7. Mitochondria – Parasite Eve
Spontaneously combusting has to be up there as one of the worst ways to die
Another example of a story that might be a bit too winding for its own good, but in a sort of loveable way. The idea is that (here comes a very brief summary) you have an organism called Eve who can alter the mitochondria in people’s bodies. This then serves as the wide-spread epidemic that the game is based on, but it can range from possession and mind reading, right through to the regularly used and now partially infamous spontaneous combustion that befalls the people of New York city throughout the game. What a way to go.
6. GUILT – Trauma Center series
Incurable illnesses are a terrible thing, and it’s even worse when they are man-made for the purposes of biological warfare and terrorism. When you through in the fact that there is a strain of GUILT (or Gangliated Utrophin Immuno Latency Toxin as it is known for those who want to get really technical) for every day of the week, that’s just whack. And all the variations are just as bad as each other. If I had to pick one I’d take Paraskevi, as it at least offers a fairly quick demise provided no one tries to operate on you.
5. The corrupted blood incident – World of Warcraft
An intriguing example of a gaming related occurrence with real world implications, The corrupted blood incident nearly brought the ever popular World of Warcraft to its knees when it emerged on September 13th 2005. It all began with Hakkar, the end boss for the then new dungeon of Zul’Gurub who had a nasty attack that gave players a health draining debuff that was highly contagious. This corrupted blood attack was only meant to occur within the dungeon, but players who got tricky with teleportation spells soon found that their contagion was spreading across the entirety of the game’s universe. Before you know it you have digital plagues and quarantines left and right that took a whole world reset before Blizzard could completely fix the problem.
4. Poison – Any RPG
Son of a bitch! The one time I forget to stock up on potions!
You always stock up on antidotes or other such poison cures when you’re playing an RPG, yet you always find you never quite get around to needing them. Poison is such a staple of the genre, that it shows up in every RPG with the same effect on players. So, you hoard antidotes and status restoring spells never to use them, but the moment you get rid of your antidotes is when the contagion strikes, leaving you to suffer an inevitable and slow return to the title screen.
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