Pray for Death is a 1996 Fighting Game developed by Light Shock Software and published by Virgin Interactive for DOS PCs. It was one of the many fighting games that tried to copy Mortal Kombat, with a 2½D art style similar to Killer Instinct. However, it's worth mentioning that it includes Cthulhu as a character.
One day, the Grim Reaper decides to organize a fighting tournament between ten dead fighters, with the winner getting to come back to life.
This game is still sold on Steam and GOG.com. It can also be played in a browser or downloaded here
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Not to be confused with the 1985 Ninja movie of the same name starring Sho Kosugi.
Pray for Death provides examples of the following tropes:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Painbringer. A "malfunction" turned him from a military training automaton into a genocidal robot supremacist.
- Alien Blood: Cthulhu's blood is green, Anubi's is purple.
- All Myths Are True: The Norse god Odin is mentioned in Wolfrich's bio, the Egyptian god Anubis (named "Anubi" here) has his cult, and Cthulhu is here as well.
- Ax-Crazy: Pantera and Maelstrom. The latter once slaughtered his own entire army, thinking he would no longer need them.
- Badass Normal: In a game which features killer robots, angels, demons, and physical gods, Jan Fun is pretty much an ordinary man who is really, really good at martial arts.
- Bad Boss: Working for Sir Maelstrom is hazardous to your health. Just ask his army, who got slaughtered by him.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Sir Maelstrom has two blades on each of his gauntlets.
- Bruce Lee Clone: Jan Fun is a Chinese martial artist who immigrated to America, invented a martial art, and died in 1973 under mysterious circumstances. Even his name is just Lee's Cantonese given name (Jun-Fan) with the vowels switched. The only difference to the real Bruce Lee in his backstory is that Jan Fun opened a dojo instead of becoming an actor.
- Dance Battler: Pantera, who kills dancing to the sound of techno.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Well, considering the man himself is a fighter, anybody is capable of felling the mighty Cthulhu. Even Jan Fun can put up a fight against him, and killing him is Maelstrom's goal.
- Driven to Suicide: Pantera in her ending, once she's unable to cope with the idea of having escaped Hell.
- Drugs Are Bad: An addiction to hard drugs ended up aggravating Pantera's mental state, and causing her to become a Serial Killer.
- The End of the World as We Know It: Cthulhu's plan for if he escapes from Hell is to destroy the dimension that humanity resides in.
- Evil Versus Evil: It's a given when all of the playable combatants have been damned to Hell. Some are A Lighter Shade of Black though.
- Fallen Angel: Uriel didn't want to help build Hell. Therefore, she was sentenced out of Heaven.
- Finishing Move: At the end of a fight, the winner can perform a "deadly move" to kill the loser.
- High-Pressure Blood: All characters bleed a lot during the finishing moves - even when they are barely hit or not hit at all. Even Death himself bleeds! Averted only for Maelstrom and Painbringer, as their metal bodies give of sparks when hit. Pantera actually comments on this before battle.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Maelstrom renounced his Christianity to harness the dark power of the Necronomicon. Several years later, the Turks used its powers to send him off to Hell.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: Hilariously, Cthulhu's ending shows that he, the Great Old One who wanted the destruction of the world, has been reduced to performing at a water park billed as "Polip-Man".
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: From easiest to hardest: Dead, Ectoplasm, Zombie, Demon and Entity.
- It's Personal: Wolfrich decides that now he's in Hell, he has the opportunity to go after his killer Xenobius.
- Kill the God: Maelstrom's God complex means that he wants to get rid of any competition: more specifically, Cthulhu.
- Man Versus Machine: Painbringer's main goal is to kill Jan Fun and prove the superiority of machines over men.
- My Skull Runneth Over: This is what rendered Xenobius Dead to Begin With; the power of Odin's coffer ended up rapidly aging him.
- No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Maelstrom's backstory indicates that he is clearly meant to be Vlad the Impaler, down to Wallachia being his homeland and having "novels" written about him being mixed with legend (an obvious reference to Stoker's novel), not to mention how he was eventually killed by the Turks (the primary adversaries of the historical Vlad the Impaler).
- Succubi and Incubi: Murgan's backstory calls him a succubus, although he doesn't really do any seducing in-game and he'd more logically be called an incubus.
- Token Good Teammate: While all of the other participants are bloodthirsty maniacs, wrathful grudgeholders and/or malevolent gods, Uriel and Jan Fun are there for relatively more noble reasons; the former to repent for her prior crimes, and the latter to reunite with his bereaved family.
- Tome of Eldritch Lore: Maelstrom's main goal is to find the Necronomicon and become a god.
- Worthy Opponent: Death admits that he has a lot of respect for Jan Fun should the latter best him in combat.
