History ArtificialStupidity / Platformers

*** While Elec Man is one of the toughest bosses in the game (especially if you fight him without his weakness), it's possible to exploit his crude A.I. by jumping and shooting him in a very carefully timed pattern, freezing him in place while also allowing you to dodge his attack. This is because Elec Man's AI is programmed to run back and forth and throw out attacks when he's reached specific places in the room; if he never reaches one of those designated places, he never makes an attack.

*** To be fair, these were pretty much necessary gifts from the designers to keep those weapons from being unfair. Unlike most boss weapons, neither the Rain Flush nor the Bright Stopper is really dodgeable-- the Flush hits the entire screen, and the Stopper unavoidably freezes you long enough that you're almost certain to get hit before it wears off. Being able to prevent their use is the only thing that makes a {{No Damage Run}} possible.

** This is [[InvokedTrope invoked]] with the Clank sections where [[TeamPet Scrunch the Monkey]] pops up to help out. There are sentry robots with searchlights that Clank can’t avoid, and he will be killed instantly if he's caught in the lights. So to work around this, Clank uses a [[EdibleAmmunition Banana Gun]] to shoot bananas into the searchlights. Scrunch will ''always'' [[TooDumbToLive blindly run into the light to eat the banana and thus set off the sentry]], unwittingly distracting it by drawing its fire while Clank sneaks by. Thankfully, Scrunch is functionally invincible for gameplay purposes, but he never learns if he's tricked into distracting the sentries again.

* The first NES ''VideoGame/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|1989}}'' game had a hilarious bit with the foot soldiers; walk away from them at exactly the right moment as they jump at you, and they get confused and start hopping in place without attacking. Makes them rather easy to beat.

** In ''VideoGame/KnucklesChaotix'', one of the biggest sources of [[FakeDifficulty frustration]], besides the [[ObviousBeta all-around wonkiness of the teamwork mechanic]], is that your partners are so dumb that they'll more often than not get you stuck or weigh you down instead of helping you. The dev team probably anticipated this and added the "Call" button (which summons your partner back to you at the cost of 10 rings) to the game as a result.

* The first NES ''VideoGame/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles'' game had a hilarious bit with the foot soldiers; walk away from them at exactly the right moment as they jump at you, and they get confused and start hopping in place without attacking. Makes them rather easy to beat.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Spelunky}}'', TheMothership is guarded by several miniature tanks that fire bombs that can easily blow you to pieces, doubly so because they explode instantly if they hit you before touching the ground instead of stunning you. However, each one is a OneHitPointWonder, and more often than not ends up [[HoistByHisOwnPetard driving straight into the same bomb it just fired]].

* ''VideoGame/TwentyXX'' has both in-universe and out-of-universe examples. In-universe, Manticore enemies are capable of little beyond "point self at enemy and raise shield briefly", and they can't turn around while the shield is up (the artillery is even less intelligent, although given that it has no ability to turn around and has no way to detect its targets, the best programming on the planet probably wouldn't help). Out-of-universe, the exploding spider drones tend to just rush straight towards the player, even if there's a gap between them — an awful lot of drones can be dealt with just by waiting for them to fall into endless drops.
* ''VideoGame/JakAndDaxter'':
** The Krimzon Guard in ''VideoGame/JakIIRenegade'' are not good drivers. They will pursue you in their jetbikes when the alarm is raised with remarkable passion but little regard for things like other vehicles, walls, impenetrable forcefield barriers for which you do not yet have the security pass, and so on, leading to an awful lot of crashing and dying on their part.
** Also in ''Jak II'', your competitors in the races will regularly attempt to take a jumping shortcut over a BottomlessPit, miss, and explode.
** Marauders in ''VideoGame/Jak3'' will drive directly towards you, even if you're at the bottom of a cliff and they're at the top. Fall damage exists. The marauder vehicles rarely survive the landing.
* ''VideoGame/{{SOS}}'': People in your group, once called, will all take the same path in the same way, even if that involves jumping to their death after seeing someone else do it or just getting stuck in the floor for five seconds before continuing normally.