Game Over

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Game Over is a traditional message in video games which usually signals the game has ended with a negative outcome. Notably used first in pinball machines and, later, arcade games, it has since been adopted widely and is now commonly associated with video games in general; however, many other phrases have been substituted for it depending on the game, like "Mission/Challenge Failed" for mission type games, "You Are Dead/You Have Died/You Died" for survival horror games, and "Your adventure has ended" for some adventure games. The phrase was originally used in early devices such as electromechanical pinball machines, which would light up the phrase with a lamp (lightbulb). The limited space available on electromechanical pinball machine displays prompted the shortened sentence structure, conveying the basic message ("Your game is over") with minimal extra characters.