Or the 'living-impaired', to be more politically correct...
Dead stuff makes a vastly under-rated contribution to the world of videogames. Sure, the heroes are usually a living, breathing, virile lot, with pulses and all that boringly conventional malarky, but dead things bring a much more varied array of coolness to the table. We're not necessarily talking dead characters here. We're not even necessarily talking complete corpses with all the parts. After all, you don't need to be anatomically complete or in a pre-decomposition state to have worth.
This ClassicRadar feature originally ran on November 18, 2008
Pinata Guy - Manhunt 2
Notable for: Death by hanging just as you reach his cell. Making us curse the lack of a baseball bat on the first level. Mmmm, sugary innards.
Dead birds - Condemned: Criminal Origins
Notable for: Teaching kids that collecting animal corpses is an 'achievement'. Disgusting mothers and ruining carpets worldwide.
Burning cop - Resident Evil 4
Notable for: Making us go "Uurgh!" and "Cool!" at the same time.
Decapitated barbarian - Castle Crashers
Notable for: Being dead and cute in equal measure. Proving once and for all that you can get away with any level of gore and dismemberment as long as it's cartoony. If only Manhunt 2 had been cel shaded!
Dangling corpses - Gears of War
Notable for: Giving us a cheap, ghost train scare early in the game. Splattering beautifully when shot. Making us wonder just what the hell's been going on in that prison anyway. Who's running it? Why's it empty apart from Locust and dangling corpses? What the hell kind of correctional institute is it!?
Player-controlled zombies - Metal Slug 3
Notable for: Being soul-destroyingly slow. Obliterating everything on screen with a burst of over-powered blood vomit. On balance, being the best status change in videogame history.
Skeleton - Oblivion
Notable for: Looking like a basic bit of environmental detail until you realise you can use the axe like a golf driver and whack its skull off down the hall. Fore!
Gino - The Darkness
Notable for: Having one of the earliest and most hilariously unexpected deaths in videogames. Teaching us why we shouldn't lean out of moving cars. Trucks are heavy, kids.
Chewed-up Pikmin ghosts - Pikmin
Notable for: Teaching us that even sentient vegetable people have souls. Making us feel guilty and creeped out at the same time.
Murdered Colossi - Shadow of the Colossus
Notable for: Making us feel like total wankers as we turn a once proud and noble creature into just another pile of rock and mould.
Skulls - Zelda III: A Link to the Past
Notable for: Being one of the first instances in which we could use a piece of disembodied anatomy as a tool or weapon in a game. Speaking of which...
McCoy and the crazy nurse - Dead Space
Notable for: Proving that love can blossom between two people even if one of them is a dismembered corpse. Especially if one of them is blind and insane... (more follows)
McCoy and the crazy nurse - Dead Space
Providing endless squishy fun when stomped on... (more follows)
McCoy and the crazy nurse - Dead Space
...and confirming that there's one thing a gamer will always do when presented with body parts and a gravity gun.
Giant slug-fish thing - Metroid Prime
Notable for: Being the first of many dead things in MP we could investigate with the scan visor. Training us to poke around in corpses for educational value.
Aeris - Final Fantasy VII
Notable for: Still being the subject of fanboy mourning 11 years later. Get over it! Please!
Captain Price - Call of Duty 4
Notable for: Having the finest moustache that HD can muster. Having an agonisingly ambiguous "Is he?/Isn't he?" death (He isn't - ClassicRadar Ed). Being more heavily mourned than Aeris by certain GamesRadar editors.
Cubone's mother's skull - Pokemon series
Notable for: Being worn on her son's head as part of some hideous necro-oedipal nightmare. Warning us that behind the friendly exterior, Nintendo are a scary bunch of bastards.
Dry Bones - Super Mario series
Notable for: Being the coolest of all Koopa variants. Being utterly invulnerable unless swiped with a piece of yellow cloth. Not letting death stop him from scoring endless cheap goals in Mario Strikers: Charged.
Drowned Lara - Tomb Raider: Underworld
Notable for: Maintaining the tradition of great drowning animations in Tomb Raider games. Doing a bizarre head-banging animation for twenty seconds before eventually croaking.
But these are old...
Yes, even poor Resident Evil 4 axe woman up there is no spring chicken. In fact, since this article was written, she's probably rotted clean away. So what would you replace her with? And don't say 'an axe rack' or something equally clever. Let us know your favourite dead things from games in the comments. You never know, we might make another article based on more recent dead things!
And if you enjoyed this classic GamesRadar article, you might enjoy SkeleTONS - nearly every bony bastard in the gaming universe or perhaps What if Hitler smoked pot?
