Sudden Death

1. In sports, a game-deciding extra period where the first team to score wins. In modern times the losers are not usually put to death.
2. A fairly bad Jean-Claude Van Damme movie in which terrorists take the Vice President of the United States hostage during a Stanley Cup Playoff hockey game at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh. The game continues while JCVD tries to defuse semtex bombs and rescue his kids.

The Hanson Brothers second record, released by Virgin Music Canada. The track list consisted of

1. The hockey song

2. Stick boy

3. We're brewing

4. Not for Mary Lou

5. You can't hide the heino

6. Third man in

7. Danielle (She don't care about hockey)

8. I will never forget her

9. Four heads, one brain

10. Rink rat

11. Pea, pie and pud

12. I'll ask the 8-ball

13. My problem

14. He looked alot like Tiger Williams

15. Sudden death

The energy starts hard with The Hockey Song, and continues hard through the whole album. Track 14, He looked alot like Tiger Williams, is a little bit of a different sound (as it doesn't sound quite as Ramones-y as the rest of the album), and the last track is nothing but load guitar riffs and drum solos, with the occasional background voice. While this album is harder to find than Gross Misconduct, I personally think it's worth the effort. The quality of the tunes is just too good.

A phenomenon in video games where the player loses a life without warning.

The earliest examples of sudden death can be found in certain text adventures. For example, if I chose to go north only to be informed that I had fallen into a pit of spikes and died, that would a sudden death and considered grossly unfair - assuming there was absolutely no hint or warning available. In the 8 bit days or time-consuming tape saves (if any), the sudden death was an infuriating setback. In adventure games, the textbook sudden death would present you with a description of your demise and the cherished phrase "YOU ARE DEAD".

Another breeding ground for sudden deaths is the 3D platformer or FPS. When you walk into an unmarked trap, that's a sudden death. When the signs of danger - a subtly different texture on a wooden floor, for example - are not demonstrated in advance (e.g. by the death of a NPC, or a note of caution in the mission notes), that is also a sudden death. If you're presented with three identical buttons and pressing one of them will make you explode, you'd better believe that's a sudden death. The worst manifestation of sudden death is the game that forces you to navigate a level through trial and error, by "learning" where not to go and what not to do over the course of several deaths.

Certain game types lend themselves to sudden death more than others; it would be impossible to encounter a sudden death in Pac-Man or Tetris. It's worth pointing out that games of this ilk are often converted from or to coin-op versions, and it's unlikely a title that threatened sudden death would attract paying customers for very long. As a result, console or PC games involving exploration of hazardous environments are the most vulnerable genre.

(It is possible to suffer a kind of sudden death in Asteroids, but that's the calculated risk that limits the power of the hyperspace button, and as such is a valid design element - you must choose to expose yourself to the risk.)

The development of fast storage for saved games (the PC's quick save facility in particular) makes the sudden death less of a burden today than it used to be, but at the same time there's an argument to be made that quick saves and the like have made the sudden death a convenient device for the lazy designer who needs to pad out a level or two. At any rate, the phenomenon remains a demonstration of poor design that should never make it past QA.