Summary
- Earth’s destruction often serves as a pivotal moment, driving heroes to confront aftermaths or strive to rewrite history.
- Sin and Punishment features a storyline where Earth Mimicry aims to replace the planet with its twisted creation.
- In Saints Row 4, Earth’s destruction fuels the determination to dismantle the Zin Empire and rescue friends.
Earth has long been the heart of human life, fostering civilizations and nurturing existence over millennia. Its rich history and humanity’s deep connection make it a natural setting for countless video game stories.
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Unfortunately, Earth doesn’t always get the happy ending we’d hope for. From wars and environmental collapse to alien invasions and cosmic disasters, many games imagine its tragic end. Earth’s destruction often serves as a pivotal moment in these stories, driving the heroes to confront the aftermath or strive to rewrite history.
Beware Story Spoilers
8
Sin And Punishment: Successor Of The Earth
Earth Is The Final Boss
- Released
-
November 21, 2000
- Developer(s)
-
Nintendo
- Publisher(s)
-
Nintendo
After Earth’s overpopulation caused severe food shortages in Sin and Punishment, scientists stepped in to solve the crisis by creating a new species of animals known as Ruffians. Initially designed to address food supply issues, the experiment went horribly wrong when a gene mutation turned the Ruffians into savage, uncontrollable creatures. Worse, the Ruffians escaped, spreading their mutation to other animal species and plunging Japan into chaos.
As the global emergency spirals out of control, the story takes a dramatic twist. The mastermind behind the crisis, Achi, reveals her true intentions. Her plan all along was to manipulate Saki into becoming the ultimate warrior to serve her in an intergalactic war. In her final, monstrous transformation, Achi becomes Earth Mimicry, an alternate version of Earth itself, with the intent of replacing our planet with her twisted creation. As you destroy Earth Mimicry, Achi warns you that the destruction of the old Earth is inevitable.
7
Saints Row 4
Punishment For Escape
Third-Person Shooter
Open-World
- Released
-
August 20, 2013
- Developer(s)
-
Volition
Saints Row 4 takes a wild sci-fi turn with an alien invasion led by the Zin Empire. The Zin, driven by conquest, travel from planet to planet, capturing the best and brightest individuals and breaking their spirits to force loyalty to their empire.
After being kidnapped, you quickly prove to be anything but a compliant captive. Zinyak, the Zin warlord, warns you that any attempt to escape will result in Earth’s destruction. Refusing to back down, you call his bluff and break free… only to watch in horror as Zinyak makes good on his threat, obliterating the planet.
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Instead of breaking your spirit, this devastating act fuels your determination. With Earth gone, you set out to rescue your friends, dismantle Zinyak’s empire, and show the Zin what it means to mess with the Saints.
6
Chrono Trigger
A Plan Millions Of Years In The Making
In Chrono Trigger, an ancient alien parasite named Lavos crash-landed on Earth millions of years before the game’s events. Lavos burrowed deep underground, slowly siphoning the planet’s energy to grow powerful and spawn offspring, continuing its cycle of destruction across the cosmos.
In 1000 AD, Crono, Marle, and Lucca stumble upon a time machine and uncover a dire revelation: in 1999 AD, Lavos emerges from beneath the Earth’s surface, causing apocalyptic destruction and reshaping the world.
Determined to change history, the trio embarks on a journey through time, forging alliances, uncovering secrets, and gaining strength. In a final act of courage, they confront Lavos before its emergence, securing a brighter future for humanity.
5
Goat Simulator: Remastered
Death By Goat
Adventure
Simulation
Casual
- Released
-
November 7, 2024
- Developer(s)
-
Coffee Stain Studios
- Publisher(s)
-
Coffee Stain Studios
Goat Simulator gives you the opportunity to live out your wildest, most chaotic dream: causing as much destruction as possible as a goat. The game’s open-world setting offers plenty of opportunities for mayhem, but if you’re not careful, you might accidentally take things a little too far and destroy the Earth.
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Related
In the Waste of Space DLC, your goat ventures onto a space station on the moon. While exploring, you’ll find a battery and a radar dish. If you lick the battery before connecting it to the radar dish, you inadvertently charge up a laser. Moments later, the laser fires at Earth, obliterating it into pieces.
The game rewards your world-ending blunder with money and a somber message: “The Earth is no more. Sadface.”
4
Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3
Try To Eradicate Zombies, Destroy The Earth Instead
Call of Duty: Black Ops III
- Released
-
November 6, 2015
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 throws you into a futuristic world set during the Third Cold War. As a special agent, you navigate high-stakes missions involving global conspiracies and stealth operations to restore peace. However, the tone shifts dramatically if you venture into Zombies mode, where survival takes center stage against relentless waves of the undead.
In the Zombie Chronicles map pack, you can help Dr. Maxis build a superweapon, believing its purpose is to sever Earth’s connection to the Aether, a realm tied to the undead plague. However, upon activating the missiles and launching them at Earth, you’re met with a horrifying scene. The missiles strike, devastating the planet in an apocalyptic event. As the explosions ripple across the surface, all sound and music abruptly stop, leaving you in haunting silence to witness the destruction you caused.
3
Universe Sandbox
Control The Universe In God-Mode
Universe Sandbox
- Released
-
August 24, 2015
- Developer(s)
-
Giant Army
- Publisher(s)
-
Giant Army
Universe Sandbox is a physics-based space simulator that puts the vastness of the cosmos at your fingertips, letting you create, manipulate, and even destroy entire universes. The game combines educational elements with creative freedom, offering you the ability to experiment with both realistic and fictional simulations of space. You can control a wide range of variables, such as gravity, time, and planetary bodies, making it a playground for both curious minds and chaos enthusiasts.
The simulator boasts a library of over 160 moons, hundreds of asteroids, and the eight planets from our solar system, allowing you to recreate real celestial events or explore wild ‘what if’ scenarios. Want to crash the Moon into Earth? Or see what happens if you replace the Sun with a black hole? With just a few clicks, you can unleash cosmic-scale destruction and sit back to watch Earth’s doom.
2
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot
Earth Is Caught Up In The Blast
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot
- Released
-
January 16, 2020
- Developer(s)
-
CyberConnect2
Dragon Ball Z is legendary for its over-the-top battles and planet-shattering power levels. Given the sheer strength of its characters, it’s a miracle that Earth and the solar system manage to survive at all… at least, most of the time. In Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, the Earth doesn’t get so lucky, meeting its demise not once, but twice.
The first destruction comes during the climactic confrontation with Kid Buu. After an intense battle, the pure incarnation of chaos and destruction creates a massive energy ball, hurling it toward Goku and Vegeta. Unable to counter the attack, the Saiyans are forced to flee, rescuing Kibito Kai and Dende before the planet is obliterated in a blinding explosion. Fortunately, in classic Dragon Ball fashion, the destruction of Earth isn’t permanent. After an arduous battle to defeat Kid Buu, Goku and Vegeta gather the Dragon Balls to wish the planet (and its inhabitants) back to life.
Which is all well and good, until Golden Frieza annihilates the planet in one devastating attack, leaving nothing but space dust behind. This time, salvation comes in the form of Whis, the angelic attendant to Beerus, who uses his ability to reverse time by a few minutes. The rewind allows Goku to intercept Frieza’s attack and eliminate him before Earth is destroyed — again.
1
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
Destroyed To Make Room For A Hyperspace Bypass
- Platforms: Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Amstrad PCW, Apple II, Apricot PC, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Commodore 64, CP/M, MS-DOS, Epson QX-10, Kaypro II, Mac, Osborne 1, TI-99/4A, TRS-80, Flash
- Released: November 1984
- Genre: Text Adventure, Interactive Fiction
Based on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, this classic text adventure game throws you right into the absurd and chaotic life of Arthur Dent. The story begins with Arthur narrowly escaping Earth’s destruction, thanks to his eccentric friend Ford Prefect, who reveals himself to be an alien writer for the titular Guide. Earth, it turns out, was demolished to make way for an intergalactic highway.
From this point on, Arthur, now the last surviving human, is swept into a series of surreal misadventures across the galaxy. He faces challenges like enduring the galaxy’s worst poetry, navigating the mysterious mechanics of the Heart of Gold’s Infinite Improbability Drive, and unraveling puzzles that are as unpredictable as the universe itself.
