Ahh, love is in the air and yes – it’s that time of year again. The time when lovers celebrate their bond with gifts of flowers and chocolate. When every couple, from the shy first daters to the elderly husband and wife, bask in the love and warmth of their soul mate.
And then there’s the other side of the coin. This week is also the time of year when the bitter and cynical emerge from their cocoons to scoff and sneer at the naive valentines. These lonely souls are the ones who know the downside of romance all too well; the heart-rending pain of a relationship turned sour. It is from this perspective that we will count down the top ten most heart-breaking, tearful, vicious, and spiteful video game break-ups of all time.
The happy couples got their own list last year, but screw them – this year is all about pain. Let the reader beware, however, as there are some spoilers to follow. Enjoy.
We start off with the most recent heart-ache on the list. Gears of War 2 may have only come out this past November, but players have been talking about it from the moment they witnessed what was perhaps the sequel’s most powerful moment.
Dominic, or Dom as he’s called more often, is the character controlled by Player 2 in a co-operative campaign run. Throughout the game, Dom has been motivated to keep fighting off the ruthless Locust army so that he may return to the sweet embrace of his wife, Maria. Although his romanticism felt at times out of place in the violent, obscenity-ridden world of Gears, it was hard not to sympathize with such a likable character.
Partway through the game, however, we learn that Maria has been (predictably) captured by the Locusts, and is being held captive somewhere underground. Suddenly, the game takes on an even greater sense of urgency, as the hard-fought war has just become deeply personal.
When Marcus, the main character, and Dom find Maria, we are relieved to see that she’s okay… or at least, that’s what we’re led to believe. Soon enough, Dom’s hopeful fantasy is crushed, and we see that Maria is a mere shell of the beauty we saw only in photographs and daydreams. Driven insane by Locust torture, an emaciated, nearly catatonic woman, her hair falling out and her flesh already decaying, is what Dom now cradles in his ridiculously over-sized arms.
With a pat on the back, Marcus leaves Dom to do what he knows he has to do. And tearfully, Dom obeys. The camera cuts away as we hear a single gunshot… and feel a renewed sense of powerful hatred for the enemy that is responsible.
Oh, well knew this was coming, so we may as well get it out of the way now. Perhaps the most well-known couple on the list, Cloud and Aeris (or Aerith, if you prefer) are known widely in the video game world not for their short-lived relationship, but rather the awfully sudden break up.
The story is one we’ve all heard before. Boy meets girl. Boy starts to fall for girl. Girl starts to fall for boy because he has, in his mentally fragile state, assumed the identity of a fallen comrade who just so happens to be girl’s ex-boyfriend. Ah, young love. Assuming you played your cards right, once you reached the Golden Saucer gamers were treated to an unusual gameplay twist. You were able to actually take one of your female party members out on a first date. The default choice was naturally Aeris (though I always preferred Tifa myself), and even the most jaded gamer had to admit that watching fireworks with the misshapen polygon was oddly touching.
Alas, it was not to be, as the ever-present, ever-flamboyant Sephiroth soon made clear. While praying for the power to stop the white-haired mama’s boy, Aeris found herself impaled, and not in the way that so many hormonal teens had been dreaming about. Of course, Sephiroth gets away, and girl is left to die in boy’s arms, much to the chagrin of fanboys everywhere.
This couple’s heartache was felt so widely in the gaming community that for a long time, rumors persisted that there was a way to bring Aeris back from the dead. However, the game’s creators assured us that no, her death was permanent… aside from the Final Fantasy VII sequels, prequels, movies, Kingdom Hearts series, and numerous other cameos. Way to make her death meaningful, Square. I haven’t seen someone come back from the dead this many times since Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.
Break ups in the video game world don’t always take place within the games themselves. In fact, they’re much more commonly found in the industry itself, where making good games often takes a backseat to making money. Such was the case with Red Octane and Harmonix.
Red Octane was founded in 1999 as a video game rental service, but that fact was soon forgotten as they began to create video game accessories, such as dance mats and arcade joysticks. Eventually, the company expanded into publishing their own games. Red Octane formed a partnership with Harmonix Music Systems, a game development company known for their music games, and the two soon gave birth to Guitar Hero. Although Guitar Hero was not the first game either company had made, it quickly became their most popular. A loving tribute to music (and metal in particular), Hero came bundled with Red Octane’s guitar controller; a peripheral which allowed gamers to feel as though they were (almost) actually playing the songs.
The labor of love became a surprise hit, and the proud parents went on to have a couple sequels. Then, in 2006, tragedy struck. A couple of home-wreckers by the names of Activision and MTV Networks came along. Jealous of the happy couple, Activision and MTV wooed Red Octane and Harmonix respectively, luring them away with promises of wealth and new opportunities. Sadly, their corporate might won out in the end, and Red Octane and Harmonix parted ways. Red Octane began making new baby Guitar Heroes with skater-punks Neversoft, while Harmonix gave birth to Rock Band with MTV and Electronic Arts.
Sadly, the two have forgotten their roots, and just like any other divorced couple, they bicker. Now fierce competitors, Red Octane and Harmonix seem to have abandoned the idea that they once had something in common. And neither seems to realize that their games just haven’t been quite as special since the other one left.
Back in the days of the Nintendo 64, Banjo and Kazooie were inseparable. They were so close, there wasn’t even a space between their names in the title of their game. Banjo-Kazooie came out in 1998, and followed the mold of Super Mario 64 before it. Although it was a typical platformer in almost every sense, it did change things up by having you technically play as two characters at once. Banjo, a bear, is the main controllable character, but just about every move in the game requires the use of Kazooie, a female bird that lives in Banjo’s backpack. The pair seem to be eternally combined, almost as if they were one entity, and while their relationship never seemed to be anything but platonic, they relied on each other just as much as any loving couple.
Not even the departure of Rare (more on that later) could break these two up… or so it seemed. The couple went into hibernation for a while, and aside from an obscure Game Boy Advance game or two, didn’t reappear until this past year. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts on the Xbox 360 was supposed to be the grand return of the duo, but once the game was released, players soon had to question just what had taken place during the twosome’s absence from the gaming world.
Sure, Banjo and Kazooie still LOOKED like they were together, but the gameplay of Nuts & Bolts revealed that things just weren’t the same. Apparently the things they used to do together had gotten stale, and Banjo’s new-found obsession with vehicles and taken over his life – and the game. The majority of Nuts & Bolts no longer displays the bond between bird and bear, but the bond between animal and machine.
Banjo’s lust for mechanical pleasures has put their relationship on the rocks for now, and it’s unknown at this point whether or not they will be able to pull through these tumultuous times. Perhaps the re-release of Banjo-Tooie this spring on the Xbox Live Arcade will remind the couple of the good times they once had. Either way, fans remain hopeful that the two will get past whatever problems they may be having and rise to the forefront of 3D platforming once more.
For some, this entry is truly the saddest on the list. It is also perhaps the most puzzling. The soap opera that is NoA and Earthbound began back in 1989, when an RPG called Mother was released on the Japanese version of the NES, the Famicom. The game was hugely successful in Japan, and a North American release was planned. The game was to be renamed Earthbound in America. However, the game was never released, as by the time it was localized and translated for the North American market, Nintendo was ready to release the Super Nintendo. Although it was unfortunate, at least American gamers didn’t know what they had been missing.
In 1995 however, Earthbound did finally see a North American release – except that it was an entirely new game. The Earthbound released in the USA was in actuality Mother 2, the SNES sequel to the original. Although Mother 2 was once again a smash hit overseas, cementing its relationship with NCL. Sadly, it didn’t do very well in America… and just like a bitchy girlfriend, Nintendo of America has never forgotten it. NoA dumped the poor, misunderstood game and never looked back.
Since then, Earthbound has gone on to be a cult classic, and it generates new fans everyday. The appearance of it’s protagonist Ness in the hugely popular Smash Bros games helped a great deal as well. Last year, Mother 3 was released in Japan, but NoA, ever the jilted lover, has stated that they have no plans to take the series back.
More and more people have fallen in love with NoA’s ex, however, and an impressive number have written to Nintendo, begging the Big N to forget the past and reunite with Ness, Paula, Jeff, and Poo. But NoA has refused to let go of its grudge, and has even stubbornly ignored the public demonstrations and petitions organized by desperate fans the country over. As of this writing, Earthbound hasn’t even been re-released on the Wii’s Virtual Console.
Will NoA ever forgive EB and release Mother 1 and 3 in America? Will the fanboys across the nation ever give up on their campaign to get them released here? Find out soon on… Games of Our Lives.
Back in 1998, a little game came out called Metal Gear Solid, and, love it or hate it, it changed the world of gaming forever. Featuring a story akin to an award-winning film (or a crappy, B-movie depending on who you ask), MGS fleshed out its characters and setting like no game before it, through numerous, lengthy cutscenes that made some gamers feel more like they were playing a video than a game.
In this story, Solid Snake, working for the USA, is sent to investigate and infiltrate a hostile takeover of a nuclear weapons disposal facility on the island of Shadow Moses in Alaska. Once there, he rescues a young rookie the terrorists captured named Meryl. The two remain close throughout most of the game, and while one of the possible endings involves Meryl’s death, the canonical ending has the couple escaping alive and, presumably, hooking up – for at least a little while.
However – you guessed it – their love was apparently just not meant to be. Sometime after the events of MGS Snake and Meryl part ways. The reason? No one knows for sure, aside from Snake’s admission that he doesn’t like “tomboys.” Fans were at first upset at her omission from Metal Gear Solid 2, but soon accepted that not every relationship is built to last, and breakups happen.
And then, a few years later, a new hope emerged: a trailer for Metal Gear Solid 4 showed the return of Meryl, and gave fans everywhere the expectation that this war-torn Ross and Rachel would reunite. Alas, gamers were disappointed once more. Within the course of MGS4, Meryl falls in love with and marries one of her subordinates, leaving many that played the game with a bitter taste in their mouths. Criticism that this new romance felt forced and that Meryl and Snake should have been brought back together was acknowledged, yet ultimately ignored. Ah, but c’est la vie, no?
Speaking of cinematic series, Kingdom Hearts first wove its unique mixture of action/rpg mechanics and Disney characters in 2002, on the Playstation 2. The game immediately wove its way into fans’ hearts, as did its characters. Sora, Kairi, and Riku were childhood friends, living together on the Destiny Islands before creatures named the Heartless showed up and began devouring their world. The three of them became seperated in the ensuing chaos, and Sora makes it his mission to find his friends and return home.
Kingdom Hearts is unique for a few reasons. The most obvious of which is its fusion of Disney and Final Fantasy. Putting these characters and worlds together shouldn’t work… yet it somehow does, and wondrously so. Perhaps it is this combination of Disney innocence and Final Fantasy-level emotion that makes the story so touching, and to that end, makes the conclusion of the first game all the more heart-wrenching.
It isn’t until close to the end of the game that Sora is finally reunited with his friends. However, in order to save all the worlds, including their own, Sora’s friend Riku seemingly sacrifices himself to close the door to Kingdom Hearts, thus sealing in the Heartless that are inside (it’s a very long story). This noble feat is emotional, and leaves us even more vulnerable to what comes next. Sora and Kairi’s world begins to rebuild itself, and the two finally embrace. However, as the worlds come back together around them, they find themselves drifting apart once again. Desperately grasping each others hands, Sora says, “I’ll come back to you. I promise.”
Kairi’s last words are, “I know you will…”
Their hands are wrenched apart and the closing theme begins. It’s a powerful scene to be sure, and certainly not the ending most were expecting. In comparison, Kingdom Hearts 2’s conclusion was far too happy. Lame.
You might think it would be tough to create a touching, memorable relationship between two 8-bit sprites, one of which doesn’t even talk. However, Link’s Awakening manages to do just that, and on the Game Boy, no less. In this installment of the “legend”ary series (ugh) Link finds himself stranded on the island of Koholint, after a shipwreck. A girl named Marin finds him washed up on the beach, and nurses him back to health.
Although Marin doesn’t accompany you throughout all of the adventure, you do return to her here and there to learn a song, or find her coked-out father. Of course, you can always visit even when you don’t have to, just to chat. Midway through the game, a scene occurs where Marin asks Link to sit with her and look out on the ocean. Link listens patiently while she pontificates over what might be out there, across the sea. All she knows is the island, and until Link washed up on her shore, she thought that that was all there was. It’s a heartfelt scene, and a rare, emotional moment for the series up to that point.
But this is, once again, a list of break ups. So how are these two tender, young would-be lovers separated? Well… it turns out that Marin never really existed. In a mind-boggling turn of events, the entire island of Koholint was just a dream of the Wind Fish, and when Link awakens him at the end of the game, Marin and the rest of the island’s inhabitants vanish…
It’s a terribly depressing ending, and the secret, alternate ending is only slightly better. If the player has never gotten a Game Over the entire playthrough, Marin turns into a seagull at the end and gets to see what’s across the ocean after all. This begs the question – is being a dirty, disgusting seagull better than not existing at all? You be the judge… but keep in mind what those things eat. Ugh.
It was the video game break up heard around the world. From every continent, the cries of the anguished fanboy swelled into a deafening roar. Nintendo had sold Rare to Microsoft. All was lost. The end for Nintendo was surely nigh…
Nintendo is a stubborn company (see #6 on this list). When they developed the N64, many in the industry thought it was a major misstep. The CD format was the wave of the future, but Nintendo insisted on keeping their hardware cartridge based, which meant no loading times, but also much less storage capacity. It was during this era that Nintendo’s most trusted third parties began jumping ship, and landing on Sony’s new, shiny upstart, the PlayStation. The most notable of the defectors was Square, who brought their Final Fantasy series with them. It would be ten long years before Nintendo recovered from this mutiny, and the only friend they seemed to have in the meantime was Rare.
Rare was a second-party developer, meaning that while they were not Nintendo employees, they only made games for Nintendo systems. And luckily, Rare happened to make some of the greatest games of the entire decade. While Nintendo barely stayed afloat with it’s stellar, but limited, first-party line-up, Rare supported them with gems like Banjo-Kazooie, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and Conker’s Bad Fur Day. The two companies were pretty much the only things keeping the N64 alive.
And then came the GameCube. Nintendo had finally relented and made a disc-based system, and while the Cube still had its fair share of shortcomings, it seemed like a real contender to take on the PS2 and Microsoft’s Xbox. However, the third parties weren’t coming back. Sony had treated Square well, and they and many others had no intention of supporting the GameCube, which was considered a child’s console.
Rare, however, soldiered on, releasing Star Fox Adventures not long after the GameCube’s launch. Everything between Nintendo and Rare, at least, seemed to still be hunky-dory. And then, one of the most shocking events in video game history occurred: Nintendo sold Rare to their competitors, Microsoft.
The deal was unfathomable. Why would Nintendo throw Rare out on its ass after all they had been through? And to Microsoft, no less. The flame wars that followed were fiercer than ever, as Nintendo fanboys became confused and conflicted.
It took a long time for the dust to settle, and Rare remained quiet for some time afterwards. It was rumored that many Rare employees had either left or been laid off during the switch, and no new projects were announced for the Xbox for quite a while. Interestingly, when new games DID emerge from Rare, they were terrible. Grabbed by the Ghoulies was the gaming equivalent of having someone rub a cheese grater on your face. What happened to Rare after Nintendo threw it to the wolves? And did Nintendo actually make the right choice, considering the quality of games they produced afterwards?
Maybe no one will ever know. But the evidence of Nintendo and Rare’s memorable affair lingers on. In the first trailer for Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts a scene depicted Banjo flying a vehicle through an effigy of Mario, reducing it to bricks. A subtle jab from a jilted lover? Or a good-natured jab at an old friend? Hmm…
Gather around, boys and girls, and let me tell you the tragic story of a couple of young lovers named Sony and Nintendo. Two doe-eyed kids that got too caught up in the politics of business, and whose subsequent break up changed the world of video games forever.
It was the mid-90’s. Bill Clinton was in the oval office. Mississippi had just officially recognized the abolition of slavery (yes, really). And Nintendo, whose name was still synonymous with video games, was thinking about the successor to the ultra-popular Super Nintendo. Although they were still #1, Sega was proving to be a worthy adversary, and Nintendo was looking for a way to shut them out for good. When Sega announced that they were creating a CD ROM drive add-on to the Sega Genesis, Nintendo panicked. Not to be outdone, they contacted Sony, and a contract was forged to create a CD ROM drive add-on for the SNES. If the contract had remained unbroken, we might all be playing the hottest new games on our WiiStation 3’s today. However, Nintendo terminated the contract after realizing that Sony would receive all of the profits from the CD ROM media. To make matters worse, Sega CD bombed. Thus, Nintendo ended its fling with Sony, and began pursuing an incredibly misguided tryst with Phillips instead.
But Hell hath no fury like a Sony scorned. Sony used the knowledge they gained from sleeping with the enemy to build a secret weapon – the PlayStation. Nintendo meanwhile birthed a mongoloid son with Phillips named the CD-i before dumping them as well. The N64 was born of immaculate conception, and the rest is history. As we all know, Sony soon toppled Nintendo as the king of video games, and would remain on top for the better part of a decade.
It was quick. It was dirty. But it was the most devastating break-up in video game history.
And now, you may return to shredding those old love notes, writing bitter poetry, or whatever it is that suits your misery. Have a good weekend, and may anyone who rubs their significant other in your face choke on a piece of dark chocolate. Cheers.
Great article! I love the comment about Dick Clarks Rockin’ New Years Eve. Is it bad that I still watch that?