Games that punish you.

[Tupin]

I'm not talking about difficulty, I'm talking about games that punish you when you don't do what it wants you to do. I think there was a flight sim from the late 80's that actually deleted itself when you crashed. I think the same thing happens to your save in Steel Battalion if you don't eject in time.

Any other instances?

[heybtbm]

Smurf Village (Capcom's version of Farmville). If you try to "accelerate" your smurfberry earning (by re-setting the iphone's clock), Papa Smurf takes away some of your workers...

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/7113/500x1vmx.jpg

http://kotaku.com/5713172/papa-smurf-is-not-amused-by-your-sweatshop-tactics

[Sonicwolf]

Animal Crossing. Mr Resetti's tantrum every time you reset was aggravating.

[Swamperon]

In Azure Dreams if you reset/powered down when you were in the tower then the game would act as if you died. So when you reloaded you would have lost all your items/money gained during that trip.

I presume this is was to stop people from save abusing and getting perfect tower runs.

[Tempest]

In Azure Dreams if you reset/powered down when you were in the tower then the game would act as if you died. So when you reloaded you would have lost all your items/money gained during that trip.

I presume this is was to stop people from save abusing and getting perfect tower runs.
The old Wizardy games would do something like this. If you reset or shut off the game without coming back to the surface and saving it would say that your characters were "Lost in the maze".

Tempest

[G-Boobie]

We'll just get the obvious entries out of the way right now. Demon's Souls, Ninja Gaiden (any of them), Ninja Turtles NES, etc. etc. etc.

The one that made me craziest though is the original Siren for PS2. It was a great game, but it might have been the hardest single game I've ever played through. There is absolutely no room at all for mistakes, and if you screw up even once, you're likely to be starting that section of the game over.

Special mention goes to Far Cry 2 with its stupid malaria bullshit. Just don't ever go swimming. Ever.

[kupomogli]

In Azure Dreams if you reset/powered down when you were in the tower then the game would act as if you died. So when you reloaded you would have lost all your items/money gained during that trip.

I presume this is was to stop people from save abusing and getting perfect tower runs.


This also happens on Torneko the Last Hope. You might be able to copy your save data to a different memory card if you really wanted to cheat though. I know with Mobile Suit Gundam Encounters in Space, the game won't allow save data from mission mode to be copied to another memory card to now allow cheating so maybe the same thing on this.

Also on any Mysterious Dungeon games like Chocobo Dungeon, Torneko, etc. Any Chunsoft title. If you die in the dungeon you'll lose everything you are carrying at the time.

On Diablo 2, I've heard if you die on hardcore mode then you can't reload your character.


We'll just get the obvious entries out of the way right now. Demon's Souls, Ninja Gaiden (any of them), Ninja Turtles NES, etc. etc. etc.

Not hard games but games that punish you for either losing or cheating.

[Nebagram]

Dunno if this counts but Doom on Nightmare difficulty disabling all the cheats? You know a game's going to be vicious when it flat-out states it's not going to be fair to the player before you've even begun.

[Tempest]

Ninja Turtles on the NES had some sort of anti-cheat thing going? What did it do?

[Flashback2012]

Superman 64. :drinking:

[Ryaan1234]

Don't forget, some of the old text adventure games would automatically quit the game (or maybe something worse on others, I haven't played them all!) when you typed something like "FUCK" or "SHIT".

[LaughingMAN.S9]

wasnt there some japanese game for the famicom that advertised a phrase, something along the lines of "this game was created by a man who hates video games"

and you were routinely punished just for carrying on playing, like i think one boss towards the end who was literally unbeatable, as in it was written into the code that there could be no possible way to legitamately beat him?

i also remember some level where you're only objective was to put the controller down and not touch it for 2 hours lol, like the whole game just sounded like one complete mindfuck after another, wish i could remember the name tho

[Rickstilwell1]

The old Wizardy games would do something like this. If you reset or shut off the game without coming back to the surface and saving it would say that your characters were "Lost in the maze".

Tempest

Oh I remember this one. You had to create and send in a search party of characters and remember exactly where your other group left off and use "Search" to rescue them from the maze. This was really bad if your good characters were in a lower level of the maze and you would have to level up a whole new party in order for them to be strong enough to survive the trip to them. Otherwise, you would have to start over.

In this situation I would try to keep both groups alive because it never hurts to have backup characters when someone dies and you don't have the money to revive them.

[FoxNtd]

Enemy Zero on the Saturn has an interesting punishment system for save file usage. You have an electronic device in-game that corresponds to saving your progress. If I recall it starts with some numeric value and it costs 4 to save. However, loading your save file would cost 2. So if you kept failing somewhere, you would eventually lose the ability to save the game anymore and you'd have to start all over.

For a game with a very lousy weapon and invisible enemies, I thought the save system went too far and I just gave up on the game before even clearing disc 1. I presume the US version of Enemy Zero is the same way as this was. (You can defeat the punishment by returning to the Saturn system menu and copying the save file to the RAM cartridge since the game only acknowledges on-console memory.)

Super Mario Bros. 2 for FDS is also mean. Every time you get a game over, you have to repeat the current world you are playing. You could also consider the fact that beating the game 8 times is necessary just to be able to play Worlds A-D a punishment in itself.

Atlantis no Nazo for Famicom is one massive punishment start to finish. I don't know anything about that game that is good enough to help counter how much it does not want you to win or figure out how to win.

Vampire Killer/Castlevania Bloodlines -- for this one I'm not sure if it's a design flaw but it's obnoxious and perhaps a bit of a punishment. You get limited continues but once they expire, your options are resorting to using the password over and over or starting the entire game over. Also I recall the password would preserve your lives total, so if you're using a password that you got with only one life then you keep restarting the stage your password is for with only one life.

Tsumi to Batsu/Sin & Punishment for N64, you can save your game and resume later but it costs you one credit to do this. Considering how this does feel somewhat sensible, and the game has the word punishment in its title, it's probably okay to have this here.


wasnt there some japanese game for the famicom that advertised a phrase, something along the lines of "this game was created by a man who hates video games"

and you were routinely punished just for carrying on playing, like i think one boss towards the end who was literally unbeatable, as in it was written into the code that there could be no possible way to legitamately beat him?

i also remember some level where you're only objective was to put the controller down and not touch it for 2 hours lol, like the whole game just sounded like one complete mindfuck after another, wish i could remember the name tho

Takeshi no Chousenjou

That game can die in a fire.

[wingzrow]

Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter

You are only given a certain amount of "permanent" saves in the game. You can still save whenever you want with "temp saves", but when you load a temp save it deletes it's self.

So basically what happens is you play for 3 hours, get to a boss or area you screw up in, and without realizing what you've done, you reset the game to start up your save again only to realize there's no save anymore because temp saves delete themselves when you load them.

[Icarus Moonsight]

On Diablo 2, I've heard if you die on hardcore mode then you can't reload your character.

Confirming that. Though with a character editor, you can bring them back and take them into or out of hardcore mode. Hardcore is fun and fundamentally changes how you play the game. We used to do voluntary hardcore in Diablo 1 for weekend LAN meets, but we called it Ironman Diablo. The dead people then usually would play Unreal or Starcraft until the next Ironman round started up. In Diablo 1 it was much harder, friendly fire and all.

[Sonicwolf]

Superman 64. :drinking:

Yeah, that's a pretty masochistic game. Absolutely ridiculous inside and out.

[Gapporin]

Atlantis no Nazo for Famicom is one massive punishment start to finish. I don't know anything about that game that is good enough to help counter how much it does not want you to win or figure out how to win.

Haha, yes. When you have to position yourself to activate some of the larger warps by getting in a very exact spot and then killing yourself, you know you're in for a treat.

I watched a speedrun of that game once and it's mindblowing just considering how the multitude of little tricks and tactics were even found out in the first place by players.

[SpaceHarrier]

I've been playing Magician Lord lately..

If you stand still for about 10 seconds (timing enemy shots or trying to time a jump), then enemies start flying on to one or both sides of the screen, shooting projectiles at you. They don't appear frequently unless you stand still.

Man, I was just tryin to chillax and listen to the awesome soundtrack... X_x

[Cobra Commander]

and you were routinely punished just for carrying on playing, like i think one boss towards the end who was literally unbeatable, as in it was written into the code that there could be no possible way to legitamately beat him?


I think you had to hit one particular pixel like 100,000 or more times. Of course for you it's a one hit kill. Even if you understand Japanese, the game is unplayable.

[Swamperon]

Debatable as a punishment, but in Harvest Moon 3 for the GBC when you played as a boy and were asked to help reinvigorate the farm you could select no. Instead of it being the usual 'you must say yes!' situation, if you say no enough times it will take you to a game over/ending screen.

In Sonic CD, if you sit still for 3 minutes (which you aren't likely to do admittedly), Sonic yells "I'm outta here!" and runs off.

[wingzrow]

Doraemon game overs you if you choose no too many times too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZGvStt1AVo

[Rickstilwell1]

Doraemon game overs you if you choose no too many times too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZGvStt1AVo

Suikoden 2 also does that if you choose to run away from your duties as leader when your sister gives you the choice to do so and then reject your strategist's request to come back multiple times.

[Zthun]

In Azure Dreams if you reset/powered down when you were in the tower then the game would act as if you died. So when you reloaded you would have lost all your items/money gained during that trip.

I presume this is was to stop people from save abusing and getting perfect tower runs.

Are you sure about this? Azure dreams allowed you to have multiple save files and I don't remember it auto-saving when you entered or exited the tower or powered off. The tower saves were temporary and they would get deleted once you used them. Am I forgetting something here?

[Haoie]

Hideo Kojima was going to make you buy MGS1 over again if you died.

Phew, good thing that didn't happen.

Maybe it was just a rumour after all.

[kupomogli]

Are you sure about this? Azure dreams allowed you to have multiple save files and I don't remember it auto-saving when you entered or exited the tower or powered off. The tower saves were temporary and they would get deleted once you used them. Am I forgetting something here?

I don't remember Azure Dreams exactly so like me Swamperon may have been mixing up Azure Dreams with games like Torneko. Torneko the Last Hope saves in the middle of the dungeon and it uses the same save file. If you reset or power off the system without saving at the town or in another save area in a dungeon, then when you turn it on at a later time it will add a death to your records and you'll have none of your items.

I haven't had this happen yet, but it'd really suck if you loaded up your save file in the middle of a dungeon and then got hit with a power outage.

[maxlords]

If you tried to play a ROM of Earthbound without the copy defeat, it does something like triple the enemy encounter rate and strengthen enemies like crazy :)

[SegaAges]

I have not played my copy yet, but I was told that Resonance of Fate punishes you for dying at boss battles. Apparently when you die, you get the choice to spend some in game credits, or start the entire level over.

[ALAKA]

In Gish, saving the game costs you a life.

In Evander Holyfield's "Real Deal" Boxing, resetting the game to avoid losing a fight still results in a lost fight.

[Berserker]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned the chickens in Zelda: A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time yet.

This probably doesn't fit the criteria exactly, but I've always felt a sense of punishment when a game damages/kills you for trying to explore areas it doesn't want you to go - like the lurker fish from Jak and Daxter. Barriers and bottomless pits are one thing, but overtly punishing me for trying to explore the world you've created is a good way to make me hate your game.

[Gameguy]

The Painstation. It's basically like Pong, except if you miss the ball your hand gets hurt.

http://www.painstation.de/

[wingzrow]

Steel battalion deletes your save if you don't press the eject button before you die.

[Swamperon]

Are you sure about this? Azure dreams allowed you to have multiple save files and I don't remember it auto-saving when you entered or exited the tower or powered off. The tower saves were temporary and they would get deleted once you used them. Am I forgetting something here?

Well, no it doesn't delete your save file. But should you randomly power off whilst in the tower it will treat it as you dying, sending you back to town, losing all your items/money and saving over your last file. Kewne even warns you about this at the start.

Like what's already being said, if you were to suffer a power outage whilst playing it could cause extreme frustration, especially if you were to loose say your Gold Sword +56 and Diamond Shield +42.

You can create a temp save and quit normally and then power down of course whilst in the tower. And there's nothing to stop you creating alternate save files as back-ups.

[maxlords]

Steel battalion deletes your save if you don't press the eject button before you die.

Forgot about that....that's the coolest and most evil thing EVER :)

[Icarus Moonsight]

Doesn't Nier (360/PS3) mess with your save under X conditions in someway too? Fuyukaze was telling me about this a while back, but I can't for the life of me recall exactly how. Neat underrated game too BTW... All hail Twattycake!

[jb143]

Lose/Lose

It's like an old school space shooter but the enemy ships are procedurally generated from a random file on your computer. Destroy that ship and the file on your computer is deleted. If your ship is destroyed then the game itself is deleted.

[megasdkirby]

Doesn't Nier (360/PS3) mess with your save under X conditions in someway too? Fuyukaze was telling me about this a while back, but I can't for the life of me recall exactly how. Neat underrated game too BTW... All hail Twattycake!

Ugh, thanks for the warning. Now I know I need to backup all my saves before tackling this game. I was about to play it in a few weeks too.

[Richter Belmount]

Final Fantasy 13 with its awfulness.

[mattimeo310]

SkiFree on the old windows computers. The yeti would get you if you weren't prepared to pull off some crazy unknown maneuvers. Originally I thought the game was impossible.

[kupomogli]

Final Fantasy 13 with its awfulness.

This.

[Tupin]

This.
I don't think I've ever played a game that was so shamelessly padded out.

[Zoe F]

Doesn't Nier (360/PS3) mess with your save under X conditions in someway too? Fuyukaze was telling me about this a while back, but I can't for the life of me recall exactly how. Neat underrated game too BTW... All hail Twattycake!

Nier forces you to delete all of your saves for the game in order to access the final ending. It actually makes sense in terms of the plot. You can easily back up your save and restore it afterward anyway. You're also given a good deal of warning before the actual deletion process. I wouldn't really consider this a punishment at all.