Permanently Missable Content / Platform Game

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• Banjo-Kazooie:
  • There is a Mumbo Token in a waterlogged pyramid in Gobi's Valley, on the surface of the water. Collecting the Jiggy in the pyramid will drain the water, so if you don't get the Mumbo Token before you drain the water, it is lost and there will be no other way to get it.
  • Another one in Banjo-Kazooie is often missed by fans. There is a grille connecting the chambers with the picture puzzles for Mad Monster Mansion and Rusty Bucket Bay, but many fans do not notice this link. After raising the water level once, it is possible to go to the chamber with the Mad Monster Mansion puzzle and break it, then go through to the Rusty Bucket Bay puzzle. Raise the water level twice and it's impossible to ever raise the grille again. Some of them have spotted the grille in the chamber with the Rusty Bucket Bay puzzle, but mistake it for a dead end. If discovering this upsets you, the Rare Witch Project wiki has a list of cheat codes that can be entered on the sandcastle floor in Treasure Trove Cove to open parts of Grunty's Lair, and among the more useless codes to open various grates is CHEAT THE GRILLE GOES BOOM TO THE SHIP PICTURE ROOM to open the grille in question (although entering more than two codes will prompt Grunty to erase the game file, and in the XBLA version you will lose your leaderboard status).
  • The XBLA version changed the note collecting so notes stayed collected as opposed to reappearing. This causes problems later in the game if a player chooses to do the Bottle Bonus Puzzles early in the game. In the puzzles the game simulates Banjo doing stuff; in two of the puzzles, this includes collecting notes, which, due to their non-reappearance, makes the notes disappear for good. The game is known for people overlooking notes and spending ages trying to find them; this only causes frustration. People spend hours trying to find the missing notes. Worse still, completing all the bottle puzzles gives an achievement which encourages people to do it. This glitch has thankfully been patched out.
  • In Banjo-Tooie, when speaking to Goggles for the first time, she'll give you the Amaze-O-Gaze Glasses (and thus the ability to zoom in and out during a first-person view). That is, provided that you haven't won the Tower of Tragedy quiz yet, otherwise you'll be permanently locked out of Bottles' House and thus will never get another chance to get the Amaze-O-Gaze. Not that you'd need it, anyway, since it's entirely optional.
  • In Tooie, the Jolly's Jukebox song "Sad Jinjo Houses" can only be unlocked by walking into a Jinjo house before the family is reunited. However, if you have saved all the Jinjos, the track is lost. Strangely, the tracks "In The Hall of the Zombie King" (heard in the Zombified Throne Room) and "Party at Bottles'" (heard by approaching Bottles' house after beating Tower of Tragedy but before beating the final boss) can be unlocked in the jukebox without even having to hear them.
• One of the secret items in Braid cannot be acquired once you clear a particular world, forcing you to restart and solve every puzzle again in order to see the Best Ending (which is just a few more screens of text).
• Clarence's Big Chance: Generally averted, as you can return to previous levels through the interdimensional hub. However, whatever you do, do not eat the burger for breakfast, as it will give Clarence permanent bad breath ^note Weirdly enough, the burger counts as one of the items for 100% items found; you can avoid "eating it for breakfast" by picking up either milk or cereal before you get it. (That is, unless you kill yourself before walking through a door or past a television, in which case you will be reset to a point before you ate the burger.)
• In Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, skipping the opening cutscene also skips the introduction level. It is not needed for 100% completion, however, but the player can pick up an extra life and a hit point.
• In Donkey Kong 64, Hideout Helm's Banana Medals (which must be manually picked up after completing each section of disabling the Blast-o-Matic) will disappear after Hideout Helm is completed. Failure to pick them up makes getting 101% completion impossible. This only affects the US version; the PAL and Japanese versions allow the medals to be collected if the level has been completed.
• Of the 31 secret houses in The Floor is Jelly, 6 of them can be rendered permanently unenterable in the Disc-One Final Dungeon as the hidden entrances to each of their rooms they're found in are blocked off in the post-glitching versions of the rooms they're located in, and the pre-glitching versions of said rooms are no longer available ever again, not even if you revisit the stage again, so if any of them are missed, it's impossible to achieve 100% Completion unless you delete your save file and start over.
• In Iji, if you miss one ribbon, the following ones will disappear. But the sector 7 ribbon fits the trope more: After the ship, there is a teleporter accessible by using the Nuke weapon's recoil. It's actually a shortcut, and using it causes the sector's ribbon to be permanently missed.
• Jak II: Renegade has seven one-time-only Precursor Orbs in the Metal Head Nest. All other locations can still be reached after beating the game. Some are just trickier to reach than others, which is probably why some people think they're permanently missed if they miss them (the Strip Mine, for example, can still be accessed via the warp portal in the prison cells where you rescue Jak's friends at the beginning of the third act).
• La-Mulana:
  • Both Whip upgrades can be permanently missed if you fail to solve their respective puzzles. The first one at least warns you in advance "err just once, and it will never reach thy hands".
  • The Life Jewel in the Dimensional Corridor is nigh-impossible to reach if you defeat the Dragon miniboss first (the boss provides a platform for reaching it.) It can technically still be acquired afterwards, but requires exploiting the knockback from the randomly-flying bats.
  • Almost any and everything in the Shrine of the Mother (in particular its Life Jewel) can be permanently missed if it's not acquired before it transforms into the True Shrine of the Mother.
  • As well as Hell Temple if you don't complete its whole unlocking process in one go.
  • In the remake, a tablet in the Dimensional Corridor poses you an offer if you can defeat Tiamat: A hidden fairy somewhere will reset one failed puzzle to give you a second shot at doing it right... but she'll only do this once.
  • A difficulty level can be lost this way: A tablet in the Mausoleum of the Giants warns you that you should not read it a second time. So what happens when you do? The tablet now tells you, the "mongrel who disobeyed the warning" to "taste bitter death", and the difficulty across the ruins increases for the remainder of the game. However, in the Vita port, the Fairy Queen will offer to lift this particular curse once.
• Mega Man:
  • Getting the Bad Ending in Mega Man X5 makes Zero permanently gone from the game, due to him going Maverick. Any Heart Tanks and part upgrades given to Zero are permanently gone as well.
  • In Mega Man X6, Zero is lost (well...until Mega Man X7, anyways) if X doesn't fight Nightmare Zero before exposing Gate.
  • In the various stages, there are Reploids for you to save. If a Nightmare Virus gets to them first, they're lost...and some of them give you useful things.
  • X7 also has rescuable Reploids... problem is they're apparently made of paper, they die from the smallest amount of enemy contact, and you need 64 of the 128 Reploids to unlock X. It's especially frustrating because your characters have a tendency to fall over when shot in mid-air (where most of these Reploids are in some stages) and they just sit there, slowly getting up. When they do get up, chances are the Reploid you wanted to save is dead. What's worse is, some Reploids will give permanent power-ups such as maximum Health or Buster upgrades, but you have to assign them to characters you have at the end of the stage. If you rescue most of those as Zero or Axl, X will miss out on most of his power-ups until New Game Plus.
  • In Mega Man Zero 2, you collect Forms by performing certain tasks during missions. However, the game only gives you one Form per mission, and there are a limited number of missions, so it's possible to miss some Forms. Fortunately, there are more missions than Forms, and the New Game Plus lets you try again to collect anything you missed.
  • In Zero 2 and 3, collecting EX Skills requires maintaining an "A" rank or higher on almost every mission. Each EX Skill is specific to a boss, so you get precisely one chance to get each one per playthrough. And using Cyber-Elves gets points deducted from your score on every mission afterwards, even into a New Game Plus, so using too many Cyber-Elves makes A-ranking impossible and thus renders all unobtained EX Skills truly permanently missed. True, there are Cyber-Elves that got you a temporary A-rank, but there aren't enough of those to get you every EX Skill.
  • Zero 3 has a a special feature where you can activate Ciel's supercomputer and link up to another Gameboy Advance with a Red Sun or Blue Moon cartridge and initiate a very special, one-time-only trade to get the exclusive Z-Saber chip. Unfortunately, it won't work for multiple games- just one. And guess what? The chip's not available on Higsby's ordering service! Buy another game copy, mooch off a friend's game, or dust off the Gameshark!
  • In Zero 4, you can make items out of parts obtained from defeated enemies. Some items require parts from Moloids, an enemy that only appears during one mission that can't be repeated. If you didn't stock up on their parts during that one mission, you'll just have to wait until the New Game Plus.
  • In the original Zero:
    • Entire missions are permanently missed if you get a game over and choose to continue instead of restart. And the game barely has any 1-Ups.
    • The abandoned laboratory that serves as the introduction stage, which has a few Cyber-Elves and nice opportunities to grind crystals. An early mission that sends you back there ends with the lab self-destructing. You'll be forced to wait for the New Game Plus afterwards.
    • There are mission-specific Cyber-Elves that only appear if you defeat certain enemies during a mission. Fortunately, New Game Plus remedies that problem, and by the second game, the developers made getting the Elves a built-in feature of any area, regardless of missing them on the first go-around.
    • Lastly, there's a door to Ciel's room that will only open if your rank is A or S. Inside is a Cyber-Elf. Screwed up the ranking to the point of no return- well, then- that Elf's PERMANENTLY MISSED!!
• The third James Pond game, Operation StarFI5H, you have to complete the "Cheese Mine" levels, which are made inaccessible afterwards as In-Universe, the locations are destroyed. One of these levels "Rennet Mine 1", has a Micro-map that can only be accessed on the first run of the level.
• Ori and the Blind Forest has missable secrets in all three of its major dungeons, since they can't be revisited after the escape sequences, as well as in the Mobile Maze section of the Misty Woods. The Updated Re-release adds fast-travel fountains to a the dungeons, allowing them to be revisited, which defies the trope.
• Prince of Persia:
  • In Prince of Persia: Warrior Within there are nine secret life upgrades. You must find all to get the Water Sword, which enables you to fight the Dahaka and get the alternate canon ending. Fortunately, the game allows for plenty of backtracking from the Central Hall, so most of the upgrades can be picked just before the True Final Boss. However, two of them are located in a One-Time Dungeon. Miss either and kiss the good ending goodbye.
  • All Sands ot Time trilogy games contain missable life upgrades; however, you're only penalized with a different kind of ending in Warrior Within for missing any. The upgrades have no bearing on the plot of the preceding Sands of Time, nor in the following The Two Thrones. This last game also packs missable Sand Credits. Miss enough and you won't be able to pay for all the unlockable artwork. Not a big deal, unless you're after 100% Completion.
• Psychonauts:
  • Once you free Lili from Loboto's clutches, you can't return to the camp or Cruller's lab. You can still collect anything left in the mental worlds and redeem stuff in the final level, but if you missed any Psi-Cards, Scavenger Hunt items, or other collectibles found in the real world, too bad! You're prevented from getting to Rank 100 and getting the secret ending movie.
  • An optional objective In Black Velvetopia awards the player with a health-extending golden helmet for helping a painter finish a poster advertising the level's upcoming boss fight. If you complete said boss fight without claiming your reward, the helmet becomes inaccessible.
• Psychonauts 2: Once the player finishes their business in the Lady Luctopus Casino Mission, the casino is never visited again. Luckily, there are no collectables in the casino.
• Shantae: Risky's Revenge: Getting the Deed to Scuttle Town without going to Bolo for him to tell Shantae that Mayor Scuttlebutt wanted to see Shantae to get that deed, means losing out on the 100 Gems of payment that was offered and received through Bolo to make that meeting happen.
• In Sonic Blast, Sonic or Knuckles can only collect one Chaos Emerald per zone, and only get one shot at getting each one in the second act of each. If you mess up on any of the Special Stages, you'll have to replay the entire game in order to get a shot at collecting all five Chaos Emeralds and gaining access to the game's True Final Boss.
• In Space Station Silicon Valley, oddly, has a permanently missable cutscene, a cinematic that explains some of the game's backstory and only plays the very first time the game is booted up, and never again. Even deleting your save data won't make it play again, and considering it's a cartridge-based game that went out of print over a decade ago, it may well be truly gone.^note On hardware, anyway. Completely scrubbing the memory of a ROM to make the cinematic play again is trivial.
• A nasty glitch in Spyro: Year of the Dragon makes the second egg from the race in each world's speedway level permanently inaccessible if you enter the level, get the first egg from the time trial, then leave without winning the second; afterwards, even if you do win the event, you won't get credited with the egg. This can happen backwards too: beat the race and get its egg, then leave without beating the time trial and you can't get the time trial egg. Particularly nasty since not getting 100% completion also locks you out of the Bonus Level and its boss. Thankfully, this bug was only in the original release of the game; the Greatest Hits re-release (as well as the PAL Platinum release) and the Reignited Trilogy fixed the Speedway bug.
• Super Mario Bros.: Usually averted because according to an interview, Shigeru Miyamoto usually avoids Permanently Missable Content in his games, though there are a couple of exceptions.
  • In the Super Mario All-Stars remake of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels: Did you use a Warp Zone? Congrats, you've locked yourself out of World 9 for the lifetime of your current save file! Oh, and if you do unlock World 9 and want to keep it, you still are not allowed to use a Warp Zone (including ones that go backwards) or your World 9 privileges will be revoked, forcing you to make a new save file if you want it back.
  • In New Super Mario Bros. Wii, you get save file stars for accomplishing certain tasks. If you never make the Super Guide box appear for losing eight lives in a level, the stars will sparkle. However, if the Super Guide box appears on any level, even if you don't use it, and then save afterwards, you can never make the stars sparkle on that save file. This is also a rare example of retroactive Permanently Missable Content, because you can lose the sparkling stars, even if you already have them, if you trigger the box.
  • Super Mario 3D Land does something similar. Lose five lives in the same level, and you get a special powerup that makes you invincible. But then, even if you don't use it, the save file's stars will stop sparkling. New Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario 3D World, which have the same power-up, don't penalize you for simply making it appear, just for using it. Since the player can regain sparkling stars in their save file just for clearing the level without using it, the trope does not play in those games.
  • Super Mario Odyssey has a total of 85 checkpoint flags spread through the kingdoms, and the number of them that Mario has triggered is tracked by the game for Toadette's checklist. Three checkpoint flags only exist temporarily, the Waterfall Basin flag in the Cascade Kingdom before Mario boards the Odyssey for the first time and the Construction Access and City Outskirts flags in the Metro Kingdom while it's under attack by Bowser's forces on Mario's first visit. If Mario doesn't activate these flags before progressing the story, then they disappear from the map without being counted towards the total. Fortunately, Mario only needs to activate 80 checkpoint flags to obtain a Power Moon from Toadette, so you can still collect every Power Moon if you miss the flags.
• Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back has Force power ups for Luke to collect as part of his training with the Force. Most are in plain slight but others are somewhat hidden in the level. If the player beats the level boss and misses on a few Force powers, they are gone for good the player can be at a handicap later when they use Luke later on. The sequel averts this by giving Luke all of his powers in the start and doesn't need to find them again.
• The first Tomba! game has a lot of these.
  • One of the areas, Wobbly Wharf, has a spiked barrel that rolls toward you. The average player will hit it a few times, destroying it, and assume it was just an obstacle and not think twice about it. What you're supposed to do is hit it three times to knock the spikes off (but not any more, or you'll break it) and push it off the bridge you find it on and into a nearby lake. Naturally, the game never tells you what you're supposed to do, and if you break it, it never comes back.
  • The go-kart sidequest is frustrating enough, but if you get the Gold Medal before the Bronze or Silver Medals, or the Silver before the Bronze, you can no longer complete the events for getting them, forcing you to Do Well, But Not Perfect your first few runs.
  • After reaching the Hidden Village, you can speak to the father of Yan, a young man you've been playing hide-and-seek with, who'll give you a lunchbox for his son. Eat it, or find all of Yan's hiding spots before getting the lunchbox, and you'll never be able to finish the "Take Out" event.
  • There's only one Funga Drum in the game, and if you give it to anyone other than the Masakari tribesman on Phoenix Mountain, you can never finish "What's a Funga?". Even worse, the tribesman will never move out of the way of the door that leads to the Molasses, which means you can't finish the "Let's Make Candy!" event, and the Golden Candy you get from finishing that is required to finish "5 Golden Items" and get the speed-boosting Psychic Fish. A hat-trick of permanently missable content from one misstep!
  • The sequel both averts this and plays it straight. To complete "Hide and Seek", you have to get a girl out of a hole in a wall. To do this, you throw a snowball into the hole under her, which slingshots it into her and knocks her to you. Capture the Ice Evil Pig before you do this? The snow melts... but an enemy appears next to the hole, and throwing it in knocks her out of the hole just as well. Unfortunately, one of the Pots of Life in the same area requires you to get covered in snow and roll onto a trampoline as a snowball, and after capturing the Evil Ice Pig and uncursing the area, you can no longer get it.
• The Tomb Raider series, of course, has countless missable secrets. Taking the wrong path in a level will bypass certain secrets, and you can't go back for them. In the Lud's Gate level, you must kill a guard without being seen to access an underwater room, if he sees you, it closes up for good. In the High Security Compound, there are two switches that each open a secret room much earlier in the level. If you hit both switches, it closes again, forever. Guide Dang It!...

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