I was watching a YouTube video of a speed run of Super Nintendo’s Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, often considered one of the most challenging games ever, and midway through the game, the player triggers aggro of a Red Arremer Devil, or what Capcom and Google insist was always named “Firebrand.” The speed runner ran for it, with Red Devil continuing chase, but as soon as the player passed a stage checkpoint, they immediately turned around, and jumped to their death, committing a suicide. They restarted the level past where the Red Devil was and resumed running the game, without having to fight the flying nuisance.
I understand that in speed runs, speed is all that matters, even if it means strategic suicides in order to save some time. This is a common practice in Zelda runs or any action/RPGs that spawn fresh lives or load states in strategic locations. But it always feels kind of cheap to me that suicide is necessary, because perhaps it’s just me, it’s just more impressive if one didn’t have to literally kill themselves in order to beat a clock.
Make no mistake, Red Arremer Devils are extremely pesky throughout the entire franchise, as they have very erratic and difficult to combat patterns, and can absorb a good deal of damage before actually going down. Furthermore, they’re virtually impossible to ignore and outrun, because to my experience, they will follow you until they die, or more likely, you die. But they are not impossible to kill, and with a little bit of luck, the ability to read patterns and most importantly, patience, they can be handled.
However, patience is the very antithesis of speed runs, and in the case of a Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts run, it makes a degree of sense to kill yourself once you pass a checkpoint, and resume playing without being hounded by a Red Devil. The difference between this tactic and strategic suicide in like Zelda is that this speed runner does it to avoid having to engage a difficult opponent, whereas in games like Zelda, it’s done in order to avoid having to traverse an entire dungeon in reverse in order to leave.
But the circumstances of this particular strategy got me thinking about enemies in video games that make the player feel that killing themselves would be a preferable decision rather than having to fight them. Basically, enemies that are video game equivalents of Haku, the baddest man on the planet. Jake “the Snake” Roberts said it best when it came to the perception of having to face Haku, outside the ring and outside of the wrestling persona:
If I had a gun and was sitting inside a tank with one shell left and (Haku) is 300 yards away, he’s mine, right? Well the first thing I’m going to do is jump out of the tank and shoot myself because I don’t want to wound that son of a bitch and have him pissed off at me.
Without question, Red Arremer Devils are Hakus. The mere presence of one elicits a feeling of dread and annoyance to players, doubly so if they don’t have a weapon like the crossbow, and/or golden armor, to where the player could just blast them away with OP magic. If you’re naked Arthur and only equipped with the lance, suicide and restarting with armor on and a chance of getting a better weapon before encountering Haku again is a completely valid option, as is what the speed runner did, which was to trigger aggro, but then run for it and hope to get to the next checkpoint, before killing themselves, so that they can start back up with armor on, and past where the Red Devil had spawned.
The bottom line is that whenever you have an enemy in a video game to where death is preferable to fighting, then you have a Haku. Off the top of my head, I can’t really think of any other Hakus in gaming, but it goes without saying that every single gamer out there surely knows of at least one video game baddie that they’ve lost sleep over, and screamed out ungodly amounts of profanity over, and suicides were common and frequent in the lengthy quests to overcome a Haku.
