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Video Game / Crypt Killer

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Crypt Killer is a 1995 light gun shooter (Henry Explorers in Japan) from Konami. In it you play as explorers looking for the Eyes of Guidance in hope of finding the ultimate treasure. Just one catch though, a huge wave of monsters stand in your way. It's nothing a shotgun and a couple of bullets can't fix right?

The arcade was notable in that three players could play the game at once, something that was only reserved for mounted gun games. As it was an early game, CK blended both pre-rendered sprites and 3-D background together. While muddled looking the game plays fast and can be quite addicting. At the end of every stage you're allowed to pick from two paths to continue one that would lead to a different stage. These paths decided what ending you got. The game was also ported to the PlayStation and Sega Saturn albeit without three player co-op.

Crypt Killer provides the following tropes:

  • Ancient Egypt: The pyramid stage where you fight off mummies, swords, hieroglyphs, and the Large Pharaoh Head.
  • Ancient Tomb: Most of the stages are set in underground crypts infested with the undead.
  • Attack of the Monster Appendage: Type 2 Example from the Hydra boss; the battle starts with you battling it's heads sticking out of a pool, one at a time, which spews fireballs at your direction and attempts to bite you. After fending off three or four head attacks, the heads then retreats... before revealing itself as an eight-headed monster.
  • Booby Trap: A reocurring hazard, where you will need to shoot arrows, fireballs and projectile traps that comes at you each level.
  • Bottomless Magazines: Your shotgun will never run out of bullets, although you still need to reload manually by shooting out of the screen.
  • Cloth Fu: Mummies will attack you by slapping you with their bandages. Somehow getting hit by an old piece of cloth can deal enough damage as being struck by a sword or a fireball.
  • Dem Bones: Skeletons serves as recurring mooks that attacks the player in every stage, enough to count as The Goomba. There's also a type of bull-headed skeletons which are stronger than regular skeletons, taking at lest two shots to destroy.
  • Dracolich: Occasionally, you'll be attacked by skeletal dragon heads which will breath fire on you. They're also large and powerful enough to be counted as Giant Mooks, taking up plenty of space on the screen and soaking up several shots before falling apart to pieces.
  • Elemental Embodiment:
    • Water elementals, which shows up as humanoid blue blobs capable of throwing explosing bubbles at you.
    • The Golden hieroglyphs which comes to life and attack you might also count.
  • Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: The player's reaction during the bad ending, stuck between a dead end and all of the game's bosses.
    "Is this the end? But... that means... AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
  • Exposition Fairy: Galazon, the giant disembodied spirit head that greets you at the start and end of each level will brief you the details your mission entails and provide advice on the choices of two doors you can choose from at the end of each stage.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: From monsters to swords, to statues to even hieroglyphs on the wall. Even the water will take on a solid form and attack you!
  • Flash of Pain: This happened in the arcade version only. When a boss has a couple blocks of health left, he/she can blink red.
  • Giant Hands of Doom: One of the bosses is a floating Egyptian statue head with two disembodied arms which it uses to periodically lash out at the player.
  • Life Meter: For the bosses. The arcade version uses blocks while the console versions use a different form of meter.
  • Light Gun Game: In the same vein as House of the Dead.
  • Living Statue: The Viking statue in a cavern that comes to life that attacks the player with fireballs. Naturally, defeating it will lead to a scene where it gradually breaks apart, piece-by-piece before collapsing into chunks of rocks.
  • Medusa: One of the bosses is a Gorgon, although unlike most examples she can't turn you to stone on the spot.
  • Monster Mash: Oh boy, a truckload of them. From mummies, zombies, fireballs, water monsters, fishmen, floating swords, living hieroglyphs to the large bosses such as the Large Pharaoh Head, Medusa, Hindu God Statue, Rock Monster, Sphinx and Hydra.
  • Multiple Endings: Depends on which paths you take. You either get ambushed by all the bosses you defeated, find the treasure, find out it was all just a movie you were acting in, or find a shining, legendary sword. Also an odd example; the game wants you to have exactly three of the endings in order to win it, as in completing all 6 levels.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous: The six-armed Hindu statue, which attacks by summoning swords in all six of his hands to fling at you.
  • Our Gargoyles Rock: One of the early levels starts your adventure in the middle of a gargoyle-infested forest. They will either claw at you, or hurl spears at you while in the air from a distance.
  • Nested Story Reveal: The "Hollywood" ending, where after defeating the boss, the entire adventure is then revealed to be part of a film set with the player as the main actor of a big-budget adventure film. The monsters and bosses are played by extras and special effects.
  • Our Hydras Are Different: The Hydra boss that attacks you in a cavern resembles closer to a plesiosaur with eight hydra heads, which it will use to either breath fireballs at you or chomp you from up close. It also averts the Hydra Problem typically associated with these type of monsters, losing each head as the battle progresses, until its last head is blown off.
  • Our Sphinxes Are Different: One of the bosses is a Sphinx who, instead of questioning you, will rather attack you on the spot, running around you in circles while firing projectiles at you.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: The zombies in this game throw their body parts at the player from a distance instead of biting the player.
  • Poltergeist: More of poltergeist activity such as floating swords that come down and attack the player.
  • Prongs of Poseidon: The fishmen enemies uses tridents to attack you.
  • Rail Shooter: An adventure-themed version where you travel in a straight path while shooting everything that gets in your way.
  • Raising the Steaks: Piranhas, rats, bats, and insects attack the player.
  • Rodents of Unusual Size: Another reoccurring enemy types, every now and then you will be attack by giant rodents pouncing at you.
  • Route Boss: As you only need to defeat two of six bosses to get an ending, all of them counts under this. Although you do need to replay the game multiple times to defeat all six bosses and obtain the "true" ending.
  • Shoot Out the Lock: Towards the end of each stage, you'll end up at two locked doors, bound by chains. Which the game allows you to enter either one of each (that leads to the following stage) by shooting at the lock.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Smart Bomb: You start with three at the beginning of each level, capable of clearing the screen of enemies, and every time you use a Continue you're granted three more. They're VERY useful when you're getring swarmed by hordes and hordes of undead or fighting three dragon-skeletons all at once.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works: The skeleton enemies will fling swords at you if you're out of range melee attacks.
  • The Undead: Comes in all shapes and sizes. This game hands you mummies, zombies, skeletons, and many other undead enemies.
  • Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Averted for the Flame Rounds, that can clear an entire screen of enemies in seconds, such as one scenario in a pyramid where three rounds can wipe out maybe a dozen mummies all at once. But this trope is played straight if you're fighting stone-based enemies: five or six Flame Rounds are needed to take down golems or living statues, the same amount as the default shotgun.
  • Zerg Rush: Lower-tier enemies like skeletons, bats or mummies tends to do this. Expect getting swarmed by nearly twenty of these enemies onscreen at later levels!

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