YMMV / Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Outright memetic levels of it, so crazy to the point that there is an entire subculture dedicated to it. Because of the game's downright sadistic Surprise Difficulty, fans have taken to interpreting the characters in a Cosmic Horror Story setting, a fittingly unexpected dark take on the franchise that fits perfectly in line with the unexpected Nintendo Hard difficulty.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: If you've ever seen a pro pitcher throw a knuckleball, you'll know that Owl's pitches, while exaggerated, aren't quite as impossible and "physics-defying" as most players assume.
• Breather Level: Rabbit's often considered to be slightly easier than Kanga and Roo, the preceding opponent.
• Common Knowledge: Despite what some people claim, the difficulty of the English version is the same as the Japanese version and hasn't been made easier in any way.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • The first three stages are fairly straightforward. It's when you get to Kanga when the erratic ball movements begin. And it only gets worse from there.
  • The amount of home-runs required takes a sharp jump from Owl to Tigger: 19 out of 35 in the former, 28 out of 40 in the latter. Christopher Robin further pushes it to 40 out of 50.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Christopher Robin has been viewed as a Physical God due to his notorious pitching ability.
  • To a lesser extent, Pooh himself, given that he hits 500-foot home runs on a regular basis and—provided the player is skilled enough—scores home runs off said Physical God.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The game's infamous Surprise Difficulty has led players to channel their rage into portraying it and the opponents as a Cosmic Horror Story.
  • Cr1TiKaL's (NSFW) playthrough of it has some quotable lines.
    Most owls can turn their heads 270 degrees in both directions. This owl can fuck itself in all directions.
• Nintendo Hard: And how! It starts off really easy, but quickly escalates to a level reached only by few games in existence. What, you thought a game about Winnie the Pooh would be easy?
• Periphery Demographic: This game has so much of a fanbase among hardcore gamers that it was (apparently) at a fighting game tournament. It also has quite the fanbase among Cosmic Horror Story fans, due to the Alternative Character Interpretation memes. Not bad for a Winnie the Pooh Flash game!
• Ron the Death Eater: This game has managed to change people's opinion of these lovable characters, interpreting them as The Legions of Hell, with Christopher Robin as their leader Satan.
• Surprise Difficulty: Since it's a Winnie the Pooh Flash game, most people going in imagine it's probably just one of those cheap preschool-level Flash games that anyone with any sort of intelligence could beat... completely unaware that the game gets Nintendo Hard and near-impossible to beat after the first few levels.
• That One Boss:
  • Out of all of the opponents, Owl is the first opponent that's liable to cause a rage quit due to his constantly waving pitches adding an air of unpredictability. The hitbox on the ball becomes far more errratic, and you're more than likely to accidentally get a foul ball or a simple hit when it looks like a home run. He's also the first to require more home runs than misses with the requirement being 19 out of 35, meaning only 16 misses are allowed before you have to try again.
  • Tigger, the penultimate match before getting Christopher Robin, seems more simple on the surface; he has comparatively normal pitches, with the only caveat being that they suddenly turn invisible halfway through the pitch. While it's much more possible to get the timing down than it was with Owl, the invisibility gimmick can mess with a player's perception and cause them to strike out anyway. The real difficulty comes in the amount of pitches you need to successfully land being a significant amount higher than Owl's: 28 home runs out of 40, meaning only 12 misses allowed. In other words, you have to hit a homer 7/10 of the time, barely over 3/4. Landing the ball is simple enough; the problem is keeping a successful streak going long enough for it to matter.
  • The man himself, Christopher Robin. He has all of the other characters' pitches and throws each ball at random, meaning you will never know what he's planning until the ball is already thrown, and you'll have to get each one memorized until you have a good idea of the timing. Of course that includes Owl and Tigger's pitches. And if that wasn't enough, he has 50 pitches; the amount required to win is 40 with only 10 misses allowed, meaning you have to hit a homer exactly 4/5 of the time. Good luck, silly old bear...

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