That One Attack / Rhythm Game

Why yes, the chart lanes are doing a barrel roll. While there are notes to hit.

Rhythm games in general have fixed "charts", so you know when That One Attack is coming, and have time to say This Is Gonna Suck before it comes.

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Dance Dance Revolution

• Max300 and Maxx Unlimited both have crazy sections after the big pause in the middle. In fact, DDR has a metric, called Voltage, which basically just measures how difficult That One Attack is for the selected song.
• Battle mode of the PS2 games can also throw modifiers at you in the middle of a song. One popular tactic for the computer to wield is putting 2 of the 4 arrows on Sudden, or putting every other beat on double speed. These are MUCH harder to read than they sound.
• Healing-D-Vision has a 5-second run of 8th notes at 360 BPM. Have fun trying to Triple-A the song. Oh, and the run goes LDRDLDRD; normally these are handled by using the same foot for the L and R panels ("cross-overs"), but at this speed, that's a write-off; instead, the only hope is to exploit the design of the pad and brush the panels using the heel and toe from the same foot on different panels. Fun.
• The streams in Horatio on Challenge, mainly because of the absurd amounts of Fake Difficulty in it. Especially egregious in the PS2 version, where the shock arrows are on EVERY BEAT OF THE STREAM.
• Valkyrie Dimension has a slowdown near the end...which then becomes a massive stream at 400 BPM. The Challenge chart throws down another nearly impossible stream; this one goes at 480 BPM. To put this into perspective, Determinator below has 14.7 notes per second; this is 16. It doesn't help that, while In the Groove has a lot of really tough charts to get one used to runs like the one Determinator, DDR has very very few such runs, so when one does come along, it's an absurd Difficulty Spike that can only be completed by people who have played other games.
• PARANOiA Revolution has another Last Note Nightmare, where the song seems to end on a long freeze note and a clip of the announcer saying "I'm so impressed I could cry! Thank you very much for your best dance!" before throwing a short 360 BPM stream at you. The Expert chart rips it straight from Valkyrie dimension above, and the Challenge chart throws in 16th notes.
• "Egoism 440" is one of the few songs rivaling "Valkyrie Dimension" in difficulty (440 refers to the average tempo of the streams) but near the end, it goes into 16th notes (that's about 14.5 steps per second) for a little under 10 seconds.
• Sakura has one in the form of a slowdown to about 20 BPM. This is very, very slow and makes the incoming notes very hard to hit. And there's a second one at the end of the song, too!
• "Tohoku EVOLVED" is notorious for its final jump, which not only comes after a sudden spike to 1,020 BPM but also is always randomized to be one of four "corner" jumps (←+↓, ↓+→, ↑+→, or ←+↑). Back when X3 only allowed it to be played on a "Risky" life meter (one break in your combo is an instant failure) as part of the Encore Extra Stage, this meant that once you got to this point, the game had a 75% chance of failing you unless you had big enough feet to hit all four panels at once.^note Nowadays, the track is available for regular play and you can recreate the conditions with the optional Risky modifier if you really want to.
• Three tracks that debuted in the Dance Dance Revolution Solo games (a sorta-Gaiden Game line of single-player DDR arcade games featuring up-left and up-right arrows), "HYSTERIA", "CAN'T STOP FALLIN' IN LOVE", and "PARANOIA EVOLUTION", all require the player to hit four arrows at once at the ends of their 6-Panel Maniac charts. Granted, they're ←+↖+↗+→ jumps and there are no separators between ← and ↖ or between → and ↗ meaning that you can easily hit with just your two feet, but if you don't see this final jump coming, you might get confused and attempt to hit the panels with your hands in a panic.
• "Furuhata's Theme" (also known as "Ninzaburo") features a section that features "gallop" patterns. But these aren't just any gallops, they are ''3/16th gallops" (as opposed to the more common quarter-note gallops) at 170 BPM, as if gallops aren't already tricky enough for your feet to learn.
• "DEAD END"'s GROOVE RADAR Special chart is already known as one of the worst charts Konami has ever made, but special mention has to go to the 16th note triplet jumps in the middle. Stepping that quickly with one foot is pretty hard; doing it with both feet at the same time is pretty close to impossible. A pattern even close to that has never shown up in another DDR chart before or since for good reason.

Rock Band

• Caprici Di Diablo's third guitar solo is even faster than the rest of the song. Dozens of other songs in Rock Band and Guitar Hero have their own That One Attack, but many can be faked through using star power. Unless it's at the start, like in "Foreplay\Long Time", or a long "attack", like the drumming climax of most The Who songs, or there are two such attacks, like "Green Grass and High Tides" on guitar (like in many RPG examples, except you're guaranteed to get hit with it twice in a row).
• "Green Grass and High Tides"'s snake patterns are actually easy to full-combo on a Rock Band guitar if you use a technique that flat-out should not work: holding down the middle fret for the entire duration and pulling off from the outside frets to the middle fret, using the shredboard all the way. I'll repeat that once again: you PULL OFF FROM A LOWER FRET TO A HIGHER FRET. This only works during solos, and only works on a Rock Band guitar.
• The zig-zagging in "Green Grass and High Tides" is nothing compared to "Satch Boogie". To borrow Guitar Hero 2's loading screen joke for "Free Bird", "You're looking for "Surf Solo" or "Guitar Solo 2A" in Practice Mode."
• "Can't Be Tamed" is a pain on guitar, don't get fooled by the fact that it's a Miley Cyrus song, it's on the "Nightmare" tier for a reason. It's a particularly egregious example, because the song itself has no actual guitar parts (Harmonix charted the solo just for the game) and it starts off really easy, so you're most likely not going to expect to get nailed with a nasty solo section that gives "Tornado Of Souls" a run for its money.
• Walk up to any drummer that has seen the drums-expert chart to all of Coheed and Cambria's DLC and start singing "Cold as winter's guns of summer point and watch them run".
• We cannot talk about this without mentioning the guitar solo from "Constant Motion". The first half is fairly easy. Then you get hit with the practically random strings of notes followed by a bunch of 23-note-per-second triplets. Eagh.
• One of many keyboard charts with this is Roundabout by Yes. The whole thing is hard, but where does the shit really hit the fan? Why, in Subdued Section of course!
• No Doubt's "Tragic Kingdom," aside from the outro that gradually spirals out of control, is a relatively easy song on guitar... except for the solo, where the first half is entirely comprised of rapid HOP Os that can catch you completely off-guard if you've never played the song before. This goes on for a good 13 seconds, too.
• Both Rock Band 3's DLC and Guitar Hero 3 contain "Through The Fire and Flames" as the infamous That One Boss but where does the song's most infamous part come in? The Intro (a ridiculously rapid HOPO run that lasts over 12 seconds), of course!
• For those who sing, and try to imitate the singer of whatever song is playing, if you're not particularly trained in singing metal, the song "Halls of Valhalla" by Judas Priest has a couple of these: there are the eponymous cries of "Valhalla", as well as "I belong" dispersed throughout the song, and if that's not enough, there is a build-up then there is the near growl during the bridge into the next cry for "Valhalla".

Other

• It is possible for BMS charts (and their derivatives) to have some degree of randomness, meaning that a cruel charter can have an easy section at one point on one run and then on another run have the same section be replaced with a really difficult section, and which one gets used being determined by a random number generator.
• Many of the bits from BIT.TRIP qualify, but some of the worst are the bits that change back and forth from black to white from Void. If you don't get the timing down quickly, you will lose points both from missing black bits and collecting white bits, and you will fail ridiculously fast.
• beatmania IIDX uses a special Life Meter system in which you must have at least 80% of your life intact when the song finishes. So how do some charts get Fake Difficulty? By having ridiculous patterns at the very end after a only moderately hard or an outright breather section, often forcing the gauge down to a dreaded 78%. Charts with such BS endings lead to many cases of getting the highest grade on the song and STILL failing it.
• DJMAX Technika: "Son of Sun (SP)'s" end segment. GO GO GO GO GO—GAME OVER. Some people have even made montages of fellow players failing the song.
  • Also on SP difficulty: "Your Own Bullshit". Go on (Go on) / Pick those beautiful feet up off the—GAME OVER.
  • "A.I. (TP)'s" ending. It say something about how awkward the ending is when people who have cleared the Challenger Set still "spam" that segment. By the way, notice that all of the examples thus far involve gratuitous repeat notes?
• Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents have their fair share of examples: the last section of "Shanghai Honey" on Insane (notes spread out all over the place and designed to mess up those who assumed Insane was just a mirrored Hard chart), "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and its infamous third verse (ridiculous clusters of notes with spinners interspersed), and, of course, the last 14 notes of "Countdown" (be prepared to go from full-health to fail in 2 seconds!).
  • If not the third verse of "Jumpin' Jack Flash", the fourth and final verse is. A brutal segment where the game throws every beat trick it can think of, along with a weakened life bar (From the third section) that is dropping faster than ever. Miss any one of the notes hemorrhaged to you on Hard Rock and you are DEAD. Failing here is downright heartbreaking.
  • "The Anthem" in EBA has the final spinner for people trying to S Rank the song. The thing is 'Damn near impossible without spinning as fast as humanly possible.
• From Space Channel 5:
  • When it reverses your controls.
  • In the beginning of level 2 of part 1? Up down up down up down up down updown.
    • And later, rightleftchu, leftleftrightrightchuchu. Notice that there are no spaces - they come at you THAT fast.
  • One part of Part 2 gives you twenty two step commands to repeat.
  • The last sequence for the final boss battle in both games are a Kaizo Trap; failure to complete the last "chu chu chu" sequence as the boss is about to be defeated will cause an instant Game Over and you have to restart the stage all over again.
  • The second section of "Report 2 Bonus" in the first game. "Up down up down up down up down up down up down up down..." It's a solid thirty seconds or so of up-down finishing with a typical 3-Chu. Then after that, you get to do it again with Right left. Listening to the music helps you keep your place, but the sheer length of the commands can still throw you off it you aren't paying attention.
• DJ Hero:
  • "Push It vs. I Want Your Soul" has a nasty stream of 16th taps all on the same track. And it's one of the faster mixes. "Planet Rock vs. Busy Child" also does the same thing, but it's shorter and makes up for it by having you hold a note at the same time.
  • On Expert, Move For Me has a BRUTAL section with about 160 actions in 15 seconds (starts around 2:21 in the video).
• Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA:
  • The final song in Second ("The Singing Passion of Hatsune Miku"). At first, you get a long stream of constant Os that feels like That One Attack, seeing as you're even greeted by an easier section directly after. Five seconds later, the game gets serious and you have to hit O eight times per second, doing it too fast gets you killed. This is still the easy part. And then when you finally feel like it's over... Well... Words really can't describe this. this is something you have to see.
  • The first game has the similarly difficult "Disappearance of Hatsune Miku", which was clearly the predecessor for the way Singing Passion is played in the sequel.
  • Though "The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku" was hit with the Nerf hammer in F 2nd (it lost its iconic first streams of Button Mashing in favor of spaced out triplets), its final Technical Zone is this to those who want to Excellent or Perfect the song. How does it make up for the lost Button Mashing, you say? Well, try the zone's nightmarish combination of triplets, double notes, and hold notes of differing buttons in one single stream over the span of 3 flippin' seconds.
• O2Jam has the "Identity" series on Hard difficulty. All three songs' Hard charts have a section consisting of 1/16th notes forming the character 헉 (heok), also known as the "huk smash". There is no verified human attempt at clearing that particular pattern without any combo breaks.
• Groove Coaster:
  • In the original game on iOS any pattern involving notes that have to be hit in rapid succession, as the game will refuse to recognize any presses if at least one finger is down on the touchscreen. This means songs like "VISIONNERZ" (Hard) and "magnet" (Hard) become extremely hard to get No Miss let alone Full Chain on, as using one finger to mash these patterns can be tiring and alternating hands can result in the aforementioned issue.^note This doesn't apply to Beat notes, which also involve tapping the touchscreen repeatedly but don't have to be tapped at a specific rate, or the arcade version, as the game will recognize button presses on one Booster even if the other Booster is being pressed down. This has since been fixed for Original Style, which does support multi-touch.
  • Forget about trying to No Miss "OMAKENO Stroke", let alone Full Chain it, on a touch device. About 2/3 into the song is an extremely fast onslaught of L+R Dual Slides. This isn't so bad in the arcade since it just amounts to shaking the Boosters back and forth in opposite directions, but due to the way Slides are registered in the smartphone versions — namely that you have to lift your finger off of the touch screen for subsequent Slide notes if you use the same finger — it's nearly impossible to chain this section properly without using some convoluted tricks.
  • The only reason "Bad Apple!! feat.nomico"'s Extra chart is a 9 is because of the ending Slide barrage that can easily kill you even from a full Groove meter.
  • "Music Revolver" on Hard has several strings of Slide notes near the end that pop onto the track at the last second and will cause sight-readers to fail. There is a section consisting only of Tap notes that are already on the track afterwards, but you'll likely have bled out so much of your Groove meter that it won't be enough to bring you back into passing the song. The same pattern shows up on Extra as well, but if you're good enough to get an S on the Hard chart, it's not a huge issue on Extra.
    
    That said, Extra has its own TOA in the form of a rapid 16th stream (at 168 BPM) of alternating Tap and Critical notes right before the breakdown of the song, forcing you to rapidly mash with both hands together, with even less "recovery" notes afterwards. If your arms aren't strong enough, that section will destroy them.
• jubeat has a lot of nasty note patterns in its harder charts, but the nastiest That One Attacks come when the same patterns appear in the easier charts:
  • Milchstraße's Advanced chart, a Level 5 (out of 10). Just before the song's crescendo hits, there is a section of rapid-fire 16th notes - a pattern usually reserved for level 9 and 10 charts, and the crescendo is a hard pattern of 8th notes, which is normally found in level 7 or 8 charts!
  • 532nm's Basic chart, a Level 6. Part of the chart involves multiple 4-panel fast horizontal slides, and each slide needs to be timed carefully for each panel to be hit at the right time. These slides are again, usually reserved for level 9 and 10 charts!
• Cytus:
  • From Chapter 10, "FREEDOM DiVE" on Hard, known as one of the game's "big three" charts alongside "L2 (ver.B)" and "Codename : Zero", features an infamous "box" pattern near the beginning of the chart, where the player must trace a box of drag notes around the screen while hitting tap notes inside the box. Halfway through this section, the box changes directions. All of this at an insane 222.22 BPM! "Blue Eyes" from the Prologue chapter seems to be designed to train players for this, as it features the exact same pattern, only at 151 BPM instead.
  • From Chapter 7: "L2 (ver.A)" on Hard has the "grape plantation" section near the end, where the player must hold onto hold notes while tapping triple-time streams of notes, all at a horrendously slow 76 BPM. It's bad enough that there are players who consider "L2 (ver.B)" to be easier.
• maimai has "Garakuta Doll Play Master". Near the end of the song, you get lots of slides that jump everywhere on the screen. This section is so hard someone made a tutorial solely dedicated to explain that section.
• In the Groove gives us "Determinator", a fairly difficult but manageable song. Except for one little part that makes you move around the pad at the rate of 14.7 stomps per second. If you're not sure how fast that is, it is very, very fast. (Example here; the fast part starts at 1:16.)
• In Rhythm Heaven, any time the music stops playing for an extended period of time mid-song before continuing. Rhythm Tengoku has "Cosmo Dance (Space Dance 2)" which has a good 7 or 8 seconds of silence before the song continues in which the Pa-pa-pa-PUNCH following it has a tighter timing than before. Rhythm Heaven Fever has "Working Dough 2" where you must hit the beat while the music isn't playing at all at one point, even the bass that normally accompanies the silence in this particular stage. If you're playing for a Perfect, these will likely end the streak, but what places these in That One Attack territory is that these parts count individually in their home games as part of a Superb score. Screw one of those up and you can kiss the Superb goodbye. Both of these return in Rhythm Heaven Megamix and are the portions of the song that nets you a star (basically a big score boost), so the pressure is still very much on for the Superb even with the Sequel Difficulty Drop.
• In Pump It Up:
  • Starian's S07 chart^note the Hard chart before the series started using difficulty numbers for chart names is infamous for having four simultaneous jumps at the end which consist of all four diagonals, and due to the design of arcade pads, cannot be simply hit with both feet unlike most triple notes (which usually have the center panel thrown in; players can just step on the center panel and one of the other panels with one foot and the remaining panel with the other foot); the player has to use their hands unless they happen to have feet that are big to the point of being a major disorder. Quite surprising for a chart that's only in the single digits.
  • King of Sales S21 brings back the all-diagonal quad. Not only that, but each one of those steps is actually a 50-step hold that's really, really short. Miss one of those and one of the steps before or after it and the game will tell you to just get up and dance, man.
• Guitar Hero:
  • "One" by Metallica has Fast Solo A, a really fast pattern of descending licks at the start of an already hard solo. The song wouldn't be nearly as infamous or even final tier if it weren't for its solo.
  • "Because It's Midnite" is infamous for a hair-raising solo out of nowhere in the middle of an otherwise very easy song. It's only 12 seconds long, but has a blistering 174 notes (keep in mind the song as a whole is 540 notes). Even "Jordan" doesn't have that kind of density. And this is in the second tier (out of six).
• From SOUND VOLTEX, any time the chart lanes spin and you still have to hit notes, with "VALLIS-NERIA" on Exhaust and "FLOWER" on Heavenly being two of the most well-known offenders. Memorization is a must if you expect to chain these notes, let alone get a Perfect on the chart.
• Arcaea:
  • Any time the game requires you to hold down four notes at once (always two long notes and two Arc notes) especially if you're playing with thumbs, the most notorious example being the initial Final Boss track "Grievous Lady" which has you do it both on Future and Present difficulties.
  • The anomaly for "Tempestissimo" pulls a nasty trick on players. Instead of an Interface Screw before switching songs like other anomalies, the track changes difficulties mid-song and switches your life bar to one that constantly drains for the rest of the song. If you started on Past (a 6), you have to play the Present chart (a 9); on Present, you have to play the Future (a 10+); on Future, you have to play the Beyond (an 11).
• BanG Dream! Girls Band Party!:
  • "Tear Drops" on Expert, otherwise considered an easy song, has its now-infamous death slides: three very fast screen-wide notched slides in quick succession right before the second refrain, which will instantly drain your life if you mess them up. Anyone playing with thumbs, especially on medium-to-large devices, may not be able to go from one side of the screen to the other fast enough. Its harder Special map proudly features the slides as well.
  • The refrain to "Little Busters!" on Expert has double tap notes followed immediately by double flick notes that can be very tricky to hit correctly.
  • "Don't Be Afraid!" on Expert has a 7-note eighth-note scale that spans the width of the playfield, occurs twice, and can easily break a full combo if you're playing on a phone and are not particularly coordinated with switching thumbs.
  • The intro to "MOON PRIDE" on Expert features several short slide-note pairs which have very small gaps between the notes and the sliders, all coming at a blistering pace that makes it difficult to lift your finger from the note in time to hit the slide. It's easy for an unprepared player to lose most of their energy bar in the first ten seconds of the song. And then they show up at the end of the song, too!
  • Many maps end on a long slide note signifying the last few notes of the song. However, "Kimi Janakya Dame Mitai's" Expert map, which appears to end on one of these, instead follows it with a serious of fast notes and some surprisingly tricky notched slides, which can serve as a nasty surprise to anyone who let their guard down after thinking that they FCed the song.
  • The consecutive long-range slide notes on "Koi wa Chaos no Shimobenari" EX can and will cause your SAN points to be in danger.
  • Alien Alien, where the last verse has flick on every beat when the other verses don't do this.
  • The intro to "Easy Come Easy Go" on Expert has Afterglow's infamous fast-paced drumroll after a slow beginning, then immediately followed by a long spam line of switching between tap and flick notes before ending it with a double-flick. Players must remember their left finger must do the tap notes while the right do the flick notes, the real problem is that the fast tempo and rhythm can make them unprepared to when the drumroll ends and the spam starts.

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