Watching an 8-bit sprite’s life blink out has never been so emotional.
While playing older games like Asteroids or Ghosts ‘n Goblins, have you ever thought that your deaths actually had meaning? There’s something about this old-school videogame death montage created by Boing Boing that makes it seem like they do.
The reason is partially the choice of music, which is a chiptune version of “Mad World” by Tears for Fears (though you might know the Gary Jules version from this Gears of War commercial). If a more upbeat theme were used, the video would likely have a different feeling.
Additionally, in the context presented here, all we see are deaths. There are no life counters. No restarts. Just pure, old-school, videogame death, and that that’s it.
If videogame worlds were real, and the characters got only one life, the princess would be a slave for eternity. The universe would be destroyed by a never-ending flow of asteroids. Demons would be stuck behind those barriers in Gauntlet forever while nothing but another pile of bones littered the ground.
Thank god for extra lives.
Source: Boing Boing