Discussion Main / PlatformHell

Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Many think it's NintendoHard, but more., started by artman40 on Jan 15th 2011 at 6:35:06 PM

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Misused, started by __Vano on Jul 24th 2015 at 5:47:36 AM

Examples need details. Please see How To Write An Example before returning to Main.

• Rick Dangerous. Yes, it's Older Than They Think.

Removed this section:

Non-Platformers:

• Trope Maker: The infamous Dungeons And Dragons module, Tomb Of Horrors. To just get into said dungeon you have to get past a literal Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies. It's all downhill from there. Have fun, you jackasses.
  • And as a shining example of Tropes Are Not Bad, this is also by far and away the franchise's most well-known module.
  • And just to show the difference between this trope and Nintendo Hard, the 3.5E counterpart Red Hand of Doom is an insanely difficult Timed Mission module which requires players to punch way above their weight class. In a lot of ways, Red Hand of Doom is more difficult since it relies much more on a complete mastery of the combat engine and character builds than Trial-and-Error Gameplay. But aside from that the adventure doesn't pull any unusually cruel tricks. Well, for the kind of game it is.
• The Impossible Quiz - a non-platformer example, only by virtue of the completely ridiculous and hilarious "solutions" that the game expects of the player.
  • A brief sampler of said "solutions:" Finding a completely invisible button to click on a white field, choosing an answer in a multiple choice question where the answers have nothing to do with the question, are not in english, or are blank, and right clicking on the window to deactivate the Flash control to keep the program from failing you.*
    ^{This was possibly inspired by the quiz level in Earthworm Jim 2, which was only a Bonus Level but had answers such as 'B. A' and 'C. Come on, I really need this powerup!'}
• The PC game based on The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy is notorious for being very close to Adventure Game Hell. Many puzzles are ridiculous and insane, and the room descriptions contain outright lies. Not mistakes, lies. Many other Infocom Interactive Fiction games have even harder puzzles, but this is the only one that uses its difficulty in the same ironic manner as other Platform Hell games.
  • In addition, it's extremely easy to make this game Unwinnable. Didn't pick up the junk mail at the start of the game? Didn't buy the sandwich in the pub? The game won't mind, it won't even hint that those things have any effect when you do them - but if you don't, woe betide you later on.
  • Douglas Adams said in an interview "This is the first game that moves beyond user friendly. It is user insulting and ... user mendacious."
  • Dave Leary's games were notorious for their "lying computer" puzzles as well. Leary did admit to being heavily inspired by Infocom games.
• Several Interactive Fiction games fit this trope; the most famous is probably Curses. (Just don't say any actual curse words in-game, no matter how frustrated you get, or you will be punished with a parser that ignores you until you wash your mouth out with the soap that just appeared in your inventory.)
• Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna is RPG Dungeon Crawler Hell. You know how weak the average monster in a Random Encounter is compared to RPG heroes? Well, in this game, you're on the side of the monsters. Not only that, but the puzzles take Guide Dang It! to an extreme; most players won't even make it out of the first room without outside assistance.
  • The same can be said about Samuel Stoddard (of RinkWorks fame)'s dungeon crawler Murkon's Vengeance, which is basically a homage to Wizardry IV in every way. Including the difficulty. Watch as your 10-hitpoint-1-damage-dealing character barely scratches the enemies less than half of the time and spends the rest "too scared to act". Thankfully, it gets easier once you find the summoning squares.
• Chips Challenge is largely Nintendo Hard, but plays it straight... until level 131, which is called Totally Unfair and requires the player to remember the exact layout of an earlier level, given only a bare minimum time limit.
  • And level 140, Icedeath which literally requires you to use trial and error, instantly sliding chip into some fatal water every time you make a false move. And you can't see where the safe land is!
    • Of course some of the custom levels that people have made make even the hardest of the original levels look easy. Especially the Inanity level pack.
• Penn and Tellers Smoke and Mirrors, though unreleased, appears to be a deliberate play on this trope, especially the minigame where you drive a bus across the Nevada desert without exceeding 45mph. Oh, and the bus veers a little to the left. And you can't pause. And making it to Nevada is worth one point. And the game is in real time. Like, actually real time. By which I mean, it takes 8 hours to play once.
  • And then you get to drive back. And forth. And back. And forth. To play the game to completion takes either copious cheating or over one month of constant play, where "completion" means until the score counter stops incrementing at 99 because the game will go forever and where "play" means something not involving fun.
    • 'Desert Bus for Hope' is a charity project where a group of gamers play Desert Bus: the more donations they get, the longer they play. It always brings in a lot of money, because gamers love to see other gamers suffer.
    • That, and because they donate the money to Childs Play, which is a badass charity
• Bastet, or Bastard Tetris, is a Tetris clone with a key difference. Whereas Tetris will select the next brick random(ish)ly, Bastet deliberately gives you the least useful brick.
• Pandemonium Warden. Final Fantasy XI managed to take That One Boss and drive it into Platform Hell. Fifty times more people have beaten I Wanna Be The Guy than this nightmarish monstrosity. Hint: try running away or logging out and then returning to get yourself off its hate list. Still belongs here.
• Non-video game example: Ninja Warrior. Hopping around obstacles of varying difficulty within a time limit is harder than it looks, especially since only three people beat the obstacle course. (And none of them have repeated their victories as of yet.)
  • To be specific, there has been 25 Ninja Warrior tournaments held, each with 100 contestants. So 3 out of 2,500 people have passed it... a whopping 0.12% success rate.
    • There's also the Ninja Warrior flash game. "Just like the real thing, you should not expect to complete this course easily or on the first try. Do you have the timing, reflexes and resolve to complete our Sasuke and become the next NINJA WARRIOR?"
  • And Takeshis Castle, which has only been beaten by one person.
• Many user-made Doom levels end up like this. Here is a speedrun of the hardest official level in Final Doom.
  • That pales compares to levels like "Hell's Vendetta" from Deus Vult II, "Post Mortem" from Hell Revealed, or, most infamously, the completely ridiculous nuts.wad, where you not only have to deal with 10,617 enemies, but the framerate dropping into single digits from all the monsters.
    • The Sky May Be — has held its title as most infamous Doom WAD ever created for well over a decade.
• The Roguelike equivalent is Iter Vehemens ad Necem, which means "A Violent Road To Death". It is not kidding. The fact that some people can beat the game is officially a bug.

Can someone more familiar with these examples chip away the natter?

Does Plat Form hell also count those hacks and games where tool-assistance is almost necessary?

I found a fiendishly hard platform game. Unreasonable difficulty spikes, switches and traps that are a bit out of the way, and you can't see anything except what a very, VERY brief pulse gives out every second or so. I'm not sure if it belongs here, however

Here is the link: http://www.a10.com/game/Blind.html