History Main / PauseScumming

*** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' DoubleSubverted this with Setzer. Pausing the game allows the player to manipulate his slots easily, so the game uses a pseudo-RNG to determine what abilities are available (rigging it so that you can't hit 7-7-7 every time). Then someone discovered that the RNG is easily manipulated, so the player can re-rig it to the most favorable seed, then pause scum the instant kill.

** Averted in Hardcore mode where the difficulty is locked to Hard at all times.

** Pausing results in all the blocks to be obscured from the playfield and the "next block" window(s) to be blanked out, [[AvertedTrope so you get no extra time to think over where to put the next block]].
** The TI-84 calculator version tries to do the same thing by covering the screen like all other versions do, [[ZigZaggingTrope but upon unpausing, the block you are controlling will float in midair for a few seconds]], allowing you to take your time preciseply placing every block... until you reach a certain level, where no matter how you played the game, the game will no longer accept any button input and just drop blocks until you get game over.
** Averted ([[NotTheIntendedUse unintentionally]]) in the official NES version. Although the screen is fully obscured, there is normally an acceleration period when moving blocks left and right. Holding left and right while the pause screen is open can max out acceleration, carrying over when you unpause. This trick is extremely helpful at level 19 and above, where blocks fall normally at drop speed and just getting blocks over to an edge can be impossible if you don't plan ahead.

* In ''VideoGame/BlasterMaster,'' it's possible to beat some of the bosses by hitting them with grenades and pausing at the right moment. If you do it right, the boss will keep taking damage while paused.

** In the first game, if you pause after every frame of movement, then the on-screen timer won't clock forward. This makes it possible to complete the Break the Targets and Board the Platforms challenges with a time of 0:00.
** The Classic Mode prizes in the 3DS game are determine by roulette. You can press the Home button to pause the entire game, and when you see that it's on the prize you want, you can simply hold down the A button before returning to the game to get it.

* In ''VideoGame/ValkyriaChronicles'' and its sequel, the unit you are controlling, (and only the unit you are controlling) will be exposed to suppression fire, whether he or she is stationary, behind cover, or moving. However, enemies will mysteriously cease fire the moment you take aim. This leads to one or two different playstyles. The player will usually either run fast, shoot, and stop controlling the character; or [[GameBreaker walk, aim, walk, aim, walk, aim...]].

* ''[[{{VideoGame/Fallout3}} Fallout 3]]'' has this. Going to your [=PipBoy=] menu during combat to heal is quite effective and weighing your advantages and disadvantages through the menu is also a plus. Of course, most players do this as a standard anyway, even though there's shortcuts you can use. Putting an ammo-using weapon in the inventory and pulling it out also reloads it. Same goes for ''[[VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas New Vegas]]'', unless you have Hardcore mode activated (which makes healing item recover health over time instead of immediately).

* ''VideoGame/TwistedMetal 2'' implemented the pause feature in an odd way. Your car and the enemy cars would stop dead as expected, but projectiles would continue as normal, the sole exception being the [[IncrediblyObviousBomb ricochet bomb]]. With timely use of the pause button you could land every single Roadkill boomerang, every single Sweet Tooth ice cream cone, every single freeze missile, break out of a Mr. Slam [[CycleOfHurting infinite freeze missile loop]], blow up opponents with their own mines (because the delay before they arm didn't stop when the game was paused, of course) and avoid running into projectiles fired in front of you. The list goes on. Conversely, you could also die during the pause screen.

* The Commodore 64 version of Donald Duck's Playground, an educational game in which Donald works (you play minigames) to earn money to buy toys for his nephews, could be pause scummed. Pause/unpause was bound to the space bar, and repeatedly tapping it (holding it down didn't work) would slow the game down. Not a big deal - that's a pain to do. Except that the game used Joystick 2, and it's well-known that Joystick 1's fire button often mimics a tap of the space bar. A spare joystick with autofire became a slow-motion feature. Odder still is that the in-game clock never counted down while you were doing this: the clock seemingly "forgot" about whatever fractions of a second it was internally tracking when it was paused. Since all the minigames are on timers (and one has a second timer you also need to keep an eye on), this slow-motion also comes in handy for finishing a minigame task about to be left half-complete, so Donald could get out with a sweet sweet extra fifteen cents.

* In ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'', ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'', and ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'', you can enter the game menu, which pauses the game, at any time. In this menu, you can drink an unlimited number of potions or [[ChangingClothesIsAFreeAction change armor]] in a nick of time, even in the middle of combat. Hidden under the layers of metaphysics and allegory, the [[InGameNovel in-game book series]] ''The 36 Lessons of Vivec'' (as well as the dialogue of Vivec himself in ''Morrowind'') mentions this (as well as SaveScumming, the MasterConsole, the Construction Set LevelEditor, etc.) as a FourthWallBreaking ability of certain important individuals in the game world, notably [[PlayerCharacter Player Characters]] and some divine historical figures.

* In ''[[VideoGame/SuperMonkeyBall Super Monkey Ball]]'', rapidly toggling the pause can help immensely for staying centered over a narrow bridge. Also, there exists a speedrunning technique where the player tries to pauses with the timer showing a specific number, and uses that as a cue to start moving or change direction, doing sequence breaks or slipping past moving obstacles far more easily than reflexes would allow.

* In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'' you can use a variant of this when racing the ghost of Dampe. Since his tomb is one of the few locations that warp songs won't work in, you can abuse the error message playing one generates. You are free to move during the textbox, and it won't deduct time from the countdown. Watch this in action in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBHWuis7v40 this video]].

* The ASCII Pad and many similar controllers in the 8- and 16-bit eras had toggles that pressed the pause button many times a second, often labeled "slow-mo".

* Defied on ''VideoGame/StarCraft'', as each player can pause the game only 3 times. But its used in its [[SpeedRun speedruns]], where an open system menu doesn't give much advantage now that the action is paused per-se. What it does is stopping the timer ticking, while not preventing progression of scripted engine scenes audio dialogue. It's just that sometimes next player actions have to come after the dialogue finishes.

* In any battle in ''VideoGame/MountandBlade'' whether you are fighting in a battlefield or sieging/defending a castle, you can notably increase the number of troops on your side making attacking armies that are 7 times your size a walk in the park. The battle size can be changed from anywhere between 30 to 150, so you start a battle with the minimum size -pause- then set the size to max, you then unpause for a second and pause again so you get a decent number of reinforcements and the enemies get nothing, reset the battle size to the minimum and the enemy only get reinforcements in small groups after most of them are down.

* In [[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]], [[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]], and [[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]], you can enter the game menu, which pauses the game, at any time. In this menu, you can drink an unlimited number of potions or [[ChangingClothesIsAFreeAction change armor]] in a nick of time, even in the middle of combat.
** In the background fluff, this (and save-scumming, among other things) is a canon ability of certain individuals in the world. Notably player characters and some kings.

* In ''RockBand 3'', when the player pauses and unpauses in the middle of a song, the track scrolls back a few bars to help the player catch up after a pause, which can be abused to split up a really hard track into smaller, manageable sections. While this has never been outright ''fixed'', the game was eventually patched so that players who pause often will have their scores nullified.
* There is a very easy way to beat a rather difficult but initially non-hostile boss Firkraag in ''VideoGame/BaldursGate II'', which consists of right-clicking on him as if to talk, pausing the game, and manually ordering your party to attack him instead. Since the game locks him in dialogue mode, he will not aggro and fight back until you are about half-way through his HP.

* ''TwistedMetal 2'' implemented the pause feature in an odd way. Your car and the enemy cars would stop dead as expected, but projectiles would continue as normal, the sole exception being the [[IncrediblyObviousBomb ricochet bomb]]. With timely use of the pause button you could land every single Roadkill boomerang, every single Sweet Tooth ice cream cone, every single freeze missile, break out of a Mr. Slam [[CycleOfHurting infinite freeze missile loop]], blow up opponents with their own mines (because the delay before they arm didn't stop when the game was paused, of course) and avoid running into projectiles fired in front of you. The list goes on. Conversely, you could also die during the pause screen.
* In ''Ninja Saga'', you are allowed to change weapons in the pause screen during battle. Different weapons give different bonuses to dodging, criticals, and some other boosts, but the most powerful weapons (at least, the most powerful you can get without paying in real world money) have no bonuses. So a cheap advantage you can get is to equip the weapons that have bonuses while you're using moves, and go back to using the strong weapons when you run out of chakra.

* In ''{{Battlespire}}'' when you shoot a bow, it normally takes a few seconds for it to be reloaded and ready to fire. Pausing the game stops all the other action, but the bow reloading continued. This allowed you to murder high level enemies by turning them into a pincushion by shooting them repeatedly with each reload only taking a fraction of a second of "real" time.

* The final boss in ''DynamiteHeaddy'' involves an orb that changes colours, a roulette of heads for Headdy to choose from for a split second after the colour is revealed, and then the boss attacking based on the colour of the orb. Choosing the right head is suitably tough normally, but becomes a joke with Pause Scumming.

** Averted ([[NotTheIntendedUse unintentionally]) in the official NES version. Although the screen is fully obscured, there is normally an acceleration period when moving blocks left and right. Holding left and right while the pause screen is open can max out acceleration, carrying over when you unpause. This trick is extremely helpful at level 19 and above, where blocks fall normally at drop speed and just getting blocks over to an edge can be impossible if you don't plan ahead.

* Many games poll the controller every frame (1/30 or 1/60 of a second). This normally limits how frequently a button can be mashed - if the button state changes between pressed/unpressed faster than this interval, the game will only see the "pressed" state on every frame and act as if the button were being held down the entire time. Pausing the game often bypasses this limitation, since the game will register the button being unpressed. This is mostly useful in Tool-Assisted Speedruns.
** Used to glorious effect in ''SuperMario64'' tool-assisted speedruns to enact a glitch that enables you to travel backwards at SonicTheHedgehog-level speeds by alternating between jump and pause, effectively pressing jump on every frame of gameplay instead of every second frame. See [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL6VE_5PddM here]] for a run which incorporates some of the most stunning examples to date.

* Many games poll the controller every frame (1/30 or 1/60 of a second). This normally limits how frequently a button can be mashed - if the button state changes between pressed/unpressed faster than this interval, the game will only see the "pressed" state on every frame and act as if the button were being held down the entire time. Pausing the game often bypasses this limitation, since the game will register the button being unpressed. This is mostly useful in [[ToolAssistedSpeedruns]].
* Used to glorious effect in ''SuperMario64'' tool-assisted speedruns to enact a glitch that enables you to travel backwards at SonicTheHedgehog-level speeds by alternating between jump and pause, effectively pressing jump on every frame of gameplay instead of every second frame. See [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL6VE_5PddM here]] for a run which incorporates some of the most stunning examples to date.

* Used to glorious effect in ''SuperMario64'' tool-assisted speedruns to enact a glitch that enables you to travel backwards at SonicTheHedgehog-level speeds. See [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL6VE_5PddM here]] for a run which incorporates some of the most stunning examples to date.

* In ''NeverwinterNights'', you could use this trick to get extra xp during the prelude by running past all the monsters to the two characters who give auto-level ups at the end of their dialogue trees, then turning around and slaughtering all the enemies before leaving the prelude, though doing the second level up is very difficult without using a speed hack or a fast movement spell to allow you to pause click through his entire dialogue tree before his attack scripts triggered.

Tool-Assisted [[SpeedRun Speed Runs]] allow the performer to simulate this by pausing the emulator, which is a tame trick compared to the other things they can (legitimately) do.

* Creator/BioWare's games (most notably ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2'', ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'', and ''Franchise/DragonAge'') actively encourage pause-scumming to set up party tactics.

* In ''VideoGame/TheSims'', this is pretty much required if you want to control every action of your sims and you're playing with a large family, especially if free will is on high or the sims are spaced out over a large area meaning you can't keep an eye on them all at once.

* In any battle in VideoGame/MountandBlade whether you are fighting in a battlefield or sieging/defending a castle, you can notably increase the number of troops on your side making attacking armies that are 7 times your size a walk in the park.
*** The battle size can be changed from anywhere between 30 to 150, so you start a battle with the minimum size -pause- then set the size to max, you then unpause for a second and pause again so you get a decent number of reinforcements and the enemies get nothing, reset the battle size to the minimum and the enemy only get reinforcements in small groups after most of them are down.
** [[AvertedTrope Averted]] in that it can't be used in a keep or for fighting in the streets as the number of soldiers is set to a fixed amount after winning the primary attack (usually around 4 versus 5).

* ''VideoGame/SuperMetroid'' has a slow fade between gameplay and the pause screen (and vice-versa), during which gameplay continues for a second, but Samus's death at 0 health cannot be triggered during the transition. This has been [[http://tasvideos.org/4224S.html used in a TAS]] with frame-perfect repeating pausing and careful rationing of health from a Reserve Tank to keep Samus alive through health-draining heated rooms.

* Approximated in several RealLife sports where calling a time out can be used to obtain an advantage that goes beyond stopping the clock. In sports like basketball and lacrosse, a smart coach can call time out if their team is about to lose possession in a critical situation and then get a re-start in a more advantageous position. In Tennis the lax rules regarding "medical" time outs can give players extended breaks to recover mentally from tactical setbacks under the pretext of having an injury attended to. In gridiron football, "icing" the kicker is a dubiously effective yet commonly practiced method of PauseScumming. After the '04/'05 NHL lockout, the rules regarding icing were changed so the infringing team couldn't make line changes, thus preventing a team from using this tactic to stifle momentum and change out fatigued players.