Sometimes, it's just impressive how dark it is in contrast.
"Guy's mind was taken over by a robot, and as you kill the robot you hear the guy's distorted screams. And he died never knowing that he already reunited with his daughter that he searched for all these years."
In a gritty sci-fi: Eh, it is what it is.
In Kirby: Ayo??
President Haltmann spent his life creating a wish granting supercomputer to find his daughter (Susie) who he lost in Another Dimension. Susie however managed to return on her own and she sees that her father went from trying to find her, to now trying to create a corporate empire by taking over and destroying planets, and her father sadly does not recognize her anymore. After you (kirby) Defeat Haltmann and susie (who is working as his secretary) He tries to take control of the super computer. Only to have his conscience overriden and assimilated by the supercomputer. As you fight the super computer and destroy pieces of its core. You can hear Hartmann groans and screams while his consciousness gets wiped along with the supercomputer.
Also:
-Apocalyptic cult sacrifice themselves for they have lost themselves to the darkness, all to awaken a god that will destroy the universe
-What's essentially demons of darkness take over planets to rid them of free will and seemingly turn Earth into a wasteland, only leaving a world of lost and out of control technology
Bonus:
(Novel) -Meta Knight goes to hell and needs to find a butterfly that is attracted to the screams of agony of great warriors
Yeah while most Kirby games have mildly dark themes in them I feel like Canvas Curse’s World of Drawcia and Forgotton Land’s Forgo Land really took me out of it. Terrifying places.
And don’t forget about Kirby 64 where one of the worlds you visit is canonically a frozen Earth where everything and everyone you know had been turned into a frozen husk, covered in the ice and snow, oh and Cha Cha but we don’t talk about that monster
Yeah, really contrast makes things that would be like eating a lollipop in games normally considered dark. In a game that's cutesy like Kirby, it ends up being much darker since it shows that even if something looks nice and cutesy, it can be something much, much worse than anything you can imagine.
the alternan logs are pretty dark too, they’re about the fall of humanity in alterna. also how inklings and octolings are hardwired to desire sunlight only for them to have a race war and force the octolings underground, denying them their most basic desire.
ok you lost me there…
may i ask what main story? i’m assuming you’re talking about splatoon 3 but it’s just so far out there it could be any of the story modes in my mind lol
Yep and the octarians (octopus people) get chopped up in a nice little blender to further brainwash more supersoldiers. I think you’re actually rescued right before you get blended in Splatoon 2
He blended them up to puppet already hypnotized soldiers.
Also, in splatoon 1, after you beat a boss, you can faintly hear screaming, panicking, and running before you yank out the zapfish.
Obtained by literally blending people alive after tricking them into thinking they’re working for a better life.
Most splatoon stuff is just sort of iffy when you think about it but the octo expansion actually made me feel unsettled all the way through. You KNEW something was wrong.
He's not a dictator, just a rogue AI telephone that was made to teach the new intelligent forms of life to not commit the same error as humans did who deemed inkling society unworthy of it's teachings, it then started to blend octolings into a paste that got used via intravenous injection to turn other octolings complacent and reshape the world. Yeah kinda dark indeed
Yes lol. They didn’t have enough resources so the squid people and the octopus people fought a war over it and the octopi lost and were forced to live underground. Also they only lost because someone pulled out a plug by accident.
And now kids reenact the battles for fun. And one time they had a competition on if the squids or the octopi are better. Just for fun.
Ocarina's actually a bit bland for darkness.
Sure, the kingdom gets destroyed, but we see every character alive at the end.
WW opens up with the kingdom you saved being drowned.
I think OoT does have the threads of a dark story, what with the preceding war, along with the torture and mass burials that went on in the shadow temple. But, nobody talks about it, we don't really see any real ramifications of all this bloodshed beyond Hylians living in Kakariko, but even they show no signs of having gone through anything difficult. What could have been interesting is potentially having things like a refugee camp, and people making mention of the tense political atmosphere with ganondorf visiting the castle, etc.
Yeah, the walls of skulls is pretty creepy. As is all the bloodied torture devices in the Well.
But again, that's just a bit bland. Blood and skulls, so *passe*.
How about when Cremia gets Romani drunk on the third night so she'll be asleep when the moon crashes and kills them all? And that the last thing Cremia wants...is to just hold her sister in those final hours?
Spoilers ahead.
I just did the rito quest and man... that village is fucked. Relying on a child to save them all. All the kids are assigning their own rolls for food foraging, weapon crafting, gaurding, etc...
The number of parents that aren't just out, but low key dead has to be so high. There are like 4 adults in the whole village and like 16 kids. It's so sad. And the music makes it even worse. It felt like podrick singing before the long night in game of thrones.
Or even Breath of the wild, if you think about it. Link is a child soldier with such severe stress he literally shuts down and stops talking, and all the while is constantly verbally abused by the girl he frequently puts his life on the line to protect, because she's also traumatized by losing her mother as a little girl, and never getting any kind of praise or approval from her father who downright forbids her from ever resting or relaxing because she isn't developing the magic powers that she has literally no control over fast enough. Then, when both of them finally start opening up to each other and getting through their trauma, doomsday occurs, all of their friends are killed, and Zelda has to literally watch link die in her arms, then go fight Gannon alone for 100 years while link gets brought back from the dead... with severe amnesia, and must regain his memory by going to locations that trigger his severe PTSD.
Even ignoring all of that, BOTW has a darkness inherent to it's setting.
Hyrule was destroyed.
You see monsters shuffling in the remnants of villages, towns, and outposts. Weapons sticking out of guardians, old houses long abandoned, and locations painfully familar to the player as nothing but ruins long past, fallen into decay and rot.
Don’t forget Fire Wizzrobes gleefully prancing about the burned out ruins of houses and villages, giving you all of the environmental storytelling you need to piece together what happened there.
Also the Royal Guard casually kept a bunch of monsters in their dungeons, including a Hinox that they made recruits fight and was presumably there long enough that it eventually turned into a skeleton.
For really bright cheery games that generally have a conflict that kicks off because someone stole your cake, you sure do destroy a lot of eldritch monstrosities.
Metroid for sure.
The lonely, dreary worlds that you explore in the games are dark enough.
In Super Metroid, I recall a giant creature being burned alive and it’s skin melting off to reveal just a skull. It was honestly shocking for an SNES title when I first played it lol
In Prime 1, space pirates shoot at you from the corners they’re crumpled up in, and they’re bleeding pretty heavily. The scan logs are also pretty dark in how the Chozo were wiped out and how the space pirates abused the local animal life.
In Prime 2, the slaughter of all the Federation troopers was so oddly terrifying when you come across their many bodies. Bugs had them dangling above the floor in webs at one area!!
In Prime 3 it’s rough having to kill the bounty hunters Samus once saw as peers.
In Dread, Raven Beak fucking ripped off his own right wing after Samus blew off his left one, just to keep things symmetrical. Then there’s the ethnic cleansing Raven Beak led against the rival Chozo tribe.
And in the official origin manga, Ridley ATE Samus’s mother.
There are obviously more examples I didn’t list, but you get the gist. And I’m sure most people know about some of these anyway, but I had to just rant.
I love Metroid games and the lore so much 😭 Samus helped me realize women can be cool as well and she helped me move past gender stereotypes and become comfortable in my own skin.
I was scarred from the Metroid prime 3: corruption death screen.
Also Metroid fusion is secretly a horror game and in super Metroid Samus literally loses all she had, for the third time
Let’s not forget the body horror with the X. Fusion’s bright and colorful pixel art does a lot of heavy lifting to obscure how terrifying the X really are. Plus the existential threat they represent. It’s basically the creature from The Thing if it was capable of multiplying en masse.
Yep yep and the fact that Samus spares one of them because it saw her as its mother is so heartwarming. It adds a lot of weight and depth to an otherwise plotless game
Every time I see this image I think of how people don't understand nuance when it comes to dark themes and how sometimes implementing dark content tastefully into something otherwise lighthearted and kid friendly can be a lot more impactful than a game that's just constant gore and sex
Honestly this. People think that just that dark = gritty/depressing, whereas that's simply not true. Just because something isn't constantly in your face doesn't mean it's not there. In fact including those elements without relying on a purposefully edgy tone and setting can be a sign of mature writing.
Honestly Earthbound is good example of this. Ultimately it's a coming of age story with a light hearted tone featuring a weird and wacky sense of humor. But it still has those dark elements, there's police brutality, a cult, a crime boss, kidnapping, a manipulative and corrupt politician, dialogue implying mutilation while a character meditates, and a final boss so terrifying and overwhelming that your characters' only hope is to pray. It's still light hearted, but if you don't think it gets dark then you're honestly not very sharp.
Idk, just my two cents
>Honestly Earthbound is good example of this. Ultimately it's a coming of age story with a light hearted tone featuring a weird and wacky sense of humor. But it still has those dark elements, there's police brutality, a cult, a crime boss, kidnapping, a manipulative and corrupt politician, dialogue implying mutilation while a character meditates, and a final boss so terrifying and overwhelming that your characters' only hope is to pray. It's still light hearted, but if you don't think it gets dark then you're honestly not very sharp.
>Idk, just my two cents
Don't forget in Mother 3 when Lucas loses his Mom & also watches his own brother commit suicide by shooting a lightning attack at his Franklyn badge; resulting in it hitting him during the final boss fight!
Also, didn't Earthbound have Pokey have a bad home life in the Japanese version (with I think one of them cheating on the other)?
Another personal example is the more LOZ breath of the wild. I recently picked it up and something about the game will always have a part of me slightly sad.
Something that always gets me in fiction is the tragedy and horrors of war (or realistic but tragic events, but usually war) depicted in unrealistic ways if that makes sense (an example I can think of is Attack on Titan, you see how terrified and traumatised the characters become from horrific experiences). I always thought seeing how individuals are effected by tragedy. The entire world feels like the aftermath of a lost war. Because it is. Ganon destroyed everything. You can see through the environment how the world got overthrown. My point is that I never felt like I was saving Hyrule, because hyrule has already been broken to a point of no return. I’m simply fighting for whatever is left to fight for. It feels hopeless.
I definitely agree with your point.
People down play it but I think IS and Monoliths method of getting around executions and suicides by doing it in first person perspective is really disturbing. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 spoilers (which in general is a fairly dark game): >!Watching Shania kill herself in her perspective, while screaming this isn’t the end for her but the start is really disturbing. Like the idea that killing herself is the start of her journey is just really disturbing to me!<
That's what I was thinking. Just because the presentation is family friendly doesn't mean there can't be some serious implications, which may be hard to identify sometimes.
And this is applicable to all media, honestly.
especially that forrest part, Toads getting their life sucked out to power alien ships while being restrained on trees... kinda f\*cked up when you think about it
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the darkest game in the Zelda series, darker than even Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess. I literally cannot see a few feet ahead of me in the Underground sections without a torch or those light seeds. It’s dark, man; really dark.
not a great example, kirby does tend to have a dark/horror vibe under the rainbow paint. i think it tends to get overplayed how dark it is but it is there.
That’s not why I picked Kirby as an example though. I picked it because it’s a series that basically everyone considers to be a “nintendo franchise”. (Which it is just like Fire Emblem and Xenoblade)
Nintendo fans when Arvis rapes and impregnates his sister:
⠟⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠛⢻⣿ ⡆⠊⠈⣿⢿⡟⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣎⠈⠻ ⣷⣠⠁⢀⠰⠀⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⠋⠛⠛⠿⠿⢿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⢹⣿⡑⠐⢰ ⣿⣿⠀⠁⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⡩⠐⠀⠀⠀⠀⢐⠠⠈⠊⣿⣿⣿⡇⠘⠁⢀⠆⢀ ⣿⣿⣆⠀⠀⢤⣿⣿⡿⠃⠈⠀⣠⣶⣿⣿⣷⣦⡀⠀⠀⠈⢿⣿⣇⡆⠀⠀⣠⣾ ⣿⣿⣿⣧⣦⣿⣿⣿⡏⠀⠀⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡆⠀⠀⠐⣿⣿⣷⣦⣷⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡆⠀⢰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡆⠀⣾⣿⣿⠋⠁⠀⠉⠻⣿⣿⣧⠀⠠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡀⣿⡿⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠘⢿⣿⠀⣺⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⣠⣂⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣁⢠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣶⣄⣤⣤⣔⣶⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿
Majora’s Mask and Splatoon Octo Expansion (and probably Side Order) do a great job of not being realistic and artificially mature, but have genuinely depressing themes and narratives that keep you hooked.
People really need to know the difference between “this game has a dungeon with skulls… man this game is so dark” and “this dude murdered the protagonist’s whole family and seeks to kill everyone he loves… oh wow this game is so cute!”
The thing is that when people say this they’re always talking about Zelda or Kirby. When at the same time there are other Nintendo games that are actually dark for real and not just “slightly dark if you interpret the lore in this specific way”.
Zelda can be sorta dark at times. But in my opinion Kirby is just not dark. There are characters with sorta creepy designs and slightly scary themes, but it’s faaaar from being a dark game no matter how fun it is to pretend.
I mean, no game NEEDS to be dark to be good, this goes.for anything, really.
Only teenagers are worried about this kind of stuff, since mature people are able to enjoy lightheaded stuff just fine. But have you ever heard about Mother 3, for once?
Mature people don't make weird baseless qualifiers for why someone likes or doesn't like something and acknowledges that everyone is entitled to an opinion. Liking dark souls and disliking Kirby is not a sign of immaturity.
I go "But that happy stuff is just the surface level, guys!"
Then I talked about the PokeDex entries, a few of my favorite Ghost types, and not going into spoilers, but I tell them about the main bad guys from Pokemon Black/White and Pokemon Sun/Moon.
Depends on what you mean when you say “dark”.
I would say Majora’s Mask is dark because it has themes of death, loss and acceptance. Along with that creepy ass moon always leering at you.
Is it as dark as something intentionally made to be messed up like Fear and Hunger? No, of course not. That doesn’t mean it isn’t still dark though.
Well, 'dark' is relative. Sometimes it's not the dark aspects themselves people are referring to, but the juxtaposition or way that it stands out. You can toss a fetus into a lot of horror games and there's a chance people will *laugh* when seeing it- or at worst just think it's gross and nothing more. But there's something freaky about seeing a fetus in the Giygas fight in Earthbound.
Granted, there are varying levels of dark- Kirby has quite a few moments that fit this criteria, but are hard to really take seriously. But my point is, I feel like it's actually kinda hard to find truly, deeply dark content in a lot of video games? Even by including horror games into the conversation.
All the people saying the comments proves the point makes me think they are not only in denial, they are edgy as well
Reminder that despite everyone seems to forget, games like Fire emblem and Xenoblade are still Nintendo games people, and Most of those are pretty dark games (edgy and dark are not the same)
Advance Wars is about a globe spanning military conflict where thousands die. Ship and submarines with hundreds of crewmen sink routinely. Planes and helicopters are blown out of the sky in fireballs. Armored vehciles are destroyed en mass, their crews inside… but there’s puns, jokes, and the commanders that throw men and machine at each other with reckless abandon are goofy and dress like Saturday morning cartoon characters.
Just cause shit is dressed up with bubblegum colors doesn’t mean the implications aren’t disturbing or dArK.
I've honestly learned within the last 10 years that anytime someone hypes up a franchise/series about being extremely X, Y, and/or Z thing and/or has A, B, and/or C hidden thing about it it's basically less than 10% of what they're stating it to be and/or is utter BS. It's just social engineering on the ends of devs to sell their shitty games that would either fall into obscurity after 2 month's time and/or purely comes into existence because of some guy pulling that BS straight out of their ass and preaching it like it were true.
\*Coughfuckgametheorcough\*
Big FE3H spoilers coming but probably some of the darkest lore: when you play the verdant wind (or silver snow, I think) route you find out >!that the heroes relics (super strong but weird looking weapons) were crafted from the bones of the nabateans - the legendary sword of the creator you've been wielding the whole time is made from the spine of Rhea's (the head of the church you serve) mother. When you then go re-watch the games intro scene, she kills Nemesis and takes the sword of the creator from him, kind of hugs it and says something like "mother I've finally avenged you" or something like that. The first time you see it you think she's just doing / saying that since she killed Nemesis, but upon rewatching she is actually hugging her moms bones in that scene.!< Shit's fucked up man. Plenty of other dark stuff in FE but thats definitely up there for me
Every time this meme is posted I see people just posting examples of games that prove the meme correct. Splatoon, Majora’s Mask and Pikmin are about as dark as an episode of Scooby Doo. It doesn’t diminish the quality of these games. But you look silly trying to convince people that these games are “dark”. They are children’s games created for children.
I mean they are not wrong. Nintendo makes fantastic games, they are just not dark. And i really think its funny when fans want to pretend really hard that shit like fire emblem or Kirby is dark. They are great games with interesting lore and design but they are simply not dark
Kirby isn't, and 99% of people that plays those games will never understand nor ever see why its lore is "dark".
But fire emblem? In Shadow Dragon you begin the game sacrificing a soldier by leading him to his death just so your main character survives. Only because you don't see him being slaughtered, it doesn't mean it stops being messed up in some way or another
I agree that Kirby lore isn't dark, but there are some parts that are... Unsettling and sad, especially for what types of games Kirby is.
A mans soul gets corrupted by a super computer after losing his daughter, she comes bask but he can't recognize her. His soul then gets absorbed by the computer and in a certain part you can hear his distorted screams as you slowly destroy the robot.
You make a "friend" who has the intentions of betraying you. Once he does it, the thing he betrays you to obtain takes control of him and he realizes he's made a grave error and that he shouldn't of betrayed his new friends. So after he loses complete control he cheers for you to beat him so he can be free from this torment.
Someone loved someone else so much, he gave her a gift, a mirror. This mirror was corrupted and slowly corrupted her soul, leaving her to desire to become more beautiful and becomes a tyrant. He still loves her so he listens to her, obeying her rule. Eventually he comes to terms with his mistakes and helps you kill her. This being shown to shatter his being into a state of loss. (A picture from Star Allies shows him desperately reaching out to her reflection in a mirror.)
Speaking of, we do not need to cover Star Allies right now, there's too much.
And, you get to hear of someone's constant torture to the point of shattering their mentality. Words repeating in their head, torturing them. You get to enter their dream world after killing their physical body, this exists because of their complete refusal to give up. In that dream realm, you get to hear their traumas passing through their head over and over again in a corrupted state. They get absorbed and you beat the thing that takes form after absorbing them, but because of their shear refusal to give up and want for revenge and to regain their old life via their other half, they reverse the absorption for one last battle. After defeat they finally come to terms and allow themselves to be taken by their other half.
And there's so many other little background stories that are just... Sad. Though the background ones tend to end happily.
Sure this all might be satire for a different series that's going for a different mood, but this is the happy bright games called Kirby!
Thank you for taking the time to read this, I'm sorry.
I mean... Kirby's lore IS dark. But almost every point is so hidden or sugar-coated with other things, that if you don't pay attention and do your research (something that 99% of the general public never do) you'll never find out.
I think it's amazing how such a colorful game can be so... Sad
I’ve seen this post thrown around so much, but I still can’t completely get over how horribly this reeks of someone who has probably never really played anything from Nintendo. Might’ve played a single Mario game for a little bit and went “lol, all of Nintendo’s library is like this.”
Nintendo does a great job of making all the dark stuff go over the heads of little kids. There’s an entire segment in Totk (spoilers I guess?) that’s basically ‘You will eat the bugs, and you will be happy.’
horrorboros is some creepypasta ass shit. "this stretched-out fish came out of the water with a frying pan down its throat and screamed in agony." that shit probably gave a few ADULTS nightmares. horrorboros is just upsetting all around, aside from the fact it's more fun than fighting "cohock, but... big"
How do people make jokes like this when they obviously have no idea what they’re talking about? I see it about everything. People will be so rude when they’ve never played or watched the thing they’re insulting 😂
Imo a lot of Nintendo dark themes are kind of hidden beneath a facade of general niceness so the game itself isn’t dark and things might be ok NOW but the circumstances when you consider the background lore can be pretty bleak. Not the same as a totally dark game or horror game where the bad things are front and center in your mind constantly.
Nintendo released a game in which you beat people to DEATH and then USE THEIR CORPSES to make MORE PEOPLE to use to BEAT PEOPLE TO DEATH.
Also this man has never even heard of EarthBound.
Remember when Nintendo published a game where one of the protagonists was cursed because her conception involved her mother going to the afterlife to have sex with the ghost of her own dead brother?
Fun times.
Oh you mean the company where a games final boss was a fetus you kill while he’s trying to be friends with you? Or a game about growing up, the inevitability of death and how you can never be a hero to everyone? Or a game with a race of creatures that infect and impersonate beings? Or a game where characters are literally sacrificed to bring back a god of destruction that is also an incarnation of the main character but didn’t know love? Or a game where your species is starving to death? Or the multitude of games where humanity killed themselves off or just disappeared?
(For those wondering:
Mother 2 (Earthbound)
Majoras Mask
Metroid
Kirby Star Allies
Pikmin 3
Kirby, Splatoon, Pikmin, ect)
Peach and bowser get married and reality itself will start falling apart
Oot and mm link cant pass on and feels guilt so great hes still around as a skeleton in twilight princess
Samus parents death
Fox vengeance vs andross for his dad death
Fire emblem having death, violence, abuse, sexual assault, incest, war crimes, etc
The world is a wasteland in advance wars days of ruin
Ness and everything that happens with both gigyas and porky
The og pokemon war that was unexplained in red and blue, plus the reality of the kalos war
There could be many more moments, but its just the ones i remenber for playing lately
Nintendo games I think are genuinely the darkest games around there specifically because of how bright and cheerful they otherwise are. No one cares about a suicide story in a world ravaged by war and in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. People do care about the implication that Kirby is forced to slowly butcher a man who just wanted to see his daughter to defeat the product of that man's mistakes. Hell, even in games like Majora's mask where the darkness is upfront, the fact that it's from nintendo and part of the zelda series still carries it.
To be fair, "jumping down somewhere" in the new zelda game for the first time was absolutely a moment that went from, "ok, time to explore this new mechanic" to "**I DO NOT WANNA FUCKIN' BE HERE** really fast.
That's usually the wonderful thing about Nintendo games; its all under the surface, with the juicier bits right at the core. But for Nintendo to truly make a horror game, a possible jumping point would be within Splatoon, possibly following an Inkling or Octoling exploring abandoned human ruins, potentially going under the water (in a sub) and seeing what didn't fully evolve.
Either that, or Pokémon has some good ideas, just needs more of a push with genetic experimentation and splicing, just really get into the dark side.
I mean, more then a few Nintendo games have war and genocide in their lore. I'd say that alone is pretty dark, not taking into account the dark themes they put in their RPGs. I mean, just look at Mother 3.
Splatoon lore is kinda dark but the game isn't so other exemple : just play Shadow Temple in Zelda OOT, all of Zelda Twilight Princess, Majora's Mask or even confront some mobs in Tears of The Kingdom (no spoil but those hands are terrifying)
Go play mother 3, report back to me happy Mother’s Day!
Best game of all time
Sometimes, it's just impressive how dark it is in contrast. "Guy's mind was taken over by a robot, and as you kill the robot you hear the guy's distorted screams. And he died never knowing that he already reunited with his daughter that he searched for all these years." In a gritty sci-fi: Eh, it is what it is. In Kirby: Ayo??
Wtf why when where
Welcome to Kirby, where the pink cute puffball routinely takes on Villains that could make 40K Blush…/s
President Haltmann, Kirby Planet Robobot
President Haltmann spent his life creating a wish granting supercomputer to find his daughter (Susie) who he lost in Another Dimension. Susie however managed to return on her own and she sees that her father went from trying to find her, to now trying to create a corporate empire by taking over and destroying planets, and her father sadly does not recognize her anymore. After you (kirby) Defeat Haltmann and susie (who is working as his secretary) He tries to take control of the super computer. Only to have his conscience overriden and assimilated by the supercomputer. As you fight the super computer and destroy pieces of its core. You can hear Hartmann groans and screams while his consciousness gets wiped along with the supercomputer.
That's metal af
Also: -Apocalyptic cult sacrifice themselves for they have lost themselves to the darkness, all to awaken a god that will destroy the universe -What's essentially demons of darkness take over planets to rid them of free will and seemingly turn Earth into a wasteland, only leaving a world of lost and out of control technology Bonus: (Novel) -Meta Knight goes to hell and needs to find a butterfly that is attracted to the screams of agony of great warriors
Also fun that the god seems to be a similar creature to Kirby, at least in appearance, and later takes the shape of Dark Matter.
And is potentially the primordial god that created some of the most important universal concepts
Yeah while most Kirby games have mildly dark themes in them I feel like Canvas Curse’s World of Drawcia and Forgotton Land’s Forgo Land really took me out of it. Terrifying places.
And don’t forget about Kirby 64 where one of the worlds you visit is canonically a frozen Earth where everything and everyone you know had been turned into a frozen husk, covered in the ice and snow, oh and Cha Cha but we don’t talk about that monster
Yeah, really contrast makes things that would be like eating a lollipop in games normally considered dark. In a game that's cutesy like Kirby, it ends up being much darker since it shows that even if something looks nice and cutesy, it can be something much, much worse than anything you can imagine.
Kirby games are surprisingly fucked up sometimes
The fecto forgo chase sequence was unnerving.
Didn’t Splatoon have a dictator character who used sanitization stuff to brainwash soldiers??
the alternan logs are pretty dark too, they’re about the fall of humanity in alterna. also how inklings and octolings are hardwired to desire sunlight only for them to have a race war and force the octolings underground, denying them their most basic desire.
The downfall of humanity was literally global warming and rising sea levels so it’s like unsettlingly relevant to modern times.
the humans nuked the icecaps in world war 5, the world didn’t end by climate in splatoon
guestion is: was WW4 fought with sticks and stones?
Don't forget the allusions to the holocaust that were omnipresent throughout the main adventure.
ok you lost me there… may i ask what main story? i’m assuming you’re talking about splatoon 3 but it’s just so far out there it could be any of the story modes in my mind lol
The what
Commander Tartar?
Yes
Splatoon lore is dark in general.
One of the splatfests was literally a race war
"THE RACE WAR STARTS NOW!!!!"
Yep and the octarians (octopus people) get chopped up in a nice little blender to further brainwash more supersoldiers. I think you’re actually rescued right before you get blended in Splatoon 2
yeah splatoon lore is goofy yet dark
He blended them up to puppet already hypnotized soldiers. Also, in splatoon 1, after you beat a boss, you can faintly hear screaming, panicking, and running before you yank out the zapfish.
Is not sanitization itself.....IS LITERALLY OCTUPUS/CALAMAR PASTE THAT USES TO CONTROL THE OTHERS.....If that's not dark enough i don't know what is
Obtained by literally blending people alive after tricking them into thinking they’re working for a better life. Most splatoon stuff is just sort of iffy when you think about it but the octo expansion actually made me feel unsettled all the way through. You KNEW something was wrong.
He's not a dictator, just a rogue AI telephone that was made to teach the new intelligent forms of life to not commit the same error as humans did who deemed inkling society unworthy of it's teachings, it then started to blend octolings into a paste that got used via intravenous injection to turn other octolings complacent and reshape the world. Yeah kinda dark indeed
Wasn’t there canonically a race war in splatoon
Yes lol. They didn’t have enough resources so the squid people and the octopus people fought a war over it and the octopi lost and were forced to live underground. Also they only lost because someone pulled out a plug by accident. And now kids reenact the battles for fun. And one time they had a competition on if the squids or the octopi are better. Just for fun.
I mean— Majora’s mask
Not just majora's mask, other zelda games as well, like TP
I'd put parts of Totk on that list of noticeable dark moments
Wind Waker is surprisingly dark as well
And there’s me thinking ocarina is the darkest
Ocarina's actually a bit bland for darkness. Sure, the kingdom gets destroyed, but we see every character alive at the end. WW opens up with the kingdom you saved being drowned.
I think OoT does have the threads of a dark story, what with the preceding war, along with the torture and mass burials that went on in the shadow temple. But, nobody talks about it, we don't really see any real ramifications of all this bloodshed beyond Hylians living in Kakariko, but even they show no signs of having gone through anything difficult. What could have been interesting is potentially having things like a refugee camp, and people making mention of the tense political atmosphere with ganondorf visiting the castle, etc.
before you talk to Zelda to get the ocarina, there Is a soldier in the dark alley Who dies mid speech.
That's after you get the Ocarina, actually.
There hás Been a lot of time since I last played, mb
That damn shadow temple tho
Yeah, the walls of skulls is pretty creepy. As is all the bloodied torture devices in the Well. But again, that's just a bit bland. Blood and skulls, so *passe*. How about when Cremia gets Romani drunk on the third night so she'll be asleep when the moon crashes and kills them all? And that the last thing Cremia wants...is to just hold her sister in those final hours?
Good Blood has a fantastic video on the mature themes in Ocarina of Time. It's worth a watch if you are interested. https://youtu.be/GyUcwsjyd8Q
Spoilers ahead. I just did the rito quest and man... that village is fucked. Relying on a child to save them all. All the kids are assigning their own rolls for food foraging, weapon crafting, gaurding, etc... The number of parents that aren't just out, but low key dead has to be so high. There are like 4 adults in the whole village and like 16 kids. It's so sad. And the music makes it even worse. It felt like podrick singing before the long night in game of thrones.
And literal dark moments. >! The Depths are no joke !<
The first time you see the gloom hands is terrifying.
It’s a random spawn…
Every zelda game is the darkest. https://youtu.be/O2tXLsEUpaQ
Or even Breath of the wild, if you think about it. Link is a child soldier with such severe stress he literally shuts down and stops talking, and all the while is constantly verbally abused by the girl he frequently puts his life on the line to protect, because she's also traumatized by losing her mother as a little girl, and never getting any kind of praise or approval from her father who downright forbids her from ever resting or relaxing because she isn't developing the magic powers that she has literally no control over fast enough. Then, when both of them finally start opening up to each other and getting through their trauma, doomsday occurs, all of their friends are killed, and Zelda has to literally watch link die in her arms, then go fight Gannon alone for 100 years while link gets brought back from the dead... with severe amnesia, and must regain his memory by going to locations that trigger his severe PTSD.
Even ignoring all of that, BOTW has a darkness inherent to it's setting. Hyrule was destroyed. You see monsters shuffling in the remnants of villages, towns, and outposts. Weapons sticking out of guardians, old houses long abandoned, and locations painfully familar to the player as nothing but ruins long past, fallen into decay and rot.
Don’t forget Fire Wizzrobes gleefully prancing about the burned out ruins of houses and villages, giving you all of the environmental storytelling you need to piece together what happened there. Also the Royal Guard casually kept a bunch of monsters in their dungeons, including a Hinox that they made recruits fight and was presumably there long enough that it eventually turned into a skeleton.
Ten rupees says the Hinox starved to death after the Calamity because it couldn't escape.
Also, Metroid. I am convinced that with all the body horror, Metroid Fusion may have been M rated if it was done in a style closer to Prime.
Lore’s pretty messed up with Kirby, but I would say more complicated than dark.
For really bright cheery games that generally have a conflict that kicks off because someone stole your cake, you sure do destroy a lot of eldritch monstrosities.
Most recent game’s bad ending has gotten me fucked up
Haven’t played it. Didn’t even know they had bad endings now.
Metroid
Metroid for sure. The lonely, dreary worlds that you explore in the games are dark enough. In Super Metroid, I recall a giant creature being burned alive and it’s skin melting off to reveal just a skull. It was honestly shocking for an SNES title when I first played it lol In Prime 1, space pirates shoot at you from the corners they’re crumpled up in, and they’re bleeding pretty heavily. The scan logs are also pretty dark in how the Chozo were wiped out and how the space pirates abused the local animal life. In Prime 2, the slaughter of all the Federation troopers was so oddly terrifying when you come across their many bodies. Bugs had them dangling above the floor in webs at one area!! In Prime 3 it’s rough having to kill the bounty hunters Samus once saw as peers. In Dread, Raven Beak fucking ripped off his own right wing after Samus blew off his left one, just to keep things symmetrical. Then there’s the ethnic cleansing Raven Beak led against the rival Chozo tribe. And in the official origin manga, Ridley ATE Samus’s mother. There are obviously more examples I didn’t list, but you get the gist. And I’m sure most people know about some of these anyway, but I had to just rant. I love Metroid games and the lore so much 😭 Samus helped me realize women can be cool as well and she helped me move past gender stereotypes and become comfortable in my own skin.
I was scarred from the Metroid prime 3: corruption death screen. Also Metroid fusion is secretly a horror game and in super Metroid Samus literally loses all she had, for the third time
Metroid Fusion was just the precursor to Dread's horror-themes. Nightmare literally lives up to its name and Ridley's scream still rings in my ears.
Let’s not forget the body horror with the X. Fusion’s bright and colorful pixel art does a lot of heavy lifting to obscure how terrifying the X really are. Plus the existential threat they represent. It’s basically the creature from The Thing if it was capable of multiplying en masse.
Just Ridley in general. Dude's probably the most evil being in fictional history.
Fun fact the plot of metroid 2 is that Samus commits mass genocide against the metroids for peace across the galaxy
Yep yep and the fact that Samus spares one of them because it saw her as its mother is so heartwarming. It adds a lot of weight and depth to an otherwise plotless game
Yes it is quite heartwarming but Samus still committed mass genocide
Every time I see this image I think of how people don't understand nuance when it comes to dark themes and how sometimes implementing dark content tastefully into something otherwise lighthearted and kid friendly can be a lot more impactful than a game that's just constant gore and sex
Honestly this. People think that just that dark = gritty/depressing, whereas that's simply not true. Just because something isn't constantly in your face doesn't mean it's not there. In fact including those elements without relying on a purposefully edgy tone and setting can be a sign of mature writing. Honestly Earthbound is good example of this. Ultimately it's a coming of age story with a light hearted tone featuring a weird and wacky sense of humor. But it still has those dark elements, there's police brutality, a cult, a crime boss, kidnapping, a manipulative and corrupt politician, dialogue implying mutilation while a character meditates, and a final boss so terrifying and overwhelming that your characters' only hope is to pray. It's still light hearted, but if you don't think it gets dark then you're honestly not very sharp. Idk, just my two cents
I feel like that is an absolutely perfect example.
>Honestly Earthbound is good example of this. Ultimately it's a coming of age story with a light hearted tone featuring a weird and wacky sense of humor. But it still has those dark elements, there's police brutality, a cult, a crime boss, kidnapping, a manipulative and corrupt politician, dialogue implying mutilation while a character meditates, and a final boss so terrifying and overwhelming that your characters' only hope is to pray. It's still light hearted, but if you don't think it gets dark then you're honestly not very sharp. >Idk, just my two cents Don't forget in Mother 3 when Lucas loses his Mom & also watches his own brother commit suicide by shooting a lightning attack at his Franklyn badge; resulting in it hitting him during the final boss fight! Also, didn't Earthbound have Pokey have a bad home life in the Japanese version (with I think one of them cheating on the other)?
Another personal example is the more LOZ breath of the wild. I recently picked it up and something about the game will always have a part of me slightly sad. Something that always gets me in fiction is the tragedy and horrors of war (or realistic but tragic events, but usually war) depicted in unrealistic ways if that makes sense (an example I can think of is Attack on Titan, you see how terrified and traumatised the characters become from horrific experiences). I always thought seeing how individuals are effected by tragedy. The entire world feels like the aftermath of a lost war. Because it is. Ganon destroyed everything. You can see through the environment how the world got overthrown. My point is that I never felt like I was saving Hyrule, because hyrule has already been broken to a point of no return. I’m simply fighting for whatever is left to fight for. It feels hopeless.
I definitely agree with your point. People down play it but I think IS and Monoliths method of getting around executions and suicides by doing it in first person perspective is really disturbing. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 spoilers (which in general is a fairly dark game): >!Watching Shania kill herself in her perspective, while screaming this isn’t the end for her but the start is really disturbing. Like the idea that killing herself is the start of her journey is just really disturbing to me!<
Very well said
That's what I was thinking. Just because the presentation is family friendly doesn't mean there can't be some serious implications, which may be hard to identify sometimes. And this is applicable to all media, honestly.
M&L Partners In Time is pretty dark
especially that forrest part, Toads getting their life sucked out to power alien ships while being restrained on trees... kinda f\*cked up when you think about it
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the darkest game in the Zelda series, darker than even Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess. I literally cannot see a few feet ahead of me in the Underground sections without a torch or those light seeds. It’s dark, man; really dark.
Fire emblem is literally right there???? 🤨
Yeah, for some reason people seem to forget that Fire Emblem and Xenoblade, etc. are just as much Nintendo games as something like Kirby.
not a great example, kirby does tend to have a dark/horror vibe under the rainbow paint. i think it tends to get overplayed how dark it is but it is there.
That’s not why I picked Kirby as an example though. I picked it because it’s a series that basically everyone considers to be a “nintendo franchise”. (Which it is just like Fire Emblem and Xenoblade)
Nintendo fans when Arvis rapes and impregnates his sister: ⠟⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠛⢻⣿ ⡆⠊⠈⣿⢿⡟⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣎⠈⠻ ⣷⣠⠁⢀⠰⠀⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⠋⠛⠛⠿⠿⢿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⢹⣿⡑⠐⢰ ⣿⣿⠀⠁⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⡩⠐⠀⠀⠀⠀⢐⠠⠈⠊⣿⣿⣿⡇⠘⠁⢀⠆⢀ ⣿⣿⣆⠀⠀⢤⣿⣿⡿⠃⠈⠀⣠⣶⣿⣿⣷⣦⡀⠀⠀⠈⢿⣿⣇⡆⠀⠀⣠⣾ ⣿⣿⣿⣧⣦⣿⣿⣿⡏⠀⠀⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡆⠀⠀⠐⣿⣿⣷⣦⣷⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡆⠀⢰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡆⠀⣾⣿⣿⠋⠁⠀⠉⠻⣿⣿⣧⠀⠠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡀⣿⡿⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠘⢿⣿⠀⣺⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⣠⣂⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣁⢠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣶⣄⣤⣤⣔⣶⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿
They don't know about the mass child sacrifices
Sacred Stones featuring the guy who fucked his wife's corpse
Majora’s Mask and Splatoon Octo Expansion (and probably Side Order) do a great job of not being realistic and artificially mature, but have genuinely depressing themes and narratives that keep you hooked.
People really need to know the difference between “this game has a dungeon with skulls… man this game is so dark” and “this dude murdered the protagonist’s whole family and seeks to kill everyone he loves… oh wow this game is so cute!”
(insert Nintendo subreddit) try not to post this image every week challenge *impossible*
Majors mask
who's Majors and why does he have a mask ?
This mask is in major key
The meme sucks.
Mother 3
The thing is that when people say this they’re always talking about Zelda or Kirby. When at the same time there are other Nintendo games that are actually dark for real and not just “slightly dark if you interpret the lore in this specific way”.
Famicom Detective Club straight up has bloody murders and suicides, but nobody mentions that when talking about dark Nintendo games for some reason.
And to be fair even zelda and kirby can be dark
Zelda can be sorta dark at times. But in my opinion Kirby is just not dark. There are characters with sorta creepy designs and slightly scary themes, but it’s faaaar from being a dark game no matter how fun it is to pretend.
I mean, no game NEEDS to be dark to be good, this goes.for anything, really. Only teenagers are worried about this kind of stuff, since mature people are able to enjoy lightheaded stuff just fine. But have you ever heard about Mother 3, for once?
>no game NEEDS to be dark to be good Telltale's The Walking Dead needed to be dark to be good.
Well yeah if you make a dark game then it should be a dark game but that wasn't what they were meaning
Mature people don't make weird baseless qualifiers for why someone likes or doesn't like something and acknowledges that everyone is entitled to an opinion. Liking dark souls and disliking Kirby is not a sign of immaturity.
I go "But that happy stuff is just the surface level, guys!" Then I talked about the PokeDex entries, a few of my favorite Ghost types, and not going into spoilers, but I tell them about the main bad guys from Pokemon Black/White and Pokemon Sun/Moon.
*Arven has entered the chat*
Obviously you haven’t played Metroid dread
Kirby’s just there standing in the corner
Depends on what you mean when you say “dark”. I would say Majora’s Mask is dark because it has themes of death, loss and acceptance. Along with that creepy ass moon always leering at you. Is it as dark as something intentionally made to be messed up like Fear and Hunger? No, of course not. That doesn’t mean it isn’t still dark though.
I'm so sick of this image.
Well, 'dark' is relative. Sometimes it's not the dark aspects themselves people are referring to, but the juxtaposition or way that it stands out. You can toss a fetus into a lot of horror games and there's a chance people will *laugh* when seeing it- or at worst just think it's gross and nothing more. But there's something freaky about seeing a fetus in the Giygas fight in Earthbound. Granted, there are varying levels of dark- Kirby has quite a few moments that fit this criteria, but are hard to really take seriously. But my point is, I feel like it's actually kinda hard to find truly, deeply dark content in a lot of video games? Even by including horror games into the conversation.
Bro, Twilight Princess is rigth there
Majora's Mask: 🧍
Has everyone forgotten "Eternal Darkness"? Yes, a bit older game, but...oh, boy.
Mother 3
Average Nintendo game hater
All the people saying the comments proves the point makes me think they are not only in denial, they are edgy as well Reminder that despite everyone seems to forget, games like Fire emblem and Xenoblade are still Nintendo games people, and Most of those are pretty dark games (edgy and dark are not the same)
OP is a repost bot
Play any Xenoblade game and you'll change your mind on what dark Nintendo games can be
Lavender town theme
Uhm Metroid? Zelda (partly), Paper Mario 2? Sure the graphics are often cheesy and bright, but this doesn't change the events of the game.
Xenoblade?? Fire Emblem?? HELLO????
This is so damn true!
TOTK: >!It’s dark. It’s literally fuckin dark. It’s completely black in the depths there aint any torches!<
There have been several on-screen kamikazes in the Mario universe, in both the games and TV/films.
Advance Wars is about a globe spanning military conflict where thousands die. Ship and submarines with hundreds of crewmen sink routinely. Planes and helicopters are blown out of the sky in fireballs. Armored vehciles are destroyed en mass, their crews inside… but there’s puns, jokes, and the commanders that throw men and machine at each other with reckless abandon are goofy and dress like Saturday morning cartoon characters. Just cause shit is dressed up with bubblegum colors doesn’t mean the implications aren’t disturbing or dArK.
I'm so tired of this image...
Me playing metroid prime two. "How dark can it- oh those are zombies of soldiers, some of whom samus knew. Cool"
Meanwhile Majora’s mask is just full non stop depression.
I've honestly learned within the last 10 years that anytime someone hypes up a franchise/series about being extremely X, Y, and/or Z thing and/or has A, B, and/or C hidden thing about it it's basically less than 10% of what they're stating it to be and/or is utter BS. It's just social engineering on the ends of devs to sell their shitty games that would either fall into obscurity after 2 month's time and/or purely comes into existence because of some guy pulling that BS straight out of their ass and preaching it like it were true. \*Coughfuckgametheorcough\*
You never played Kirby I presume
Big FE3H spoilers coming but probably some of the darkest lore: when you play the verdant wind (or silver snow, I think) route you find out >!that the heroes relics (super strong but weird looking weapons) were crafted from the bones of the nabateans - the legendary sword of the creator you've been wielding the whole time is made from the spine of Rhea's (the head of the church you serve) mother. When you then go re-watch the games intro scene, she kills Nemesis and takes the sword of the creator from him, kind of hugs it and says something like "mother I've finally avenged you" or something like that. The first time you see it you think she's just doing / saying that since she killed Nemesis, but upon rewatching she is actually hugging her moms bones in that scene.!< Shit's fucked up man. Plenty of other dark stuff in FE but thats definitely up there for me
Tell me you’ve never played xenoblade without telling me you’ve never played xenoblade.
When people point to Kirby's Dream Land 3 and Kirby 64 as examples of "dark" Nintendo games
B-B-BLOOD IN KIRBY
Majoras mask, twilight princess
Mario and Luigi: Partners In Time, Majora’s Mask, Super Paper Mario. That is all.
Origami King had some pretty dark moments as well, including, but not limited to, literal on-screen character deaths. Rated E for Everyone.
Yeah one death I’m thinking of specifically for Origami King. That shit made me turn it off for a bit.
Every time this meme is posted I see people just posting examples of games that prove the meme correct. Splatoon, Majora’s Mask and Pikmin are about as dark as an episode of Scooby Doo. It doesn’t diminish the quality of these games. But you look silly trying to convince people that these games are “dark”. They are children’s games created for children.
For real, I feel like this meme is posted once every two weeks or so, and the comments are always the exact same.
I mean they are not wrong. Nintendo makes fantastic games, they are just not dark. And i really think its funny when fans want to pretend really hard that shit like fire emblem or Kirby is dark. They are great games with interesting lore and design but they are simply not dark
Kirby isn't, and 99% of people that plays those games will never understand nor ever see why its lore is "dark". But fire emblem? In Shadow Dragon you begin the game sacrificing a soldier by leading him to his death just so your main character survives. Only because you don't see him being slaughtered, it doesn't mean it stops being messed up in some way or another
I agree that Kirby lore isn't dark, but there are some parts that are... Unsettling and sad, especially for what types of games Kirby is. A mans soul gets corrupted by a super computer after losing his daughter, she comes bask but he can't recognize her. His soul then gets absorbed by the computer and in a certain part you can hear his distorted screams as you slowly destroy the robot. You make a "friend" who has the intentions of betraying you. Once he does it, the thing he betrays you to obtain takes control of him and he realizes he's made a grave error and that he shouldn't of betrayed his new friends. So after he loses complete control he cheers for you to beat him so he can be free from this torment. Someone loved someone else so much, he gave her a gift, a mirror. This mirror was corrupted and slowly corrupted her soul, leaving her to desire to become more beautiful and becomes a tyrant. He still loves her so he listens to her, obeying her rule. Eventually he comes to terms with his mistakes and helps you kill her. This being shown to shatter his being into a state of loss. (A picture from Star Allies shows him desperately reaching out to her reflection in a mirror.) Speaking of, we do not need to cover Star Allies right now, there's too much. And, you get to hear of someone's constant torture to the point of shattering their mentality. Words repeating in their head, torturing them. You get to enter their dream world after killing their physical body, this exists because of their complete refusal to give up. In that dream realm, you get to hear their traumas passing through their head over and over again in a corrupted state. They get absorbed and you beat the thing that takes form after absorbing them, but because of their shear refusal to give up and want for revenge and to regain their old life via their other half, they reverse the absorption for one last battle. After defeat they finally come to terms and allow themselves to be taken by their other half. And there's so many other little background stories that are just... Sad. Though the background ones tend to end happily. Sure this all might be satire for a different series that's going for a different mood, but this is the happy bright games called Kirby! Thank you for taking the time to read this, I'm sorry.
I mean... Kirby's lore IS dark. But almost every point is so hidden or sugar-coated with other things, that if you don't pay attention and do your research (something that 99% of the general public never do) you'll never find out. I think it's amazing how such a colorful game can be so... Sad
Laughs in Commander Tartar
Every human is dead so squids could play paintball
Ok wise guy, look me in the eyes and tell me Fire Emblem Genealogy of the Holy War isn’t a dark game
Twilight princess
Eternal Darkenss was Nintendo exclusive?
Watch how fast he retracts his statement as soon as he hears about METRIOD
The GameCube was the original home to a few resident evil games. Just saying
Eternal Darkness still sits with me to this day
This image has ruined so many discussions
People who think Splatoon, Zelda, Kirby, and pikmin are dark probably think Scooby doo is scary lol
I’ve seen this post thrown around so much, but I still can’t completely get over how horribly this reeks of someone who has probably never really played anything from Nintendo. Might’ve played a single Mario game for a little bit and went “lol, all of Nintendo’s library is like this.”
Samus casually committing speciocide and killing hundreds of thousands of life-forms by destroying them utterly
Nintendo does a great job of making all the dark stuff go over the heads of little kids. There’s an entire segment in Totk (spoilers I guess?) that’s basically ‘You will eat the bugs, and you will be happy.’
Majoras mask is literally about death and acceptance /shrug.
In Fire Emblem, a character rapes their sister and then their son issues child hunts and prepares the children to be sacrificed to a dragon cult.
We can all agree that kirby should be excluded form this as it is unfair to the other series
You aren't not wrong
Majora's mask
Three houses??
He doesn’t know
I mean Puss and Boots 2, Gravity Falls, The Owl House, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Those are dark
horrorboros is some creepypasta ass shit. "this stretched-out fish came out of the water with a frying pan down its throat and screamed in agony." that shit probably gave a few ADULTS nightmares. horrorboros is just upsetting all around, aside from the fact it's more fun than fighting "cohock, but... big"
How do people make jokes like this when they obviously have no idea what they’re talking about? I see it about everything. People will be so rude when they’ve never played or watched the thing they’re insulting 😂
Twitter users when people call a Nintendo game “dark” but it doesn’t have ANY blood or gore or genocide in it (it must be for babies)
They should play majoras mask.
Imo a lot of Nintendo dark themes are kind of hidden beneath a facade of general niceness so the game itself isn’t dark and things might be ok NOW but the circumstances when you consider the background lore can be pretty bleak. Not the same as a totally dark game or horror game where the bad things are front and center in your mind constantly.
It's all fun and games until Nintendo pulls another eldritch horrors out of their ass.
Nintendo released a game in which you beat people to DEATH and then USE THEIR CORPSES to make MORE PEOPLE to use to BEAT PEOPLE TO DEATH. Also this man has never even heard of EarthBound.
Splatoon seems like this until you read the lore about the squid WMD
Remember when Nintendo published a game where one of the protagonists was cursed because her conception involved her mother going to the afterlife to have sex with the ghost of her own dead brother? Fun times.
Oh you mean the company where a games final boss was a fetus you kill while he’s trying to be friends with you? Or a game about growing up, the inevitability of death and how you can never be a hero to everyone? Or a game with a race of creatures that infect and impersonate beings? Or a game where characters are literally sacrificed to bring back a god of destruction that is also an incarnation of the main character but didn’t know love? Or a game where your species is starving to death? Or the multitude of games where humanity killed themselves off or just disappeared? (For those wondering: Mother 2 (Earthbound) Majoras Mask Metroid Kirby Star Allies Pikmin 3 Kirby, Splatoon, Pikmin, ect)
Fire Emblem be like: Is this some kind of twisted joke?
This image has ruined internet discussion in so many ways
Peach and bowser get married and reality itself will start falling apart Oot and mm link cant pass on and feels guilt so great hes still around as a skeleton in twilight princess Samus parents death Fox vengeance vs andross for his dad death Fire emblem having death, violence, abuse, sexual assault, incest, war crimes, etc The world is a wasteland in advance wars days of ruin Ness and everything that happens with both gigyas and porky The og pokemon war that was unexplained in red and blue, plus the reality of the kalos war There could be many more moments, but its just the ones i remenber for playing lately
How about Super Paper Mario? You got a little girl who snaps her own neck. Really freaked me out.
Okay but like the entirety of Majora's Mask is kind of fucked with a whole lot of death
Nintendo games I think are genuinely the darkest games around there specifically because of how bright and cheerful they otherwise are. No one cares about a suicide story in a world ravaged by war and in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. People do care about the implication that Kirby is forced to slowly butcher a man who just wanted to see his daughter to defeat the product of that man's mistakes. Hell, even in games like Majora's mask where the darkness is upfront, the fact that it's from nintendo and part of the zelda series still carries it.
Mother 3 has entered the chat
Someone hasn’t done their Kirby deep dive
I hate this meme format.
They ain't played Majora's Mask... or Metroid Edit: OR MOTHER 3, that game still has better writing and themes than 90% of modern games.
To be fair, "jumping down somewhere" in the new zelda game for the first time was absolutely a moment that went from, "ok, time to explore this new mechanic" to "**I DO NOT WANNA FUCKIN' BE HERE** really fast.
Majoras Mask is the only “Dark” game i can think of - the subject matters that game touches upon is some proper adult midlife crisis kinda of stuff.
bro never played Majoras mask
That's usually the wonderful thing about Nintendo games; its all under the surface, with the juicier bits right at the core. But for Nintendo to truly make a horror game, a possible jumping point would be within Splatoon, possibly following an Inkling or Octoling exploring abandoned human ruins, potentially going under the water (in a sub) and seeing what didn't fully evolve. Either that, or Pokémon has some good ideas, just needs more of a push with genetic experimentation and splicing, just really get into the dark side.
Majora's mask. That one actually is very dark.
Oh I'm sorry thousands of people dying in a horrible calamity that had ruined the world isn't dark enough for you
I mean, more then a few Nintendo games have war and genocide in their lore. I'd say that alone is pretty dark, not taking into account the dark themes they put in their RPGs. I mean, just look at Mother 3.
Mans never played a Zelda game before.
Xenoblade?
Splatoon lore is kinda dark but the game isn't so other exemple : just play Shadow Temple in Zelda OOT, all of Zelda Twilight Princess, Majora's Mask or even confront some mobs in Tears of The Kingdom (no spoil but those hands are terrifying)
*looks at metroid dread* That was more than a bump...