Chests, Cabinets

The following is a list of events and occurrences which traditionally occur within video games. more...

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Original plans always change

Many games start out with the character having an original goal which is simple, and supposed to be short. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past starts out with Link going to the castle to look for his uncle, and gets worse from there. Some games have a simple intros and openings, with alternate and sometimes much more innocent goals. The goals may then turn sour by the overused “destruction of hometown,” a botched mission, an ambush or other such unforeseen consequence. A game may have original goals, and upon completing those goals, newer tasks must be completed as a result of the earlier one, or newer goals are tacked on to give you more to do to extend game length. Often, no matter what the initial goal was, the heroes will end up having to save the whole world or will be the last hope for their cause.

Can't swim

Many early games simply had the player die if they fell in water, unless it was in an underwater level. A more recent example of this is the Grand Theft Auto series. The Monkey Island series is somewhat a parody of this as the protagonist Guybrush Threepwood can hold his breath for 10 minutes for no explicable reason. Exceptions include Link from the Legend of Zelda series (you could get an item which allows him to swim in most of the early games, in the more recent ones he can swim from the start). In Psychonauts, the main character and his family have been cursed by gypsies so that they and all their descendants will die in water, and a giant watery hand appears and grabs at him whenever he touches a large body of water, and will pull him under if it grabs at him three times.

In some Sierra adventures, when you fall in the water, you die after some seconds, unless you type swim.

Seen in: Most platform games, the Sonic the Hedgehog series, the Grand Theft Auto series (with the exception of San Andreas), Frogger, Psychonauts

End of the world

In many role-playing games, the story follows the main character and his friends in a quest to save the world from complete destruction (see end of the world). The events that lead to this apocalypse usually involve the primary villain trying to punish the world or take it over. He often creates a doomsday device or summons destruction by the use of magic. In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Dark Cloud 2 and Little Big Adventure 2, the protagonists have to save the world by stopping the moon from crashing into the planet and destroying all life, and in Mega Man Zero 4, Zero must stop Dr. Weil from obliterating the world with his appropriately named Ragnarok space satellite. Ironically, the last world in Kingdom Hearts is called End of the World.

Read more at Wikipedia.org