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  • Guilty Gear -STRIVE-: The Grand Finale has Sol unveiling his completed Outrage, an Infinity +1 Sword Wave-Motion Gun capable of killing gods. As Sol is practically a Physical God himself, he is asked why he would ever bother creating such an absurdly powerful weapon when he plain doesn't need it, and Sol's response amounts to "Well, I needed to do something to occupy my time, didn't I?" Like a dad working on an old car.
  • Euro Truck Simulator. That's right, a truck simulation game that's awesome to play. Oh, and it can be modded, making it even more awesome. You can end up driving around Europe with a Big huge fucking American Rig.
    • You can also download some trailers that are mindblowingly difficult to deliver, which makes it even more cooler. Like a Baobab Tree.
  • Kaz Hirai's ecstatic reveal of Ridge Racer on the PlayStation Portable at E3 2006, which has become a Memetic Mutation.
  • Papers, Please. The game that manages to make border immigration control an engaging experience.
  • Advanced V.G. makes waitressing look cool and exciting, by having them duke it out in a MMA competition, for the title of "Virgin Goddess". Then adds nefarious schemes by the group sponsoring the tournament and genetically enhanced hybrids to the mix. They may as well call it The Queen of Fighters.
  • The Ace Attorney series lives off this trope. While trials are important and serious affairs in real life, in the game a trial is an epic battle of wits. With theme music, action lines, people reacting to arguments as if they have been physically struck, and finger pointing... lots and lots of finger pointing. That it remains hilariously self-aware of its over-the-top nature only makes the games that much more appealing.
  • The girls of Touhou's Scarlet Devil Mansion playing The best game of Jenga EVER!
    • A particular Fanvid called "Sakkyun Hair Makeover." Sakuya finds Meiling sleeping on the job, and decides to take advantage of the situation by...styling her hair. Like almost every girl from the Windows generation up. And cosplaying as them. All done with dramatic poses and ham.
    • The fangame Touhou Soccer. This is a series with little girls having uber destructive powers. And they're using to play soccer. Trailer can be seen here.
  • In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, everything the Prince does is awesome. Even a relatively mundane act, such as taking a drink of water, is accompanied by a dramatic bullet-time camera rotozoom closeup, heroic music, and whooshing sound effects. It's the coolest water-drinking animation ever devised.
    • Similar to the potion-drinking in the 3D The Legend of Zelda games, where the camera closes on Link, who quickly "draws" the bottle, and after drinking, does an heroic lip-cleaning (sometimes breathing a fog colored as the potion). Only lacks different music and slow motion (though Time Stands Still as you drink) to try being more awesome.
    • Taken even further in Super Smash Bros. Melee, where Young Link's single-player victory montage consists entirely of shots of him drinking milk, and the final triumphant chord coincides with a mouth-wipe in slow motion.
    • In the same vein, Toon Link's Baton-taunt is so incredibly overdone that it makes his game-self look humble and modest in comparison. He waves that thing like the fate of the world would depend on it (OK, it once did, but that's not the case here).
    • Well he is running around in the hot desert sun, he's epicly thirsty!
  • Metal Gear Solid features villain Revolver Ocelot who seems to feel...enthusiastic...about reloading: an otherwise mundane (if necessary) component of successful gunfighting.
    • In his particular case, its because Ocelot is good with his six shooter that he barely needs to reload it during combat. He is excited because Snake is a big enough challenge that he actually needs more than just six bullets.
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater plays this trope straight by inserting a vocals-only version of the game's theme song to an otherwise unremarkable ladder climbing sequence. This addition, however, has led to the ladder sequence becoming one of the game's most memorable parts, as many of those as there are in the game to begin with.
  • During Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots's Microwave scene, there's a slow-mo shot of Sunny successfully finishing her eggs and jumping jubilantly. The rest of that scene IS actually epic, and Sunny's moment is emotional when taken in context, but out of context it seems really silly.
    • And This scene involves the local equivalent of Light's potato chips.
  • In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, sound effects play from nowhere whenever you:
    • Use the bionic arm's sonar or sprint punch (This sound effect is a Shout-Out to The Six Million Dollar Man.)
    • Get on a weapon emplacement, such as a heavy machine gun or anti-aircraft gun.
    • Get on D-Horse.
  • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening has an Establishing Character Moment in its first cutscene:
    • Dante performs an utterly epic chair-sitting and phone-answering combo. Say this about Dante, he never does anything by halfs. Not even to answer a phone with nothing beyond "Sorry, not open for business yet." Link here at about 2:20
    • Slow. Motion. Pizza. Eating. Specifically taking a break during battle while scythes are sticking out of his body to take a bite from said pizza.
  • Devil May Cry 4:
    • This scene. In Mission 17, both Dante AND Agnus got into the act of being as over-the-top as possible while engaging in Hamlet-esque theatricals before their fight!
    • The game ends with Dante kicking down a door, making an Angels Pose with Lady and Trish, having an explosion right behind them, and firing his guns indiscriminately for no reason other than to look cool.
  • DmC: Devil May Cry: In the opening, Dante gets dressed in epic fashion while under attack by a 15-foot tall demon, using a series of acrobatics and slow-motion in the process.
  • The Pokémon games all feature calm, ambient music while your character walks around. All very good and well... until Nintendo needed some music for the Pokémon levels of Super Smash Bros., at which point the songs (except for the battle themes, which are already awesome) gained a symphony orchestra's worth of strings, horns and electric guitars, and mutated into this, this and this. And that's before we get onto the Ominous Latin Chanting of the game theme itself...
    • Ditto (pun semi-intended) for the Pokémon theme remixes in the Pokémon Stadium series.
    • Brawl is made of this trope.
    • The battle scenes in Pokémon Black and White could be seen as this due to the way the camera moves around almost constantly.
    • Pokemon games have been doing this all over the place for years now. Music, battle settings and camera movement, attack animation... It's sometimes justified; when you're in a huge battle in the story or metagame, it does portray how awesome things get. But what should otherwise be a mundane 5 second battle with wild Pokemon you've run into a million times before, it starts to get a little ridiculous and some of it can make the battles last longer than they have to.
  • Mario Strikers: Charged takes soccer and applies a LOT of Mundane Made Awesome to every aspect of the game. But don't take our word for it. And yes, everything in that video actually can happen in-game.
  • The boss battle musics from Donkey Kong 64 are the music of their levels, with full synth orchestras. Common instruments include strings, vibraphones, pan flutes, oboes, and clarinets. This has spread to popular remix site VG Music, under the moniker "Boss Remix". Example from Luigi's Mansion.
    • In this interview the game's compositer Grant Kirkhope admitted he likes to "write big melodramatic tunes that are a bit tongue-in-cheek" and that "Bosses are always a good opportunity to do this." It was only expected for this other projects like the Banjo games and Grabbed by the Ghoulies to follow this trend.
  • Scribblenauts: "...steak can be attached to a baby to attract lions..." Shows you that the ESRB really does have fun with their games, even though they may be taking it a bit too seriously.
  • In Mega Man Battle Network 1-5 Lan jumps into the air and shouts "Jack in!! Mega Man! EXECUTE!" every time he does what is simply putting a plug in a slot (and he isn't even doing that in BN 4, 5, or 6 due to the PETs being wireless). This is taken a step further when he spins the PET it to make the "MegaMan Symbol".
    • Or the officials' Mad Operation Skillz in EXE2 during the Shadowman chapter? Extreme keyboarding to the max!
    • Throughout the series you're running an anti-virus program! It IS awesome, when you think about it. What do you think operating actually is? That's right, constantly manually rewriting code to adapt to a virus trying to defend itself. Granted, it IS in the form of Extreme Graphical Representation, but still, think about that for a minute.
  • Viewtiful Joe. Joe's over-dramatic bullet time action poses can actually kill enemies.
    • His "epic costume change" at the beginning of the second game (right after a Male Gaze of his girlfriend's new set) makes him perform a Ginyu Force style pose so a V can anticlimactically * poof* onto his hat.
    Joe: "Go go phat-hat!"
    * poof*
    Joe: "SHAZAM!"
  • Most of the Kunio-kun series practically lives off this trope. Starting from River City Ransom, most of the series has lots and lots of comical violence, even the sports games, where it become so absurd it's just plain awesome. And it doesn't stop there. One game features a cross-country event where you can run through people's houses. Super Dodge Ball involves players not just getting eliminated, they DIE — and players and the ball go flying all over the place. And there's a lot more where that came from:
    • And that's not even counting the other versions of Super Dodge Ball. The Neo Geo version could be mistaken for an SNK game, or another Pocket Fighter.
    • Nekketsu Volleyball Dayo Kunio-kun had rather weird teams. The smile team bounces the ball off their asses.
    • Nekketsu! Street Basket — Ganbare Dunk Heroes had not one, not two, but THREE hoops stacked on top of each other, reaching absurd heights. And that's not even mentioning the fact that you can break the hoops and used them as weapons. Mario's got nothing on this.
    • The Kunio-Kun soccer games also had their insane share of violence, especially the second, which allowed you to jump, and you could pull off special shots and whatnot... And there's the weather changes, like lightning bolts.
    • Downtown Nekketsu Baseball Monogatari let you do things just as drop-kick and slide-kick people, and throw the ball at the umpires!
    • Being able to beat opponents silly in Ike Ike! Nekketsu Hockey is enough for the price of admission alone.
    • Kunio no Oden is a puzzle game... That happens to be the visualisation of a food-eating contest.
    • In Shin Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun-Kunio Tachi No Banka, you can play as Alex and Ryan's girlfriends and beat up enemies with them. So, What do you mean it's not Awesome?
    • Kunio-Kun/Alex himself. He's the freaking hero of the entire series, an incredible fighter (without pulling out any Ki Manipulation whatsoever, except the stat-affecting kinds of techniques, which kinda makes sense), a super-star sportsman, and he's got a girlfriend who can kick ass. King of Video Gaming Awesome.
    • As of River City Super Sports Challenge, it is apparently fair sportsmanship to use grenades in a triathlon, throw opponents off cliffs, push them in front of oncoming trains, and drown them during swimming sessions.
  • Near the end of Zork: Grand Inquisitor, Grand Inquisitor Yannick gives a speech, in which he praises the vast technological advances of the past hundred years. They're actually bloated praise for wonder knives, the Clapper, and ice cubes.
    • Not to mention his long rant on proper dental floss technique.
  • The prologue of Dark Cloud 2 features a circus performance where an elephant bicycle-kicks a large ball (complete with The Matrix-style slow-motion pan-around camera work) and bounces it off two clowns' noses before catching it with its trunk.
  • In The World Ends with You, players take part in a game for their survival, where they have to complete missions while facing insanely tough enemies, which can only be fought using reality bending, psychic pins. In fairness, most of the ones Neku can use give him the power to manifest flames and shoot projectiles out of his hands and the like... but the ones his allies use control stuffed cats, drop trash out of the sky with taps of a cell phone, propel a skateboard...
    • Minamimoto activating his final attack by reciting pi to 150 digits! You could say Sho is king of this trope. He demonstrates Math and Art can be pure awesome.
    • The bonus chapter "Another Day" is all about this. INPINCIBLE Shuto Dan would like you to know his pins are his SOUL and if you don't think the same... well, actually it doesn't occur to him that you might think any different.
  • The creators of Duke Nukem really take the cake with this one.
  • For League of Legends, Imagine Dragons made a song and accompanying music video that took the 2014 world championship for the game, itself a momentous occasion, and made it, in the game's own words, godlike.
  • Most, if not all of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! involved people with real, though non-dramatic problems, which were fixed by dancing! Problems that included getting into college, cutting hair, recruiting for a school choir club, and not wetting the bed.
    • Elite Beat Agents, its Americanized spiritual successor, is just as weird. Examples include two instances of babysitting, directing a movie (not the movie itself; the directing), driving a pregnant woman to the hospital, romancing a woman with artistry, digging for oil, auditioning for a play, and recovering from a cold.
    • For an example that doesn't have much to do with the dancing (yet,) the opening of one of Ouendan 2's bonus levels has your target emit an epic scream because some guy dropped his cellphone. Then again, he dropped it in the sewers, and he needed to text his girlfriend for Christmas...
  • Trauma Center: During most of the game, you feel like you are playing space invaders on someone's stomach. But again that "is" indeed awesome. Also, the final GUILT parasite at Under The Knife 1 Is a giant spider parasite that creates a web that seems to "Absorb" heartbeats?. Also, a doctor who begins an operation with a.... Ass Kicking Pose and/or hand gestures!
    Nurse: There are deep lacerations along the sternum—WHERE ALIENS HAVE TAKEN OVER HIS BODY!!
    Doctor: HUWHAAAAAAAAAAAAT???
    Nurse: THEY'RE SHOOTING X-RAY BEAMS OUT OF THEIR RADIOACTIVE SUPERCORES! USE YOUR ZAPPY GUN TO STOP THEM!
    • That's pretty much exactly how an Ops Stigma operation actually goes, by the way.
  • Heroes of Might and Magic V has a lot of this during the in-game cutscenes. The characters have very few scripted gestures they can perform, so you often see them waving their arms around and glowing with arcane power while holding a perfectly normal conversation. Narm ensues.
  • The little-known DS adventure game LifeSigns: Surgical Unit has this in ridiculous quantities, especially in the first game, which had dramatic cutaways practically every time you took a step.
    • Also, when the main character, Tendo, finishes up an operation, he always comments on his sutures ("That's... Perfect!") accompanied with a light flash and sound effect for no apparent reason.
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 Just... well, just this.
    • Oh snap!
  • How do you vent your frustration over Mega Man 2's Air Man? Put it in the form of a music video.
  • Metroid Prime: No, Samus, you should not be using your badass Arm Cannon to weld a transistor.
  • The game Audiosurf generates levels based on audio files. You're able to induce this effect yourself once you realize that not only can you give the same effect to less energetic song, but for any audio file, from speeches, to a recording of the Argument Clinic sketch, to John Cage's 4'33''.
  • One of Final Fantasy VIII's early cutscenes is of a satellite dish being turned on. It gets the full FMV treatment: dramatic camera motion, gratuitously complex machinery at work, the whole nine yards. It even finishes by beaming a frickin' laser into space.note 
  • Final Fantasy X-2 features the same fetch quests that so dominate the RPG genre, save that this time they're all completely goddamn extreme. Complete with Angels Pose.
    • In the same game, you don't simply "get" items, the same boring way you did in all the previous games. Nope, in this game you SCORE an item! YEAH!
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2 takes the well known and loved Chocobo March and gives it a heavy metal makeover — "Crazy Chocobo".
  • In Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy, Laguna calls his own Perfect EX Burst "The greatest attack ever!"
  • Final Fantasy XV let's Noctis go fishing. If you snag a fish on the line, super badass battle theme-type music starts playing. All for catching a single fish.
  • In the early Persona games, the eponymous Personae were called forth by just sort of willing them into being. Perhaps with the occasional cry of "Persona!" or "Help Me!". In Persona 3, Personae are summoned by shooting yourself in the head. In Persona 4, the gun-shaped Evokers are removed, and Personae are now summoned by shattering tarot cards by spinning, kicking it, smashing it with a chair, shooting it (with a real gun this time), or just crushing it with your bare hand.
  • In Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, one of Kyle's Idle Animations is shaving his beard with a lightsaber. In the same game, often times, you will be, say, walking through a perfectly mundane hallway with some of the most epic music in the game. Often with... amusing results. Probably unintentional, sadly.
  • No More Heroes. The Coconut Collector guy says that coconuts are more important than human life and doing jobs gives you favour with the God of Mowing/Garbage/Whatever.
  • The opening cutscene of Fable II has a small bird flying through a city, accompanied by epic music. It then poops. The cutscene focuses on the poo, and goes into Bullet Time as it falls...then lands straight on the Hero's head.
    • The opening cinematic of Fable III has the mock-epic escape of the Rebellious Chicken.
  • The opening video for Gaia Online's MMO zOMG! features a character putting on some rings to epic music. The rings then burst into flame.
  • Makai Kingdom: Corn.
  • In the PS2 and Wii rereleases of Resident Evil 4, Leon can get a gangster outfit. If you hit the reload button while using the infinite ammo Chicago Typewriter, he'll instead reach up and adjust it. On the third push, the camera angle changes to low-angle, he flings the hat into the air, and catches and dons it with a pose more suited to someone from High School Musical.
  • Dragon Quest Swords has the tombola sequence at the item shop, which is given all of the pomp and circumstance of unleashing a Mighty Strike to what amounts to spinning a wheel for a single ball to pop out, although the balls that give out higher tier prizes do tend to be shot out of the machine with the force of a cannon shot and skid and spark afterwards.
  • Rhythm Heaven is all over this trope, making rhythm-based minigames with energetic music out of things like vegetable picking, bird migration, calligraphy, see-saw testing, firewood cutting, giving an interview, going for a walk, and much more.
  • Complete any level in Peggle (ANY level) and the game goes into slow-mo, cranks up Ode to Joy, and draws a trail of rainbows behind your ball.
  • Castle Crashers. From fighting giant literal Cat Fish, weird..Giant fuzzy black things...Cute Teddy bears that attack you with dead fish, using a lollipop or a carrot as your own weapon... FIGHTING TO THE DEATH TO SEE WHO KISSES THE PRINCESSES AFTER YOU BATTLE HEROICALLY TOGETHER TO SAVE THEM.
  • In Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, epic music plays as Regal does what can only be described as turning off the lights. Sure he's using special handcuffs, but Regal wearing handcuffs is not exactly something new.
  • Taking the Daredevil trait in The Sims 3 allows you to go EXTREME versions of mundane things. 'Read something EXTREME' or 'Take EXTREME shower', for example.
    • Taking the Evil trait gives you actions like 'Wash hands with evil soap' and 'Read something maniacal'.
  • Mega Man ZX Advent is loaded with this. Here's an example, and a more X-TREME example! During gameplay, MegaMerging takes less than a second.
  • Street Fighter IV has its final boss. An evil clone who can teleport, use everybody's attacks, and has an absolutely epic voice, and is borderline Nightmare Fuel announces his name... "I... am... SETH!"
    • And this is without even mentioning that Seth looks an awful lot like Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen. With a spinning Yin-Yang symbol in his stomach and no genitals.
    • Street Fighter EX has its share of Mundane Made Awesome, too. Cracker Jack hits you with a baseball bat so hard you bounce off the moon and back to Earth, Zangief goes out of the atmosphere in his Final Atomic Buster, and Skullomania...
  • Deadly Creatures takes this trope and applies it to ARACHNIDS. Seriously, the player controls a realistic-looking spider and scorpion, and both of them are capable of EPIC ARACHNID MARTIAL ARTS SMACKDOWNS on other arthropods, lizards, and small mammals:
    • The Tarantula can use its spinnerets to make web zip lines, can spin-kick enemies into the air, and has a ninja stealth pounce attack that can hit a FLYING WASP.
    • The Scorpion can block attacks and flip enemies with its pincers, and has the ability to perform insanely over-the-top finishing kills in very Kratos-esque ways. For example, it can spear a mantis with its stinger, use the tail to slam it into the ground, grab the mantis' claw with its own pincer, stab the mantis with its own goddamn claw, and finally drive the mantis' claw in even deeper with a slam of its pincer to finish the poor bastard off.
  • The aluminum bat power-up in Backyard Baseball. The bat hits the ball, then the ball goes flying high (sometimes over a very, very tall wall) while a whooshing sound plays and immediately the character's Leitmotif (which is often Awesome Music) plays.
  • Even if not on a over-the-top manner, Sonic and the Black Knight features quick-time events for trading presents with villagers.
  • Gauntlet Dark Legacy does this with the names of its Legendary Items, all spoken with epic intonation in Sumner's booming epic voice. The item names themselves also feature this with gems as the SCIMITAR OF DECAPITATION, THE LEGENDARY ICE AXE, and THE LAMP OF DARK OBSTRUCTION!
  • As far as flash games go, Bejeweled 2 and Bejeweled Blitz. A color-matching puzzle game that has more and cooler explosions than most action games definitely qualifies.
    • Bejeweled 3 turns it up to eleven, with even more epic soundtracks, even more awesome combos and special gems, game modes that are absurdly detailed for a gem matching game, complete with Nightmare Fuel-ish consequences (play Ice Storm for an idea of what I mean), and an instant replay available for big combos!
  • Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII has scenes of Materia creation accompanied by battle music. This also applies to the squatting minigame.
  • Bayonetta uses this trope to an extreme, almost the entire game. From mixing drinks, to eating candy, to rescuing stuffed animals. Everything is over-the-top dramatic.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess features a sequence in which Link has to clear the Bokoblins out of an old ghost town, to a faux-Spaghetti Western guitar piece evocative of high-noon shootouts. Later, if you speak to the resident chicken as a wolf, it'll ask you to befriend all the cats in town. And if you accept, you have to hunt down all twenty cats... to the same high-tension piece they had him shooting Bokoblins to.
  • Like a Dragon:
    • Yakuza 3: Whenever Kiryu is having a revelation, which teaches him a brand-new fighting technique, he taps away on his phone so quickly as he has his epiphany, all to update his blog.
    • In Yakuza 4, the other playable characters take this up to eleven. Saejima doesn't cotton to all that newfangled technology, so he makes his Revelations with a wood-carving set, cutting an image from a piece of wood in the most epic fashion imaginable. Tanimura, while perfectly capable of using a cellphone, prefers to create his Revelations by sketchbook, demonstrating in the process that he apparently graduated from the Light Yagami School of Notebook Writing. Akiyama and Kiryu are epic as ever with EXTREEEEEME texting and blog-updating.
    • The series' Karaoke-sequences qualify. At first, your player character (or your date) is just singing in front of a screen, but halfway through the song, an appropriate stage materializes out of nowhere, and the singer starts rocking out with a full stage-show, including lights, pyrotechnics, dancing and microphone-spinning. Karaoke to the MAX!
    • Proving that he's always been this way, Kiryu in particular gets very intense in Yakuza 0 when playing Sega arcade games or racing slot cars. Even the announcer trying to hype things up can't compete with Kiryu's epic poses.
      Tanomu dase...ore no GOREMU TAIGA!
    • Yakuza: Like a Dragon takes this trope to new heights. The new protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga, is a Mr. Imagination who contextualizes gritty street brawls in his mind as RPG battles. His chosen occupations, as well as those of his compatriots, are analogous to RPG classes like mages and paladins. The street punks and yakuza he crosses fists with are imagined as enemies one may find in an RPG. Calling for backup is likened to Summon Magic, with his chosen allies (from hardened yakuza to cute animals) having over-the-top flashy attacks.
  • In Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, you can choose to have every kill with a lightsaber move given a cinematic slow-motion effect.
    • And this is why this saga was so epic actually : you probably never heard of a LIGHTSABER kill considered as "mundane" before...
  • WWE SmackDown Vs. RAW. The game will "sell" a created wrestler's Finishing Move like it's the most awesome thing ever. Watch as the game goes into slow motion with dramatic "whoosh" sound effect when your created wrestler does his finisher... an eye poke.
  • In Zettai Hero Project, this is enforced in the Shakugan no Shana-themed Bonus Dungeon. All normal attacks are forbidden, and you have to fight using only over-the-top special attacks.
  • Assassin's Creed II has... almost hilariously mundane Press X to Not Die events. For example, you get one to shake someone's hand.
    • Hugging.
    • Drinking Coffee.
  • In Mass Effect, there is a huge build-up, with a swelling of music and a dynamic cut scene, that leads to you stepping out of a stalled elevator onto the exterior surface of Citadel tower. The moment you're out of the elevator, the music stops and everything is back to normal. While this is the beginning of one of the most awesome run-and-gun sequences in all of video game history, the build-up for just getting out of an elevator is a little ridiculous.
    • A short time later, the act of climbing over a fallen statue is given a treatment usually reserved for Big Damn Heroes moments. Although it's slightly justified as Shepard's revealed to have survived the wreckage of Sovereign crashing through the window, having merely broken their arm taking down the Reaper.
    • In Mass Effect 2, during Thane's loyalty mission, Commander Shepard is told about a Shepard VI, that spouts lines such as "I delete data like you on the way to real errors!" and when it crashes, the error message says that "The fate of the Galaxy is at stake, and you should try to fix the problem yourself". To which Tali or Garrus will comment "That's pretty extreme, Commander."
    • Aria's intonation during her famous establishing scene: "Don't. Fuck. With Aria." It was a clearly over-the-top method of setting up a Forced Meme that actually worked, launching Aria to Ensemble Dark Horse status.
    • Mass relays are another possible subversion with "awesome made mundane": Gigantic ancient spaceship shooting you faster then light across the galaxy in a huge thunderous BOOM? Shepard and other in-universe characters literally do it all the time. It's like making a business flight...
    • Also there's the Charon relay; you know that dwarf-planet Pluto? The rather boring little celestial object that got downgraded from a planet? Its moon ended up being mankind's most important discovery and connection to the rest of the galaxy, basically launching the game's story.
    • In Mass Effect 3, the Citadel DLC is filled with these moments. Two notable ones are Traynor's Toothbrush saving the Normandy and an Eyed Screen when she meets Polgara T'Suzsa for a game of Asari Chess.
    • Traynor's toothbrush itself is said to use mass effect fields to clean teeth, leading Javik to claim that in his Cycle, the Protheans used their finally-honed biotic abilities for the same function, making it both this and "awesome made mundane".
    • The mass effect itself. By running a positive or negative charge through through Element Zero, one can lower or increase it's mass. This simple principle is the basis for pretty much all advanced technology in the galaxy.
  • Mirror's Edge is a game about mail delivery. Via Le Parkour, while people try to shoot you.
  • Peeking at hot springs is Serious Business for Winfield. With the most dramatic speech ever.
    • Oh and fighting a boulder in generation 1, that definitely counts.
  • In the Higurashi: When They Cry Visual Novel, the water gun fight in Tsumihoroboshi-hen brought this trope up to eleven with Night when the Invisible Scares you playing in the background of the entire 10 minute fight
  • X-Play parodied the whole extreme game trend in the early to mid-2000s with BRIAN BLESSED-level ham Johnny X-treme. The character decided no one was making a game X-TREME enough for him, so he created Johnny X-treme's X-treme Adventure, a game that will PUNCH YOUR BALLS OFF with gameplay that feels like BAKING A LOAD OF COOKIES UP IN YOUR ASS. Despite having nukes, chainsaw rocket launchers, flying snakes with searchlights, a water level with alligators used as skis, UNLOCKABALLZ(tm), and a battle with a sharkasaurus in front of the White House, the game got a completely un-X-TREME 3...out of 5.
  • FIFA World Cup 2002 opens with a full orchestra, which plays at the start of a match to epic shots of the stadium, the teams walking out, over the top goal celebrations, missed shot reactions, even fouls. The series became far more cut and dry in future installments.
  • NBA In The Zone had the option of having the national anthem before the game, like it were game seven of the finals or something.
  • Saints Row: The Third had a trailer which promised the game to be huge and full of never before seen footage from the game... of someone being punched in the nuts to truly epic music. As one Youtube comment claims, Grand Theft Auto raises the bar, Saints Row holds it to its crotch and pretends it's a cock.
  • Dustforce makes cleaning awesome by adding trickjumps, wall running and slow-motion.
  • The Elder Scrolls
    • Dragons, for whom their Language of Magic is so intrinsic, don't breathe fire so much as command fire into existence using the Thu'um. One of the Skyrim loading screens took this fact to the conclusion that when two dragons fight, they're really having an intense verbal debate. Essentially, they Invert the trope, making it Awesome Made Mundane. Paarthurnax, a friendly dragon, essentially confirms this in-game when, after he teaches you a word for Fire Breath, asks you to use it on him, and once that is done he states "It has been so long since I talked to another in my own language" (Paraphrased).
    • The "Throw Voice" shout in Skyrim plays it straight.. The Dragonborn uses the Thu'um to distract foes, causing a goofy, high-pitched voice to begin hurling insults at them from an unknown source. Unless this Shout was created by the Dragon Priests, one has to wonder what situation would lead a Dragon to ever feel the need to hurl the insult, "Hey, Skeever Butt!" at someone?
  • Asura's Wrath, with Wyzen turning Giant sized, bigger than the planet, trying to poke asura to death with a single finger. a finger as big as a country, but still a finger nonetheless.
  • Inazuma Eleven series: Middleschoolers play football with Elemental Powers, complete with Calling Your Attacks and Power of Friendship.
  • Super Smash Bros.. Brawl took "Gourmet Race" from Kirby Super Star, probably one of the most remixed video game tunes ever, and decided that it should be FUCKIN METAL.
  • Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U:
    • During the Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo Wii U 50-Fact Extravaganza, the announcer made even the simplest aspects of the game sound epic: "On the Game Pad, there's a MICROPHONE!!"
    • Wii Fit Trainer's entire fighting style consists of high-speed, high-impact yoga. This includes a method of breathing that causes nearby opponents to explode, using hula hoops to achieve flight, and shooting energy blasts by collecting solar energy. Then there's her Final Smash, where she shoots out silhouettes of herself as she turns normal fitness instructions into Badass Boasts like "Here, I'll show you" or "Now, let's try it together."
  • The New Conglomerate in PlanetSide 1 take this approach to weapon design. Rather than using boring old gunpowder guns, they shoot a gunpowder bullet and then accelerate it down the railgun's barrel. Instead of using a chaingun or something big as their assault weapon, they instead put together a triple-barreled rotary shotgun with a range of 6 inches. Their sidearm is of course, the Magscatter SHOTGUN PISTOL! Their unhealthy obsession with shotguns continues into the sequel where their gunship has an automatic nose-mounted shotgun cannon.
  • The Town with No Name makes catching a mug of beer sliding from a counter the greatest thing ever with an orchestral sting.
  • Segagaga, where making videogames is a horrifically dangerous endeavor that physically transforms programmers into monsters due to stress.
  • In the James Bond game Agent Under Fire, R finishes listing the (impressive) combat upgrades to Bond's car with "and of course, a refrigerated beverage holder."
    • Also, the game gives you points for various "Bond Moves". Many of these are required to beat the level, and/or are incredibly mundane tasks. But each time you do one, you get points, to the score of 007.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 1 Sad Battle Music, "Tragic Decision", only plays for the most climatic and dramatic of battles towards the final stretches of the story... Unless you do a certain sidequest chain that ends with a Optional Boss under that same theme, said boss being Bana, a Card-Carrying Villain Ridiculously Cute Critter.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed plays the incredibly upbeat battle theme for multiple choice questions in two sidequests: one for quizzing new soldiers, and one for two kids helping sort produce at a store.
  • Resonance of Fate features a Christmas Episode where the protagonists dress up to go around delivering presents to children. It does this by equipping each of them with a sack full of presents classed as grenades and replacing the local Random Encounters with the children they're delivering too. All this is enough to qualify by itself... but the Hero Bar is still intact and very functional, meaning presents can be delivered using Hero Actions, and all the Gun Fu, dramatic camera angles, and badass one-liners they encompass.
  • Early in Little Busters!, there's a scene where Kyousuke needs to collect aphorisms for a class and so decides to listen to his friends and quote them. Any time one of them (usually Masato) says something that sounds kind of stupid, or reflects badly on them out of context, he eagerly announces that he's found another...and the screen changes to show a clouds moving while the light slowly peaks through, dramatic music playing, while the quote slowly flashes up on the screen, all in a way as over-the-top as possible. Which of course only makes them look even more stupid.
  • In the ending of Little Inferno raising the booms at the gate to the Tomorrow Corporation headquarter requires that you request it in an appropriately dramatic fashion. After shouting "GATE OPPERATOR, OPEN THE GATE!" apparently huge steam engines are powered up and with booming honks eject massive jets of steam into the air, accompanied by music appropriate for such a huge step into the unknown that lies beyond the gate.
  • Street Fighter X Tekken has this. Not so much the Street Fighter characters in any sense, but the creators had to place the Tekken characters, with the majority having nothing more than simple and mundane martial arts proficiency, into the rather frantic and outrageous Street Fighter style, with super moves and all the rest. The end result really plays up their capabilities, with no shortage of special effects.
  • Arc System Works has the uncanny ability to make even trivial tasks like round-calling incredibly epic. For example:
    Heaven or Hell! Duel 1! LET'S ROCK!
    The Time of Retribution. Battle 1! DECIDE THE DESTINY!
  • Silent Hill 2 does have the most intense stroll through the woods you ever experienced!
  • World of Warcraft does this with the Achievements system. Sure, some of the things it marks are things like killing the final boss of the final dungeon of the expansion... and others are things like making 500 bandages, catching your twenty-fifth fish, or getting to level 10 (which usually takes about 20 minutes, if you take time to enjoy the scenery). And of course there are some people who still find it necessary to congratulate every single achievement you get, no matter how easy and mundane - thanks Blizzard for refusing to allow players to disable achievement announcements in guild chats.
  • In Quest for Glory IV, placating Baba Yaga when you come to visit involves you bringing her a snack, as in the first game. However rather than bring her a mandrake root, in Shadows of Darkness you bake her a pie. By letting the skulls which guard her hut with Frickin' Laser Beams cook it.
    • Additionally, there's gags throughout the series about wizards using powerful spells for mundane purposes, such as using levitation or Fetch spells to get something off the top shelf because they're too lazy to reach for it. The player can even do this themselves, like by using Flame Dart—a spell that flings explosive fireballs—for such mundane purposes as lighting their camp fire or the fireplace in their room.
  • One concept art piece for Mario & Luigi: Dream Team depicts a ferocious Bowser triumphantly stomping a pillow. And not one of the Pi'illo folk, either, but a regular white pillow.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV parodies this trope with the Venturas Poker Challenge show, which uses dramatic music cues, eye-popping graphics, instant replay, and overly enthusiastic commentators in attempt to make a group of people sitting silently around and trying to show as little emotion as possible while playing cards to appear exciting.
  • The fourth expansion for Crusader Kings II, The Old Gods, opens up various pagan factions as playable, such as the Norse and the Baltics. The trailer is a lot of maps and units and armies being directed around, with death metal and a load of words in bold type.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's and its sequels are pretty much the most utterly terrifying version of "Red Light, Green Light" ever made.
  • Record of Agarest War has the first generation protagonist Leonhardt Raglen pulling off a Rousing Speech to defeat a rock that's blocking their way in the most serious manner. It also serves as the game's tutorial.
  • Viscera Cleanup Detail is basically being a janitor IN SPACE. However, the game did not add weird twists to make wiping blood of the floor interesting, but rather copious amount of Black Comedy and Bloody Hilarious.
  • Undertale:
    • In a Pacifist Run, you go over (somewhat hesitantly) to Undyne's house. When Papyrus bails, she realizes his cooking lessons were supposed to be right then, so, as her overly awesome Boss Battle theme starts up again, she decides to teach you how to cook... THE HARDCORE WAY.
      Undyne: LET'S START WITH THE SAUCE! *room shakes as she stomps* IMAGINE THESE VEGETABLES AS YOUR GREATEST ENEMY!
    • Basically any of the dates available in the Pacifist Run are this to some degree, involving and including: Charts! Spears! Spagetti! Trash! Dramatic Music! Self-Esteem Training! Clothing! Fire! And various other parts that make a basically unfailable event seem as dramatic as combat.
    • There's also the "bird that carries you over a disproportionately small gap" in Waterfall, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, accompanied with appropriately dramatic music.
    • Early in the game, Toriel asks you to perform the "difficult" task of... walking to the end of a perfectly straight hallway (which doesn't even have any Random Encounters to slow you down). The music for this event (which is even listed in the soundtrack as "Unnecessary Tension") is as mock-dramatic as the request.
  • QWOP congratulates you and calls you a national hero for running 100 meters, no matter how long it took. Subverted, in that this is a game where you have to manually coordinate moving your calves and thighs—due to your fictional country's Olympic training program having No Budget (which is apparently so bad that athletes can't even walk naturally)—and even running just 10 meters means you're doing pretty good, so it's not entirely mundane.
  • Cities: Skylines might not be an absolutely mundane game, but it's essentially just a city simulation game. A DLC was developed that introduces natural disasters to the game. Ok, cool. Could be interesting. The The trailer, however, makes it look like the most awesome thing in existence.
  • Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc has a very heavily-stylised approach to showing people arguing. People's sentences fly across the screen and you refute them by literally shooting them down. The sequel even adds debating via verbal swordfighting!
  • NieR: Automata has some dramatic twin stick shooter accompanied with chiptune remix of some of the epic tunes playing while hacking (often done while playing a certain character to weaken bosses during a boss fight). Not to mention the true ending features what is possibly the most emotional Asteroids-meets-Bullet Hell 2D shooter ever, with others sacrificing their save data for you and you sacrificing your save data for somebody else.
  • In Judgement Silversword, one of penultimate boss Mitsurugi Rebirth's attacks doesn't simply kill you instantly. Instead, it pins you to the center of the screen while Mitsurugi readies its sword, the background turns into Michelangelo's The Last Judgement, and then the screen fades to white as Mitsurugi finally swings its sword and kills you.
  • In Rock of Ages 2, the final boss fight against God Himself ends up being, fitting the absurd, Pythonesque tone of the game, a foosball match, with the players alternating between controlling the ball. But it's still a foosball match against God, with a swirling constellation background and legitimately epic music.
  • In Stardew Valley, Perky Goth Abigail will during her engagement period remark that she's "engaged to a farmer" with enormous glee. Whether this is down to the fact she's aware the Player Character is really an awesome farmer or just had very low expectations of ever getting married at all is up for debate.
  • On a more meta level, the music for the NES Pictionary game seems like it should be featured in a game that's about saving the world instead of one where you have to guess what someone is trying to draw.
  • Hypnospace Outlaw:
  • Super Sized Family is just a generic simulation game about raising kids and doing chores, but it has dramatic background music and you get given an army title upon the game's completion.
  • Flight game takes throwing a paper airplane and turns it into a launch game with stars, boosting, and fairly awe-inspiring music.
  • Max: An Autistic Journey: Max gets through ordinary life situations by pretending that he's fighting monsters.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel has Rean summoning his Super Robot by bringing his right hand forward forming an uppercut and says "Heed my call", then raises it up to the air in a swift motion with his hands open and the palm pointing to the sky while screaming "Valimar, the Ashen Knight!" Contrast the other Divine Knight Awakeners who just stretch their hands in the sky while calling them out.
  • Fallout 4: Every. single. kill. using VATS goes into an epic kill-shot. The camera follows the trajectory of your bullet in super-slow-mo all the way until it slams into its target, which then (if you have the right Perk) promptly explodes into a shower of giblets. Quite satisfying when you finally take down a tough opponent; downright silly when you're shooting giant bugs.
    • The same is true of Fallout 3: make a melee attack on a radroach in VATS and you get a cimematic slo-mo of stomping on a giant bug.
  • Progressbar 95: Normally waiting for a progress bar to fill is boring. This game turns it into a mechanic, where you actually have to collect segments to fill it up and avoid other segments or pop-ups which are potentially threatening.
  • Played for Drama in Minecraft: Story Mode, where Reuben dies and drops a piece of raw pork, just like a pig upon death as a mob drop.
  • Game & Watch: High-speed acrobatics just to keep your clothes dry in a rain storm? Taking care of garden pests with a giant mallet? Yes, please.
  • The single largest experience point gain in Planescape: Torment, one of the largest in any roleplaying game ever (two million points), comes from...remembering your name. In remembering his true, original name, the Nameless One finally breaks through the endless cycle of horror and torment that has defined his existence for years uncountable. It's also enough to win the game by itself. The Transcendent One doesn't remember the Nameless One's true name, so knowing his name is enough to bring it to heel.
  • Octopath Traveler II: the final battle of Agnea's route is nothing more than a particularly heated dance-off. However, the game treats it as a serious battle, complete with two form-boss, spell-slinging, weapon-swinging, 11th-Hour Superpower, Theme Music Power-Up, and Post-Victory Collapse.
  • Hiveswap: Act 1 has an "Item Get!"-type scene for acquiring a stale cracker from the kitchen cabinet.

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