Game over

History

The phrase was used as early as the 1950s in devices such as electromechanical pinball machines, which would light up the phrase with a lamp (lightbulb).

Before the advent of home consoles and personal computing, arcades were the predominant platform for playing games, which required users to deposit a token or coin (traditionally a quarter, in the U.S.) into an arcade game machine in order to play. Players would usually be given a finite number of lives (or attempts) to progress through the game, the exhaustion of which would usually result in the display of the message "Game over" indicating that the game had ended. The phrase might also be followed by the message "Play Again?" and a prompt asking the player to insert additional tokens to prevent the game from terminating and instead allowing the player to continue their progress. The message can also be seen flashing on certain arcade games while in attract mode, until a player inserts a credit; at this point the message would change to the number of credits inserted and "Press 1 or 2 player start", or some variation thereof.

As these games were ported to home consoles, the "Game over" screen and "Continue?" prompt remained, but often required only the press of a button to keep the game going; while the video game industry shifted away from being arcade-focused to being home gaming-focused, the inclusion of such a screen was no longer as critical since it offered no financial benefit. However, the concept of Game Over remained imbued in the medium thereafter as a way to add an element of risk: a player who is unsuccessful at carrying out the game's objective (possibly repeatedly) will be faced with such a screen and be forced to start over from either the beginning of the game or a previous, saved state.

With the development of the aforementioned save function (complemented by the less popular password system, which is now seen as archaic), the Game Over message has become less common as players are allowed to respawn at a previous state of the game, which has been stored in memory either through a player deliberately saving the game or reaching a checkpoint (which causes the game to save automatically). Many modern games do not technically "end" until they are completed, and although "Game over" screens remain present in many of them in some form or another it is uncommon for them to signify a forced return to the beginning of the game. Roguelikes are the most common exception to this rule; permadeath is often a staple of the genre.

"Game over" has seen some variations in certain games. For instance, upon the death of the player character Little King's Story shows the message "LIFE OVER". Other instances include Catherine, which uses "LOVE IS OVER" and Nights into Dreams..., which displays the message "NIGHT OVER". There is also an instance in Haunting Ground where if the main character Fiona dies, there is a phrase that reads "Acta est Fabula", literally meaning "The Play is Over" in Latin as the screen turns a chromatic red shade. Screens that display at equivalent points in other games are also considered "Game over" screens, even if the message that is displayed is entirely different (such as "YOU ARE DEAD", seen in Resident Evil, God of War and Total Distortion, among others, and "GOOD NIGHT", seen in Klonoa: Door to Phantomile and its successors, also Luigi's Mansion and its sequel, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon). Some game over variations use literary references such as Abandon All Hope in Devil May Cry 4, and Dante's Inferno which uses a quote from the book of the same name every time the player dies. Rule of Rose uses a short non-rhyming poem about a little princess that dies, beginning with the words "Little princess, little princess, precious little princess..." and ending with "And everyone lived happily ever after. END". In Super Street Fighter 2 the defeated character portrait stops moving and they scream in pain and fade into ash. In The Terminator, if Kyle Reese is killed, a game over screen appears saying "Kyle Reese Terminated". In Fatal Fury 3 the game over screen shows the selected character lying defeated.

Some games can also have a non-standard game over which is a message that is only specified to that game mode, level, or situation. An example of this is in Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time, in Save Our Seeds level, it says "THE ZOMBIES ATE YOUR PLANT!", Cannons Away: "PENNY IS NOT IMPRESSED WITH YOUR SCORE!" (with the target and your current score and the brain does not appear), "PUFF-SHROOM DID NOT SURVIVE!" on Dark Ages - Night 12 when the Puff-shroom disappears, and any levels with objectives after the 1.7 update: the objective description but in green text and has a different animation is that while the screen goes black, it will become lowered unlike the first three game over variants (including the standard or normal game over) will appear is that the animation is the message will tilt while it appears in an already colored black screen, Plants vs. Zombies, in Survival Mode: after "THE ZOMBIES ATE YOUR BRAINS!" message, there will be "You survived for {number of flags completed} flag(s) before dying a GRUESOME ZOMBIE DEATH!!!", I, Zombie/Vasebreaker Endless: "You made it into a streak of {number of streaks completed}", "You ran out of zombies!" on normal I, Zombie levels, and any messages that can only appear on some of its mini-games, Insaniquarium: in Tank 5, the rest of the message is the same as other levels or modes but the only difference is the word "fish" was changed to "pets," Candy Crush Saga that there is "You have no more possible switches!", "You pressed the quit button!", Slender: The Arrival: when the player falls out of the map, the game will display the normal game over screen but with the message "Not even the bug in this game will save you from me," and many more. (To see other examples of non-standard game over messages or screens, see http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NonstandardGameOver)

Outside video gaming

The phrase is occasionally used to indicate the end of an argument or process in real life. In January 2011, protesters and rioters in several North African and Middle Eastern countries used the slogan "Game over" on banners to express their anti-government sentiments.

"Game over" is also sometimes used as a phrase to concede defeat, as for example in the movie Aliens where one of the protagonists, Private William Hudson (Bill Paxton), shouts, "Game over, man!" after the dropship meant to rescue him and his expedition is destroyed. Paxton's use of the phrase was included in shortened form in the SNES game adaptation of Alien 3, although the Hudson character did not appear in the film. Rights issues prevented the actual audio from Aliens being used and the sample was a rerecording made by Paxton specifically for the game. The 'Game over' line was not in the Aliens script, but was ad libbed by Paxton.

The phrase is also used various times in the Saw movie series, because of the antagonist's penchant for referring to the traps he creates as "games".