some backup from its mate. Defeating it will result in the centipede taking a rest…until you come back with the Mortal Blade and kill it for good.

LAVENDER TOWN (POKEMON RED AND BLUE)

For a series made primarily for kids, Pokemon has a surprising tendency to regularly show some pretty eerie stuff, and the eeriest of them all was Lavender Town as a whole. From the creepy Pokemon Tower to the vibe of the whole town, Lavender Town was not a very pleasant place to be in- and the music accompanying the location had a huge hand in that.

Game over- always a sign of temporary setbacks, but some games and developers know how to have fun even in these dire circumstances. Sure, a plain old screen telling you that you’re dead or that you failed your objective does its job perfectly well, but why not have some fun while doing so? In this feature, we’ll be taking a look at fifteen games with some of the most creative and fun game over screens. Without further ado, let’s begin.

SEGA RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP

If you remove the audio from this one, it’d pretty much be the most boring, drab, cookie-cutter game over screen of all time. It literally just says “Game Over” on a white screen. But it’s the audio that makes it so special. Because that screen is also accompanied with a weirdly cheerful person singing the very words on display. Why? We don’t know. Would we have it any other way? Absolutely not.

Boss Theme – Sonic CD

As a boss theme trying to represent the vileness of Eggman, this t-heme from the US version of Sonic CD was fitting. That is, until you listen past the 20 second mark which is when it descends into a David Lynch film and then a Dario Argento film. Neither of those is something you want to see as a kid by the way, forget hearing about it as an innocent child (relatively speaking).

Retro Studios, much like the rest of Nintendo, is usually not a studio that communicates outwardly with its fans much. Nevertheless, they recently opened a Twitter account, and today, they seem to be hinting that they will have a presence at E3 this year– a boon for any fans who may have been waiting for the next big thing from the makers of the Metroid Prime trilogy.

Retro Studios is best known for its world changing reboot of Nintendo’s Metroid series with Metroid Prime back on the Gamecube. Prime evolved into a trilogy, concluding with Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on the Wii, and it was followed by a 2D sidescrolling revival of Nintendo’s original mascot, Donkey Kong, also on the Wii. For their first game on the Wii U, many were anticipating Retro to be the premier western developer in Nintendo’s catalog- their game announcement of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, a follow up to Donkey Kong Country Returns, was met with disappointed (in spite of Tropical Freeze’s readily apparent quality).

However, since then, Retro have gone dark, and have hinted multiple times that they are working on a project they know fans want them on- this, coupled with Nintendo bigwig Shigeru Miyamoto himself nominating them as potential future custodians of the Metroid franchise, has led to speculation that Retro may be ready to return to the games that made them as big in the first place.

In that case… will we see a Metroid revival this E3? And what system will this Metroid game even be on? We don’t know yet, but this E3 is promising to be more and more interesting now.

The game looks really good, and it feels good to see the old Donkey Kong Country games making a return in 3D, this time with co-op. Yeah baby, Diddky Kong and Donkey Kong can both eat bananas this time around, together. How cool is that? Super cool, I would say.

The game has us flail our hands like a fish on dry land several times- I fear motion controls might take a away a good deal of the core formula of the Donkey Kong Country series, but it’s Retro Studios who’re developing the game, and they have a great track record.

Reggie also gives Jimmy Fallon a chance to have a look at Kid Icarus on the 3DS, the latter going crazy upon seeing the 3D visuals, screaming ‘You’ve done it! You’ve done it!’ like a madman in Arkham. We suggest you take a look at the video yourselves.

The graphics are great, and the game is a 3D side scrolling platformer. Trust Retro to do the classic series absolute justice and for Donkey Kong Country Returns to be one of the biggest titles of its year.

DK Country Returns releases for the Wii this fall. In the meanwhile, you can check out the E3 unveiled video below.