Above: A normal level shows your score, coins, time remaining, and lives.
Below: The Final Boss is too epic for that.
Below: The Final Boss is too epic for that.
This is the thing where, during a climactic Boss Battle or event in a video game, the game's display (showing Score, the Life Meter and such) vanishes away, leaving a completely unobstructed view of the game area. Presumably, something so awe-inspiring and theatrical is about to happen that it deserves the player's complete attention as if it were a Cut Scene.
But also, technical limitations of 8-bit systems often prevented both the display and the large animated segments of the boss from being displayed simultaneously, thus, the majority of these examples seem to be on 8-bit systems.
Sub-Trope of Status Line, a display element showing the current disposition of the player, e.g. score, health, ammo, etc.
Examples:
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Action-Adventure Games
- The final battle in Legacy of the Wizard has only your life and the bosses' life shown. But since your item selection is in the HUD, you can't choose a healing item after you've started.
- Enslaved: Odyssey to the West inverts this, with no HUD during the first mission, and the HUD appearing after an advanced headband is wired directly into your brain by the support character.
- The fight against Morpha in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has an interesting take on the trope. If you get caught by the water tentacle, the HUD elements vanish except for your health which is kept on screen to show Link's life slowly being squeezed away before the boss tosses him. The entire HUD also vanishes if Link dies, a feature that would be used in later 3D Zelda titles, though The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask doesn't do this.
Action Games
- Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots mostly inverted this trope with its final boss battle, actually drawing attention to the HUD by changing it to be similar to each previous game in turn. Played straight for the final climatic punches, however, where the HUD disappears completely.
- God of War III has a Dramatic Shattering Display at the endgame, after which the only HUD elements are for Press X to Not Die (IE: there's no more actual combat from that point onwards).
- Project Wingman: The final form of the final boss is fight after your HUD is damaged and thus, cannot display the HUD anymore. However it was patched out for the easier difficulties due to it causing frustration for some players.
Fighting Games
- The Final Boss battle against Suika Ibuki in Touhou Suimusou ~ Immaterial and Missing Power does this gradually when Suika uses her final spell card.
- Activating Astral Heat in BlazBlue will cause the background to go black. And except for Carl and Arakune prior to Blazblue Chronophantasma, successfully hitting with Astral causes the HUD to disappear.
- Fatalities in Mortal Kombat 9 causes the far background to go black and the HUD to disappear as well.
- Eternal Champions had the life bars and timer quickly lift themselves off-screen when you successfully pulled off an Overkill.
First-Person Shooter
- Halo: During chapter transitions, the HUDs disappear, and the widescreen crop widens out to gave way for the chapter name.
- Half-Life 2 does this from time to time, usually when the G-Man or Combine Advisors get involved.
- Inverted at the beginning of the game, because you don't yet have the suit to give you a display, and the dramatic moment is when you acquire the suit and the display appears. Fan Remake Black Mesa has an even more more elaborate version.
- In most Half-Life mods, the HUD is never hidden when the camera is used. Some mods like Afraid of Monsters (DC only) uses black widescreen barriers to hide the HUD for a more cinematic feel.
- Inverted at the beginning of the game, because you don't yet have the suit to give you a display, and the dramatic moment is when you acquire the suit and the display appears. Fan Remake Black Mesa has an even more more elaborate version.
- If you're very badly wounded and either have no bandages, or can't be bandaged up at all, in Red Orchestra 2, what little there is of your HUD begins to fade away as you die.
MMORPGs
- The final cutscene in Chains of Promathia completely removes the HUD for the first time in the game's history.
- Final Fantasy XIV has quick time events and/or cinematic phase transitions in certain battles. In these instances, all HUD elements on screen vanish except for your HP and MP.
- The Lord of the Rings Online has this happen in some of the pivotal Epic line of quests, the equivalent of a cut-scene where the HUD disappears and the camera is jerked away from your character's perception. Notable ones include Mordirith landing on his fell-beast near the end of Volume I to reveal himself as the true final villain of the Shadows of Angmar, and when the Watcher in the Water reveals itself to the dwarves upon attempting to enter Moria at the beginning of Volume II.
Platform Games
- The Bowser battle in Super Mario World for Super NES. Only the powerup box at the top of the screen remains, and only if it contains a powerup. Whilst this is for epicness, there's also a technical reason in that tiled background planes can't overlap rotating (mode 7) background planes.
- Amusingly subverted in the GBA version — it begins with no display just like in the SNES version, though if you brought a reserved item into the battle, it suspiciously won't show up. After Bowser comes out of the Clown Car for the first time, however, the display suddenly drops down from the screen. You even get a final score tally for beating him!
- The last battle of Donkey Kong (1994) not only removes the HUD, it also locks out your ability to pause.
- Worlds X-7 and X-8 in Eversion. In World X-7, the score display vanishes and the word "GEMS" is replaced by "????". In World 7-8, only the
gemskull counter remains. In World 8, the entire display is gone. Though if you're in time attack mode, none of this applies; the timer (which is the only part of the HUD in that mode) will remain at the top of the screen at all times. - The Game Gear version of Sonic the Hedgehog omitted the HUD during each Zone's third Act (where you fought Robotnik). There are zero rings during boss battles anyway.
- The final battle in Extra Mario Bros.
- Demon's Crest turns it around. During the sudden boss fight at the very beginning of the game, you have no HUD, but Firebrand can still only take four hits before dying. After fighting off the boss once and escaping, your HUD appears, and any damage Firebrand took will remain.
- Bug has the bonus levels, where your entire HUD disappears (save for a timer in some bonus levels). Then again, you're a One-Hit-Point Wonder in all bonus levels, and getting hit will make you exit. Also, when Bug dies, the HUD disappears too.
- Super Metroid has an odd variation; the status display itself doesn't disappear whilst fighting a major boss, but rather, the automap display in the top-right corner of the screen becomes completely blank during these fights.
- At the end of Metroid Dread, Samus's suit transforms into the Metroid Suit and her beams are replaced with the Hyper Beam. Considering that the Hyper Beam kills everything in one shot and the suit itself makes her invincible, the energy, ammo, and aeion meters are removed from the HUD since they're no longer needed. Only the self destruct countdown timer and the mini-map remain on screen.
- Wario Land II has a coin counter that disappears when you are in a boss room. It also serves as an indication that you can get hit in this context without worrying about losing coins as a result.
- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night completely hides the automap display when a boss battle is in progress.
Racing Games
Rhythm Games
- A few songs in DJMAX Portable Clazziquai Edition and Black Square have the game interface vanish to show the entire video, typically at the end of the song. Both parts of the song "Proposed, Flower, Wolf" have the interface remain off for large portions of the song.
- GITADORA and pop'n music have a modifier called "Dark" that hides all non-vital elements ("vital" being stuff like the notes, the score display, and your Life Meter) of the game interface.
- Some Rock Band and Guitar Hero games have a modifier called "Performance Mode" that does the opposite—it hides the entire foreground of the interface, showing only the animated background of your characters playing a concert—and forcing you to have the note chart memorized in order to pass.
- Guitar Hero Live hides the HUD and note highway during extended portions of songs with no notes.
- Happens during SOUND VOLTEX championships at the KONAMI Arcade Championship:
- When "Lachryma《Re:Queen’M》" made its debut as the game's final round song at the 5th KAC, Grace took over the upper 1/3 of the screen, causing all interface elements at the top (score, opponent information, etc.) to vanish.
- During the 7th KAC, "I" was presented in the same circumstances, with Rasis causing the top half of the inteface to vanish. Then the screen appears to turn off, then back on, with all interface elements in the middle (such as the Effective Rate meter) gone too, leaving only the track, chain counter, and judgement indicators remaining.
- In Arcaea, if certain requirements are met at roughly the halfway point in "Tempestissimo", the "boss" song of the Black Fate DLC chapter, most of the HUD disappears, leaving only the player's lifebar, lanes, combo counter, judgement displays, and the difficulty (which gets bumped up by one).
Roguelikes
- The Binding of Isaac: The final Boss Bonanza sequence of the Repentance expansion will hide the map, timer, score, stat screen, and list of collected items, regardless of whether or not they are enabled. The exception is the first of the six bosses, which is fought in a different arena.
Role-Playing Games
- You can invoke this in Dark Souls and Bloodborne by turning off the HUD in option screen. It's not just in the boss battle, you are free to turn the HUD on and off anytime you want for whatever reason, be it for filming cinematic videos or taking screenshots.
- Bosses in Final Fantasy XII tend to have a flashy attack that takes away the interface and essentially displays a short Cutscene. Really important bosses will have more than one.
- In general, some Final Fantasy games have the option of being able to remove the HUD during battles, usually by pressing the select button or similar, probably to get a good look at the animations of the attacks. Subverted Trope in Final Fantasy VIII if you get a Guardian Force to learn the Boost ability. If you use the summon command on one that has it and press the "remove HUD" button, it'll just change the HUD to a counter with the number displayed being the percentage of base damage the attack will do. Not pressing the button gives a normal amount of damage, but pressing it lowers it to 75 and you could raise it to upwards of 250 by mashing a button.
- NieR: Automata actually has this in diegetic form - as a robot, you start out equipped with a number of chips that enable the basic features of your HUD... including one that has no other purpose but to make your HUD disappear at suitably dramatic and cinematic moments. it's usually the first one to be thrown out in order to make room for more combat-useful chips...
- The first final boss fight has most of the HUD gradually disappear due to the interference caused by the final boss' attacks.
- In Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army, when you're about to get a critical piece of information, sometimes, not only do the moon phase and encounter imminence displays vanish, but the screen develops letterboxing bars. Definitely the game going, "Pay attention to this!"
- Tales of the Abyss: Character portraits and HP/TP meters at the bottom of the screen disappear during the final phase of the final boss. It's not like you'll need them - the boss can't kill you anyway, and without them you can get a better look at the Amazing Technicolor Battlefield.
Shoot Em Ups
- Most stage-end bosses in the Famicom versions of Gradius II and Life Force.
- All except the last two bosses in the Famicom Shoot 'em Up Recca.
- A partial (but nice-looking) example is seen in the manic shooter Dangun Feveron. When a boss battle starts, most of the upper HUD (rescue count, score display, high score) slides off the top of the screen to make room for the boss's health bar, leaving only the important things- your remaining bombs and lives. When you defeat the boss, its lifebar goes off the screen and the normal HUD comes back.
Simulation Games
- In The Sims 2, the screen zooms in on a Sim who has their 1st kiss, or sex, or has a baby, and the character's needs and character selection bar disappears.
Stealth-Based Games
- During the fight against Metal Gear D in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, the HUD disappears. This was done because of sprite limits - animating Metal Gear was very intensive.
- When you are low on Synchronization in Assassin's Creed, the Animus interface vanishes to let you know that one more hit Will Kill You.
Survival Horror
- If the power runs out in Five Nights at Freddy's, all HUD elements vanish. You are also undoubtedly about to die, very soon. Unless you're close to 6 AM, in which you'll have to hope you reach it in time before then.
- The early Resident Evil games had no on-screen HUD, and the only way to check your health and ammo was to pause. Code: Veronica had a health indicator through the Dreamcast's controller, but still nothing on screen. It wasn't until the fourth game that you had any sort of HUD at all, and initially they were going to have it only flash when you were damaged. The old-school games included no HUD during gameplay specifically because they wanted to give the games a cinematic feel to make them more immersive.
Turn-Based Strategy
- This is a default in some Super Robot Wars games, given the games' focus on fidelity and over-the-top-itude; units' HP and EN bars will slide out of the way for the duration of the attack animation. When they don't, it's usually because (as in the console iterations) the attack will appear to deal a portion of its damage to the health bar with each hit.
Non-Video Game Examples
- During Fox's coverage of Major League Baseball, the ever-present score bug disappears during important moments, such as the last out of the World Series.
- In 2015, ESPN's Monday Night Football games started fading out the scoreboard (a banner along the bottom of the screen) when the ball is snapped, although this ended a few seasons later. CBS also experimented with having their scoreboard turn translucent glass in a similar manner on a college bowl game, although this would not become permanent.
- Most broadcasts of boxing fade the on-screen clock and boxer names out in the last ten seconds of each round.
- The title page for Dragon Ball chapter 305 was the first in the series to lack a Dragon Ball title anywhere on it. This is because it was the chapter where Frieza attained his final form. Averted in the Kanzenban publication, which added a title back in to replace the flavor text.