History Main / UnintentionallyUnwinnable

* ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamKnight'': If you get to Founder's Island early via SequenceBreaking and then attempt to arrest either Professor Pyg or Riddler after defeating him after completing his trial on Founder's Island (which, normally, locks out the Batmobile from moving onto it until after story events allow it to roam on it) permanently locks Batman in the Batmobile since, at that point in time, it's assumed that you did the story events that allow the Batmobile access to Founder's Island, and taking Riddler/Pyg to the GCPD lock-up after defeating him simply leads to an empty waypoint and doesn't allow you to offload Riddler/Pyg into the GCPD, forcing you to start [[HereWeGoAgain all over again]] in order to get out of it.

* ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamKnight'': If you get to Founder's Island early via SequenceBreaking and then attempt to arrest either Professor Pyg or Riddler after defeating him after completing his trial on Founder's Island (which, normally, locks out the Batmobile from moving onto it until after story events allow it to roam on it) permanently locks Batman in the Batmobile since, at that point in time, it's assumed that you did the story events that allow the Batmobile access to Founder's Island, and taking Riddler/Pyg to the GCPD lock-up after defeating him simply leads to an empty waypoint and doesn't allow you to offload Riddler/Pyg into the GCPD, forcing you to start [[HereWeGoAgain all over again]] in order to get out of it.

*** There's the infamous "Stupid Pit" in Mystic Cave Zone. It has spikes at the bottom, and is far too deep to jump out of. Get all seven Emeralds, turn Super, fall in, and you now must wait for your rings to run out. An otherwise functionally identical-to-the-original mobile port of the game replaces this spike-filled pit with a spikeless pit [[spoiler:that leads to a redone version of the infamous DummiedOut [[SavedByTheFans Hidden Palace Zone]] if you fall in.]]

*** Also, you'd better not be Super Sonic when you reach that main boss, or Tails will not appear either. A similar thing happens if you replay that level, play as Super Tails, and hit Eggman more than 8 times before he takes the battle into the skies. However, this was fixed in at least one later rerelease. (specifically, ''Sonic Classic Collection'' for the Platform/NintendoDS)

** The penultimate human level has Arthas sinking his own ships (and blaming the mercenary monsters he hired) to prevent the royal edict from calling his men home. The game recommends using Muradin's Storm Bolt to sink the ships, but the expansion mechanics removed mechanical units from the list of acceptable targets.

** The Wilhelm BossFight in ''Videogame/Borderlands2'' takes place in an area enclosed on three sides by ice cliffs and a [[BottomlessPit sheer drop]] on the remaining side. While Wilhelm himself cannot fall off, killing him too close to the edge ''can'' result in the [[MacGuffin power core]] taking a dive, forcing you to exit the game and then reenter it to fight Wilhelm again. [[spoiler:Ironically, the power core turns out to be a trap laid by Handsome Jack. FailureIsTheOnlyOption indeed.]]

** The -nomonsters parameter, which removes all monsters from a level, quite obviously makes it impossible to finish a level that requires a specific monster to die before the exit will open, such as most of the boss levels in the original[[note]]Strangely, [[MookMaker monster spawners]] and John Romero's head-on-a-pike from the final level in ''VideoGame/DoomII'' are unaffected, so a run of that game, skipping MAP32: Grosse, would actually be completable, and it's possible to finish [=E1M8=] in the original ''Doom'' with no Barons to fight by clipping through a wall[[/note]]. This oversight is fixed in some source ports, which constantly check to see if the monsters are alive rather than only triggering when said monsters die, meaning the exit opens as soon as the level starts.

** ''VideoGame/FinalDoom'': "MAP31: Pharaoh", the first secret level, was rendered impossible to finish because a vital key was erroneously flagged to appear only in multiplayer. The creators of the pack, [=TeamTNT=], quickly released a patch allowing the key to appear in any mode, which also fixed a node-building error that prevented some enemies from appearing. The fixed version was also included in the official [[http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Id_Anthology id Anthology]], but it wouldn't be until the Website/GOGDotCom release of the game, almost ''20 years later'', that this version would be sold by ''Doom'' creators id Software in widely-available form. Not that it stopped people from discovering how to [[SequenceBreaking complete the level without the key]] in the meantime, of course.
** ''VideoGame/DoomII'': In MAP07: Dead Simple, the central staircase raises once you kill all Arachnotrons. If played on [[HarderThanHard Nightmare!]], Arachnotrons can respawn and be killed off again, allowing you to raise the central stairs out of reach.
** ''VideoGame/Doom64'': MAP09: Even Simpler is basically a remake of "Dead Simple," only with Pain Elementals thrown in. You have to kill every enemy, including the Lost Souls they shoot out, to advance. If they're killed next to some walls, however, the Souls they are supposed to shoot out get sucked outside the map, making it impossible to kill them.

* ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry2'': The Platform/GameBoyAdvance version requires you to play a minigame with Funky Kong in the first world in order to gain access to his flight services. If you're in too much of a rush to bother with this, it's possible to get to the Flyin' Kroc level but be unable to ever return to a previous one, making the pursuit of 102% impossible.

* ''VideoGame/MythTheFallenLords'': in mission 22 "River of Blood" your army starts before a massive wall and your objectives are to enter the perimeter and secure a bridge inside the area. The only gate is blocked by a wooden palisade, but you can blow it up with your dwarves. Unless for some reason you decide to kill them, forcing you to restart since there aren't other units capable of throwing explosives thus becoming stuck outside the wall.

* ''VideoGame/ANNOMutationem'' has a grueling bug after you complete the Harbor Town Freighter area, if you return back to the Freighter, the boat ride to head back towards Harbor Town doesn't work, no matter how many times "go back" is selected, leaving you stuck, more-so if you saved at the point without any backups to get out of it.

* "VideoGame/EarthBound":

** This is actually pretty difficult to get into an unwinnable situation without glitches.
*** That said, something the player can do is about 75% throughout the game. Stonehenge Base is home to the enemy Starman Super, which has a very rare chance of dropping the item 'Sword of Kings'. This is one of Poo's items that cannot be sold or dropped. If a player was determined, they could fill up everyone's inventories as well as Escargo Express with around 90 of them. This will prevent the player from being able to get other required key items for progression, like the Sauerkraut item from Tenda Village for the Lost Underworld, locking the player out of the final sanctuary location.
*** This actually still can be bypassed though. Due to the developers including a debug menu that can be accessed through glitches, a crafty player could access the debug menu and use it to forcibly remove items from their inventory.
*** Really, the debug menu is probably cheating for this, but it is accessible in the game legitimately, which presents many softlocking opportunities. For example, you could just warp to a late or endgame area while at a low level and save without unlocking the ability to teleport, which would strand the player against enemies they cannot beat, and even if they could, there's no option for them to escape. The Cave of the Past is especially an offender, given that it's not possible to go back to the main world.
*** Heck, it's even possible to go to level 99 and use the debug menu to remove Paula and then go there. Even with the massive level advantage, the final phase still cannot be beaten without her. Or at a low level, a walk through walls glitch could be used (especially if it's done while Paula left the party) to just simply enter the final dungeon, where the player can't progress or leave for the same reason. Also there's no currently known way to get to the debug menu while in the area (glitches or not), so the player can't just use the menu to revert everything without hacking.

* ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry2DiddysKongQuest'': The Platform/GameBoyAdvance version requires you to play a minigame with Funky Kong in the first world in order to gain access to his flight services. If you're in too much of a rush to bother with this, it's possible to get to the Flyin' Kroc level but be unable to ever return to a previous one, making the pursuit of 102% impossible.

* The coin-op game ''VideoGame/{{Trog}}'' features four cute claymation dinosaurs ([[IncrediblyLamePun Rex]], Bloop, Spike, and Gwen) collecting eggs and trying to get home. It has a complex egg-laying pattern that sometimes fails to spawn the last egg for a particular dino, making it impossible for that dino to win the round.

* The NES game ''VideoGame/HeroesOfTheLance'' was ''especially'' craptacular for one reason: if the [[WhiteMagicianGirl easy-to-die cleric Goldmoon]] ever dies and you don't retrieve her Blue Crystal Staff, then the game is unwinnable. It doesn't help that she's the default character and so, for beginning players, the most likely to die first.

* The UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance version of the ''Lord of the Rings'' game ''[[Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium The Fellowship of the Ring]]'' has a bug that makes the game unwinnable if you do not save at a specific point '''during a transition between scenes'''. Compounding the problem, saving just an instant too early means you're stuck in a sequence of "Load game -- automatically trigger scene transition - game freezes - turn off game".

* ''Series/{{Airwolf}}'' on the UsefulNotes/AmstradCPC is effectively unbeatable since shooting either of the switches on the last screen crashes the game.

** The UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance remake of ''VideoGame/BrokenSwordTheShadowOfTheTemplars'' had a couple of these because of {{Game Breaking Bug}}s. If you go to Spain before going to Syria, then it often causes a glitch which prevents you from going to Syria at all. Also, there is a part early on where you have to make a plaster cast; a glitch lets you do that without having picked up the plaster, which you need to get a key later in the game.

** The NTSC version for the NES is just plain impossible when playing with two players simultaneously -- there's a bug in Level 11 in which Player 2's Clinger Winger ''never starts moving'', and so the Hypno Orb runs him over every time. Since the level restarts if either player dies, this will repeat until either player runs out of lives, at which point they need to finish the level on their own if they wish to beat it. Thankfully, it was fixed in the PAL version of the game, the UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis port, and most recently, in [[CompilationRerelease Rare Replay]].

** At the end of "Blast Pit", the pipe Gordon is walking through breaks and drops him in a storage room below. If you don't have enough health to survive the FallingDamage, you have no choice but to load an earlier save or use cheats to progress. The UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 and cancelled UsefulNotes/SegaDreamcast ports rectify this by filling the room with SoftWater.

** The UsefulNotes/GameBoy game:

* In ''[[VideoGame/BubbleBobble Bubble Bobble Plus]]'', the UsefulNotes/WiiWare remake of Bubble Bobble, while playing Classic mode, if you get an EXTEND on Round 99, something incredibly specific and up to luck, one can skip the final level (Round 100), and go to [[MinusWorld Rounds 101-104]]. Rounds 101-103 are the three secret bonus rooms, and Round 104 is the EXTEND cutscene's room. Dying once in Rounds 101-103 skips to the next round, but death in Round 104 has no effect. There's no way to attack the Super Drunk, thusly trapping the player forever. Furthermore, if you use a continue after all players die, the Super Drunk doesn't even respawn.

* In the [[UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis Sega MegaDrive/Genesis]] game ''Chuck Rock'', the last level has a rock close to a tall platform with a green dinosaur on top. You're ''supposed to'' jump onto the rock and then onto the platform. However, if you throw the rock on the platform to kill the dinosaur, you're as good as screwed. The platform's too tall to overcome with your normal jump, Chuck can't climb, you can't nudge the rock back down, there are no other rocks to use, and there's no way to jump higher. If the player leaves the screen and comes back, the rock doesn't reset. On top of that, enemies don't respawn so the player can't kill themselves, and there's no time limit either so the player is stuck there, without any choice other than to reset the game. Hope you remembered to write down the password...

* ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry2DiddysKongQuest'': The UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance version requires you to play a minigame with Funky Kong in the first world in order to gain access to his flight services. If you're in too much of a rush to bother with this, it's possible to get to the Flyin' Kroc level but be unable to ever return to a previous one, making the pursuit of 102% impossible.

** In ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure2'' for the UsefulNotes/SegaDreamcast, some discs had an error which made you fall through the floor at the beginning of the last level, meaning there's no way to stop it. [[https://tcrf.net/Sonic_Adventure_2_(Dreamcast)#Anti-Piracy The Cutting Room Floor]] speculates this was done [[InvokedTrope intentionally]] for CopyProtection purposes.

*** Also, you'd better not be Super Sonic when you reach that main boss, or Tails will not appear either. A similar thing happens if you replay that level, play as Super Tails, and hit Eggman more than 8 times before he takes the battle into the skies. However, this was fixed in at least one later rerelease. (specifically, ''Sonic Classic Collection'' for the UsefulNotes/NintendoDS)

* The UsefulNotes/GameBoy original version of ''Franchise/StarWars: Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'' included an unwinnable situation in the first level. Near the end of the Hoth caves stage, there was a long jump that needed to be crossed, with a stack of ice blocks on the other side allowing you to reach your destination. However, the ice blocks are [[DestroyableItems destroyable]], meaning that if you accidentally break enough of them (particularly by riding your Tauntaun while attempting the jump--its weight automatically breaks through ice blocks), you are stuck with no possibility of finishing the level. Possibly UnwinnableByDesign.
* In the UsefulNotes/GameBoy original ''Franchise/StarWars: Film/ANewHope'', you can find each of the main characters from the movie (except Chewbacca and C-3PO) and add them to your party. However, you don't ''need'' to find any of them except R2-D2. Obi-Wan Kenobi is located in the back of a cave out in the middle of nowhere, and is notable in that he provides you with the less than useful lightsaber and also has the ability to heal your party a certain number of times. However, if you left Obi-Wan to rot on Tatooine then you'll quickly regret it upon reaching the trash compactor level of the Death Star. The sewer monster from the movie is seemingly immune to your blaster, and even if it isn't the damaging water rises too quickly for you to kill it that way. The only way to get past the dianoga is with the lightsaber provided by Obi-Wan.

* In the UsefulNotes/GameBoyColor pirate ''Thunder Blast Man'', [[PortingDisaster an even worse port]] of the Famicom ''Rocman X'', the "city stage" boss is unbeatable due to a GameBreakingBug.

* In the version of ''TabletopGame/{{Freecell}}'' distributed with UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows, game 11982 out of 32000 is unwinnable. Windows XP and onward extend this to 1,000,000 games. The same seed-based [[UsefulNotes/RandomNumberGenerator RNG]] is used, so as earlier, 11982 is impossible. Including that one, there are eight unwinnable deals. 146692 is the second one. Taken even further, 1282 out of the first 100 million deals are unwinnable, which is one out of every 78,003.

** The game on the UsefulNotes/SegaCD can end up being unwinnable as a combination of three factors: the game has only scripted battles, set points where the player characters gain experience and a highly customizable character building system. The end result of this is that it is entirely possible to build up your characters in such a way that they cannot win a mandatory battle, and the game offers no possibility of straying from the main storyline to grind.

* ''VideoGame/Persona5'': Sending a calling card forces the treasure of a Palace to materialize, and stealing that treasure is the final step in clearing a dungeon. However, ItOnlyWorksOnce; after sending the card, you start the next day at the Palace with no way out except defeating the boss, and there's nothing stopping the player from exhausting their resources against other enemies in the Palace first. Mercifully, the game does give you an escape clause: in the event that Joker runs out of HP, you can restart to the prior morning before sending the calling card, or if it's too close to the time limit, you can return to one week before the deadline.

* The original ''VideoGame/FZero'' had a level called "Death Wind" that was impossible to beat with the Golden Fox on Master difficulty. This is because the Golden Fox had the best handling but the lowest top speed, and the AI racers were just too fast for the Fox to catch them. With every lap having an increasingly strict requirement as to what position a player could safely be in, this meant outright failing the course after a certain number of laps had passed. The level has been beaten only once with the Golden Fox on a Tool-Assisted {{Speedrun}}, and that was because the speedrunner had the car in second place "pushing" him.

* ''VideoGame/AloneInTheDark1992'' has a soft lock(or hard lock if it consistently affects a save file) situation where the player character clips out of bounds and a splash is heard as if falling into water, after which they are permanently detached from the background and doomed to wander the void until you restart or reload an uncorrupted save.

** You must break into the local museum to steal some items. The regular way of doing this involves using the Red Key Card on the back door to get to the sewers, from where you can access the room with the museum's alarm switch. Turning it on will evacuate the museum, after which you'll be able to enter it -- still from the sewers -- and take everything you need there, with the automatic robot guards as your only obstacle. However, if you're skilled enough, you can skip all this and just go through the front door, [[SequenceBreaking steal the items in broad daylight]] and escape before getting arrested. Performing such a robbery [[ScriptBreaking before obtaining the aforementioned Red Key Card]] will cause the game to assume you already have that item, which means you can no longer get it for real. Since the Card is needed to open a few more doors later on, you can't complete the game without it.
** LBA has a SingleSaveFile and {{Autosave}}s whenever you enter a different location. Unless you make use of the "copy saved game" feature, this can get your save file screwed up if you were to, for example, drop into a scene from significant height while having only one HP (which you lose due to hitting the floor) and no extra lives.

* The random nature of the Item World maps in the ''Franchise/{{Disgaea}}'' series can potentially produce maps that are unwinnable if you're lacking units capable of reaching the exit or the enemies on the map. Random Geo Effect combinations can produce even sillier results, such as a situation where the moment one unit attacks another in melee, they punch each other in an eternal counter loop (Always Counter) yet inflict negative amounts of harm by doing so (Reverse Damage), producing a loop that only ends when you reach for the power button.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Banished}}'', you can make it impossible to expand your town by wasting all your stone and iron (for instance by making tools and paved roads) and/or abandoning them on the other side of a river and dismantling the bridge that leads there, leaving you without enough stone to rebuild it. Since your only source of those two resources besides gathering are the Mine and Quarry (and they require stone and iron respectively) is the Marketplace (which also requires Iron to build) you're essentially left stranded.