The Murder Report tallies all the onscreen kills in the console makers’ E3 press events.
E3 2014 has ended. Our correspondents in the field at this year’s show, Ryan Smith and Matt Gerardi, will have a few more game previews and post-show thoughts for you in the coming days, but for now, there’s other unfinished business to wrap up: the full accounting of E3 press conference murder.
Nintendo, the perennial Murder Report cellar-dweller, makes a bold move this year, looking to capitalize on Sony’s mediocre body count. (It’s a race for second, though: trigger-happy Microsoft is unlikely to be bumped from its first-place perch anytime soon.) The House Of Mario may not offer much in the way of gore and graphic violence, but Nintendo Of America president Reggie Fils-Aime is always ready to kill off cartoon characters by the bowlful—Judge Doom’s got nothing on Reggie. Watch the video to find out how many notches the Nintendo folks carved into their belts at this week’s E3 Digital Event.
As he has done all week, Sam Barsanti provided a few details on the grim data, starting with a remarkable stat on Nintendo’s gun violence (or lack thereof):
Even with 20 gun deaths, that was all laser guns and squid-people shooting ink guns, so no deaths by real-world guns.
I didn’t count Toads as human, because they’re not, but I did count the squid-people as human. I figured they’re people that turn into squids, not squids that turn into people.
The cutesy Yoshi game and Splatoon tied for second place with 17 deaths each, which is surprising because one of them is a shooter, and one of them is about an adorable dinosaur made of wool. But none of that matters because of Hyrule Warriors, which easily won the whole murdering competition across all three consoles with 105 kills. Without adding it up—though I certainly can—I’d guess that’s more than almost every shooter combined. So if you want to crown the best murderers of the week, it’s Link and Zelda.
But my favorite death of Nintendo (and maybe the whole E3 show): Robot Chicken Reggie Fils-Aime using a Super Mario Bros. fire flower to blow up a member of the games press. The reporter came back to life in the end, but then he got killed again, so I’m counting it.
Thanks for running the numbers all week, Sam. And thanks to all those game characters who gave their lives for our amusement this week. They’re true heroes, or at least they might be if they weren’t dead.