History Main / UnwinnableJokeGame

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' has "Heroin Hero", it's a game that is suppose to relieve anyone of stress, there's no score or time limit. The objective of the game is to chase a pink dragon through a magical enchanted forest while injecting simulated heroin. Except the dragon can never be caught.

* One of the earliest computerized examples is ''[[http://history-computer.com/Dreamers/Torres_chess.html El Ajedrecista]]''[[note]]Spanish for "chess player"[[/note]] from ''1914'', a game against a [[TabletopGame/{{Chess}} chess automaton]] in which a human player plays a bare king against the automaton's king and rook. As any chess player with ''some'' knowledge of the endgame will tell you, the player cannot win or stalemate, and will inevitably be checkmated.

Compare UnintentionallyUnwinnable, where the game cannot be won because of a design flaw or programming oversight, UnwinnableByDesign, which is a serious game that is designed so that certain circumstances will render it unwinnable, as well as EndlessGame and WideOpenSandbox, which don't have a win condition in the first place, and UnwinnableTrainingSimulation if it's meant as a practice run. For games (including joke games) that are horrendously difficult but have a win condition that is intended to be actually ''achievable'', the trope you're looking for is NintendoHard (or, in very extreme cases, PlatformHell)

* The creators of ''VideoGame/TheRoomTheGame'' released what appeared to be the equivalent for ''Film/TheHungerGames''.[[spoiler:.. on April 1st. It becomes a test to see how many times a player can take one of Clove's throwing knives to the head before giving up.]] See it for yourself [[https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/592902 here]].

** The "Smoke & Mirrors" game has its own [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWlbzdaJJ_s Impossible Mode]], where Music/LouReed appears and kills [[Creator/PennAndTeller the duo]] by shooting lightning from his eyes, then tells the player, "[[ExactWords Impossible doesn't mean very difficult.]] Very difficult is winning the Nobel Prize; impossible is eating the Sun."

* Pippin Barr's games are usually more like critical commentary than actual games, and "[[http://www.pippinbarr.com/games/zorba/Zorba.html Zorba]]" is no exception; you can't win, because the computer-controlled character will never make a mistake.
* The hilarious [[GameMod game hack]] ''[[http://www.baddesthacks.net/?p=1153 Uwe Boll's Punch Out!!]]'' allows you (as "Little Tax") to take on Creator/UweBoll in the boxing ring. [[spoiler: Punches score points but do no damage and you can't run out the clock since it's not running. Possible subversion: if Little Tax survives long enough, Uwe Boll ''does'' eventually run out of moves. [[ShaggyDogStory Then the game crashes.]]]]

* ''Segway of the Dead'', a game by the creators of ''VideoGame/RoadOfTheDead'', was presented as the latter game's sequel. Just one problem: [[spoiler:no matter how fast you get the segway going, you cannot possibly break through the crowd of zombies.]] Never trust a game that comes out on April Fool's Day. ([[TrollingCreator The creators later put out a video of]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQJ3L88i05Y the angriest reviews Segway of the Dead got.]])

* Shortly after Brazil was trampled 7-1 by Germany in the 2014 UsefulNotes/{{FIFA World Cup}}, a Brazilian programmer decided to enhance the SelfDeprecation with [[http://www.clickjogos.com.br/jogos/gol-da-alemanha-simulator/ "Gol da Alemanha]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh6nN_KbyTM Simulator"]]. There the player controls a Brazilian attacker, when one of the other players is a traffic cone, the other nine filled to the brim with ArtificialStupidity, and the opposing German team actually knows what is doing.

* ''VideoGame/GuitarHero'' games are another popular target for fake levels in the form of impossible songs only bots can play, let alone win flawlessly (and even then if the programming isn't tight enough bots can still flub parts of these songs). The idea is to see how difficult it can truly get, how many notes you can fit into a song, how many points you can earn, etc. Often, songs from artists like Music/{{Buckethead}} are synced up with the impossible note track even though since the multitracks are never involved this doesn't result in the screeching fast guitar solos dropping out if any notes are missed. When an already existing song is deliberately turned into this, it's typically considered an "Overchart", meaning that there are notes in the chart which do not actually correspond to any real note or sound in the song. A smaller group of these "impossible songs" are those who are not actually overcharted and are instead truly composed to be exceedingly difficult. A well known example of this would be [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gMspNaL2S0 Soulless 6 by ExileLord]].

* ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'' has [[http://xkcd.com/724/ a strip]] about ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}''. Predictably, someone on the internet [[http://www.kongregate.com/games/banthar/hell-tetris made a game]] like that. And some managed [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reFPscApObs to score]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_giTK__WVOw lines in it]].

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'', Stu, Drew, and company go to a minature golf course, and are promised free games if they get a hole-in-one on the final hole, the titular Ice Cream Mountain. Problem is, the golf course owner Earl Skaggs had deliberately rigged the mountain so it would ''literally be impossible for any player to get a hole-in-one'', as unintentionally revealed by the kids, who sneak into the inside of Ice Cream Mountain (under the impression that it's literally made of ice cream) and remove the paper cover that blocks balls going into the mountain from exiting through the chute that results in a hole-in-one. As a result, they end up accidentally [[ForegoneVictory inverting this trope]], causing every player's ball to go into the hole for holes-in-one, much to the dismay of Skaggs.

* Polandball has [[https://www.reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/mt1s6e/realism/ Partition 2]], “the ultimate Pole-playing game”, a ''VideoGame/{{Skyrim}}''-esque RPG where the lowest difficulty is Legendary and the first enemy (Imperial Germany) kills you instantly.

Certain gambling machines may fall under this trope, though most countries have laws against such machines that never allow the gambler to win the jackpot, on the grounds that gambling is a game of ''chance'', of winning the jackpot, not throwing away money to play something that is ''literally'' unwinnable. And at that point, you may as well just throw money into an open fire.

* Pit Jumper in ''20 Useless Apps''.

* A recurring Minigame in ''TheSimpsons'' video games, "Larry The Looter", is completely unwinnable. Immediately after looting the electronics store (the only store it's possible to loot), [[ShopliftAndDie Larry is gunned down by the angry store owner.]]

* ''[[https://qntm.org/files/hatetris/hatetris.html Hatetris]]'', a variant of ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'' that is programmed to always provide you with the worst possible pieces. Most of the time, this means handing you an endless stream of S and Z blocks, but crucially not enough S and Z blocks to actually start clearing lines with them. Like many unwinnable variants, it is actually possible to clear a few lines in it, though the highest anyone has ever managed is 66.

* ''[[https://qntm.org/files/hatetris/hatetris.html Hatetris]]'', a variant of ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'' that is programmed to always provide you with the worst possible pieces. Most of the time, this means handing you an endless stream of S and Z blocks, but crucially not enough S and Z blocks to actually start clearing lines with them. Like many unwinnable variants, it is actually possible to clear a few lines in it, though the highest anyone has ever managed is 31.

* Polandball has [[https://www.reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/mt1s6e/realism/ Partition 2]], “the ultimate Pole-playing game”.

Compare UnwinnableByMistake, where the game cannot be won because of a design flaw, UnwinnableByDesign, which is a serious game that is designed so that certain circumstances will render it unwinnable, UnwinnableByInsanity, which is a game that is rendered unwinnable by the player doing things which no one would think to do, as well as EndlessGame and WideOpenSandbox, which don't have a win condition in the first place, and UnwinnableTrainingSimulation if it's meant as a practice run. For games (including joke games) that are horrendously difficult but have a win condition that is intended to be actually ''achievable'', the trope you're looking for is NintendoHard (or, in very extreme cases, PlatformHell)

* ''Waiting for Godot: The Game'', never advances past it's loading screen.

** Adverted, now that Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio actually won an Oscar, [[spoiler:they programmed in an ending and a boss fight]].

** The intro screen promises that I-Mockery will donate money to charity for every player that clears 20 lines or more in A-Type mode (no such promises for ''VideoGame/RType'' mode). However, once you breach the 15-line mark, [[spoiler:NES characters fall instead of Tetris blocks.]] They can't fit together in any line-clearing fashion. Then the game's ending chastizes you for not even being able to clear twenty measly lines. This is, truly, one of I-Mockery's cruelest AprilFoolsDay jokes of all time. It's still possible to sneak in a Tetris after you clear line 16, if an I piece is next, clearing 20 lines total. However, you still do not advance to level 3, as the game refuses to recognize that last cleared line, and sticks the counter at 19.

* A [[BlackHumor darkly humorous]] folklore game is ''Russian Roulette with a semi-auto pistol''. For those who aren't gun nuts: a revolver, the type of handgun you usually play Russian Roulette with, has several chambers (traditionally six, occasionally five or seven for different size bullets), one of which is loaded. So your chance of survival after a round of Russian Roulette is 5/6 (or 4/5, or 6/7, depending on the model of revolver). A semi-auto pistol has only one chamber. The bullet is fed into that chamber automatically. Playing the game will kill you with 100% probability (or 99%, depending on the [[ShurFineGuns gun quality]]).

* [[https://youtu.be/MmGYPNlPLrI Super Releasio Brothers]] is a fanmade sequel to the above hack, and much like it, it's completely unbeatable under normal means as Mario (who has the top part of his head replaced with a mushroom) will speed up far too fast with the inability to slow down at all. [[Main/GameBreakingBug He even runs so fast that the game glitches up because Mario's not supposed to go that fast,]] which causes part of the levels to loop over, can put him in solid objects, run right into a pit or an enemy, etc. However, you can still go fairly slow and try not to intentionally speed up. You could beat the game like this... [[TimedMission if it weren't for the fact that the timer wasn't removed,]] so you wouldn't reach the end of the level by doing that unless you froze the timer or went at the normal (for Releasio) speed. It didn't help that in the original version, [[GameBreakingBug level 7-4 was actually impossible to beat,]] as the game couldn't tell if Mario went through the right path or not due to how quick he was going, causing the level to loop endlessly. There's also even its own version of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBrosTheLostLevels'' called [[https://youtu.be/QTPVEzFnWTo Super Releasio Bros: The Lost Toads,]] making NintendoHard into Nintendo Almost Impossible.
** Much like before, Made For Releasio Toad has played, observed the physics and made tool assisted runs of both games, which you can see [[https://youtu.be/z01Lkt1AYRk here]] and [[https://youtu.be/RRPdRt3d9D4 here.]]
* ... And Ethan White (the guy who made Super Releasio Bros. and Super Releasio Bros. 2: The Lost Toads) and Shadow Mario made another hack called Super Releasio Bros. 2u, which is a hack of Super Mario Bros. 2. [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6q2uCjVTVO-E0iCqRMgIqQ MadeForReleasio Toad]] (again) played through it and made videos documenting it.

* ''VideoGame/GuitarHero'' games are another popular target for fake levels in the form of impossible songs only bots can play, let alone win flawlessly (and even then if the programming isn't tight enough bots can still flub parts of these songs). The idea is to see how difficult it can truly get, how many notes you can fit into a song, how many points you can earn, etc. Often, songs from artists like Music/{{Buckethead}} are synced up with the impossible note track even though since the multitracks are never involved this doesn't result in the screeching fast guitar solos dropping out if any notes are missed.
** When an already existing song is deliberately turned into this, it's typically considered an "Overchart", meaning that there are notes in the chart which do not actually correspond to any real note or sound in the song.
** A smaller group of these "impossible songs" are those who are not actually overcharted and are instead truly composed to be exceedingly difficult. A well known example of this would be [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gMspNaL2S0 Soulless 6 by ExileLord]].

* ''VisualNovel/HatePlus'' has an achievement that is absolutely impossible to achieve: [[spoiler:[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Level Four Revive Materia.]] According to the description, you must finish the game with ONLY the version of *Mute that you started with. However, *Mute is DrivenToSuicide at the end of Day 2, and the rest of the game is spent with the older version of *Mute that you restore, and there is no way around this. Note that using the Harem version, while allowing *Mute to survive, doesn't fulfill the conditions. As, it said only.]]

* Waiting for Godot: The Game, never advances past it's loading screen.
* Subverted with Sisyphus: The Video Game. Contrary to the myth, you can roll the boulder to the top of the hill, giving the player one point, at which point they are then smote by Zeus and sent back to the bottom. As such, it's really just a regular arcade game. This maybe be a case of doubly subverted though, as in a sense ALL arcade games where the player is shooting for the highscore are unwinnable, but they just aren't joke games like this is. Sisyphus by George Prosser is a more straight forward take, which is also high score based, but the hill has no top in his version. This game is not to be confused with Sisyphus by Love-From-Tom, which is a more normal game that just happens to be named after the myth.

* Subverted with Sisyphus: The Video Game. Contrary to the myth, you can roll the boulder to the top of the hill, giving the player one point, at which point they are then smote by Zeus and sent back to the bottom. As such, it's really just a regular arcade game. This maybe be a case of doubly subverted though, as in a sense ALL arcade games where the player is shooting for the highscore are unwinnable, but they just aren't joke games like this is.

* ''VideoGame/GuitarHero'' games are another popular target for fake levels in the form of impossible songs only bots can play, let alone win flawlessly (and even then if the programming isn't tight enough bots can still flub parts of these songs). The idea is to see how difficult it can truly get, how many notes you can fit into a song, how many points you can earn, etc. Often, songs from artists like Creator/{{Buckethead}} are synced up with the impossible note track even though since the multitracks are never involved this doesn't result in the screeching fast guitar solos dropping out if any notes are missed.

** There was a tabletop RPG player describing a ''Spacemaster'' (''TabletopGame/{{Rolemaster}}'' [[RecycledInSpace In Space]]) game where one of the players at the table won such a game. The character put the gun to his head, and rolled a critical failure, jamming the gun. Then, he passed it to the BigBad, who checked that yes, the gun was truly jammed, and played his turn. The BigBad rolled a critical success, unjamming the gun and blowing his head off. The story is on "Le Domaine de Saladdin" (in French) if you want to read it.