History Main / ComebackMechanic

* In the "Blast Ball" mode of ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeFederationForce'', each time one team scores, the opposing team's goal has doors closed around it, making it tougher to score again.

* Team golf events such as the Ryder Cup traditionally schedule their first two or three days of play with two-on-two matches before concluding with one day of one-on-one ("singles") matches. Because the singles session is often the only one in which every player on both team is required to play a match, the final day typically has more points at stake than any of the prior days, allowing teams the chance to come back and win the competition from being down early in the day (best seen with the 1999 US Ryder Cup team, 2012 European Ryder Cup team, and 2019 European Solheim Cup team).

** In ''Mario Party 9'', most possible outcomes of landing on a Bowser Space will benefit the player in last, and one outcome is an ''extremely high-stakes minigame''[[note]]In case you're wondering, the extremely high-stakes minigame is that Bowser takes half of everyone's Mini Stars, and the player who finishes 1st will get most of the Mini Stars, which is ''a lot''[[/note]]. We're talking "whoever wins this wins the board" stakes, so it can cause comebacks, making it a combination of this and GoldenSnitch.
** The first few ''Mario Party'' games had the Chance Time space, which had the player roll three dice. Two picked a player, and one picked something that happened. The first die you choose to hit is slow enough that it effectively allows you to pick what it is, the second requires some skill to do that, and the third is effectively random. This could include everything from "give Player A twenty coins" to "give Player A all your Stars."

* ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}''

** Splat Zones (''Splatoon's'' version of the classic King of the Hill mode) has a penalty mechanic. When a team manages to take the zone(s) out of the opposing team's hands, the opponents receive a penalty timer, with a bigger penalty being given the closer they were to running out their main timer. If they manage to capture back the zone, this penalty time has to drop to zero before their main timer starts counting down again. While this penalty doesn't affect the final score after the match ends, it does make it so the losing team has a bigger chance to turn a match around, even if the enemy was a few seconds away from victory; and it forces the enemy to fully commit to taking the zone(s) back and keeping them.
** Tower Control involves riding a tower platform along a rail to its destination in the enemy base, and this has its own comeback mechanics. First, if a team takes the tower after it's gone into their territory, the tower moves at an accelerated pace until it enters territory that team has not yet covered. Second, in ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon 2}}'', both sides have streamlined routes that are lined with checkpoints at which the tower comes to a complete stop, allowing the defenders a chance to siege the tower and retake control.

** During all Ranked Battle modes, the team that's behind on the objective will have their active members' [[LimitBreak special]] meters slowly refill. (This refilling is suspended when someone is KO'ed and won't refill until they leave the respawn point.) The conditions upon which their special meters refill depends on the mode:

** If the losing team in any ranked mode is currently in control of the objective when the time runs out, the game goes into Overtime, which finishes when the losing team loses control of the objective or surpasses the winning team, encouraging the losing team to keep trying until the very end.

There are two ways a game can go about comeback mechanics: The first is to give an advantage to a losing player. That is, it allocates privileges among players at any given moment, with more given to those whom the game feels is more likely to lose. The second is to give an advantage to a player about to get eliminated. All players can use this mechanic, whether they're winning or losing, but they either favor players close to the losing condition in a game (such as having low remaining health) or can only be used by such players.

* A few patches into the successful A Realm Reborn rerelease of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' Square introduced a buff for groups who died against bosses after being engaged for 2 minutes. The buff gave a 10% increase to all stats and would stack up to 5 times. Unlike most examples of the trope, however, this buff could actually end up hurting groups; due to many boss's highly scripted attack patterns, the increased damage would often cause phase changes at inopportune times in the cycle. Thus causing an additional wipe that further complicated matters. Some groups would rather abandon the Duty and return without the buff than deal with the poorly timed phase changes that resulted.

* All ''VideoGame/MarioKart'' games will bestow more powerful items the further behind a racer is. This was at its most potent in ''VideoGame/MarioKartDoubleDash'', where characters have powerful special items. This extends to Battle Mode's Balloon Battle in ''Mario Kart Wii'': When a player runs out of balloons, they are considered knocked out, and that player's team loses 1 point. The fewer balloons a player has, the more likely an Item Box will yield something powerful. If one team has a substantially higher score in any mode of Battle Mode, the game will give the losing team a powerful item, such as the Lightning Bolt or POW Block, which hits all members of the opposing team.

* ''VideoGame/PuyoPuyo'' has a few that appear in certain games. ''VideoGame/PuyoPuyon'' has Super Attacks, which allow the player to clear Puyos more easily or hinder their opponent; CPU players tend to make use of this mechanic when nearing defeat. ''VideoGame/PuyoPuyoFever'' introduced Fever mode, which is triggered when you fill a meter all the way and gives you preset chains of Puyos that unleash a ''massive'' attack on the opponent when set off. ''Puyo Puyo 7'' has a variant on Fever mode called Transformation, where the player's character transforms into a child or adult once the meter is filled; Mini mode (child) is essentially Fever mode but with even larger chains of smaller Puyos, while Mega mode (adult) has you eliminate as many mega Puyos as possible to sustain a chain attack.

** The fourth game adds an additional comeback, called "rage," where the higher a character's damage percentage, the more knockback is added to all of their moves (although damage dealt is unaffected). For Lucario this stacks with its existing comeback power, making an injured Lucario a truly dangerous threat. Even on other characters, this could lead to extremely early KOs(Samus with rage could combo dash attack into up special for a KO at ''0%,'' for example), and also indirectly buffed heavyweights and nerfed lightweights, since the former can nearly always survive long enough to abuse it, and the latter would often be on the recieving end of it. The mechanic was nerfed in [[VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosUltimate the next installment.]]

** The fourth game adds an additional comeback, in that the higher a character's damage percentage the more knockback is added to all of their moves (although damage dealt is unaffected). For Lucario this stacks with its existing comeback power, making an injured Lucario a truly dangerous threat.

** ''Smash Bros Ultimate'' has [[VideoGame/Persona5 Joker]], who after his Rebellion Gauge gets fully charged by taking damage, he becomes a complete LightningBruiser, having the kill power of Bowser combined with the swiftness of Sheik and similarly to Cloud, gains better specials. However unlike Cloud's Limit in Smash 4 it only lasts for 20 seconds rather than until you use it. Despite this, many people consider Joker to be one of the best characters in the game if fully utilizing Arsene correctly and requires most characters just simply to camp.

* ''VideoGame/PuyoPuyo'' has a few that appear in certain games. ''Puyo Puyo~n'' has Super Attacks, which allow the player to clear Puyos more easily or hinder their opponent; CPU players tend to make use of this mechanic when nearing defeat. ''VideoGame/PuyoPuyoFever'' introduced Fever mode, which is triggered when you fill a meter all the way and gives you preset chains of Puyos that unleash a ''massive'' attack on the opponent when set off. ''Puyo Puyo 7'' has a variant on Fever mode called Transformation, where the player's character transforms into a child or adult once the meter is filled; Mini mode (child) is essentially Fever mode but with even larger chains of smaller Puyos, while Mega mode (adult) has you eliminate as many mega Puyos as possible to sustain a chain attack.

* ''VideoGame/PuyoPuyo'' has a few that appear in certain games. ''Puyo Puyo~n'' has Super Attacks, which allow the player to clear Puyos more easily or hinder their opponent; CPU players tend to make use of this mechanic when nearing defeat. ''Puyo Pop Fever'' introduced Fever mode, which is triggered when you fill a meter all the way and gives you preset chains of Puyos that unleash a ''massive'' attack on the opponent when set off. ''Puyo Puyo 7'' has a variant on Fever mode called Transformation, where the player's character transforms into a child or adult once the meter is filled; Mini mode (child) is essentially Fever mode but with even larger chains of smaller Puyos, while Mega mode (adult) has you eliminate as many mega Puyos as possible to sustain a chain attack.

* ''VideoGame/TimeSplitters'' has a "Monkey Assistant" mode in multiplayer, where the player with the lowest score gets [[EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys an army of monkeys]] to help them out; conversely, this crack team of monkey commandos targets the player in first place as their top priority, making it both easier for the straggler to get back into the fight and harder for the top dog to stay there. There's also "Shrink mode" where the lower your score, the smaller you are and thus the harder you are to hit.

** If the losing team in any ranked mode is currently in control of the objective when the time runs out, the game goes into Overtime and stays there until the losing team loses control of the objective or surpasses the winning team.
** In Ranked Battles, if time runs out when the losing team is in control of the objective, the match goes into overtime. Overtime finishes once the losing team either loses control of the objective, or manages to pull ahead and overtake the opposing team's score. This encourages losing players to keep trying until the very end.

* ''Videogame/CrashTeamRacing'' (along with sequels such as ''Crash Nitro Kart'') use a similar item curve as the ''VideoGame/MarioKart'' series, especially noticeable since a lot of items [[FollowTheLeader work in the exact same manner as those of the latter series]].
* In ''[[VideoGame/JakX Jak X: Combat Racing]]'', Peacemaker (which kills 1 or 3 players ahead of you, will hit the one in first place unless someone happens to be in the way of the missile) and Super Nova (which destroys EVERYONE in front of you) have a higher chance of appearing when you're in last place.

* The TabletopGame/{{Pokemon}} Trading Card Game, during the 3rd-generation, had Pokémon-star cards. Most of them had one attack that had pitiful strength but became overwhelming if the player is about to lose the game. And starting in [[VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon Generation VII]], the [[TabletopGame/{{Pokemon}} Trading Card Game]] introduced particular cards, always beginning with the word "Counter" (such as [[https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Counter_Energy_(Crimson_Invasion_100) Counter Energy]] or [[https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Counter_Catcher_(Crimson_Invasion_91) Counter Catcher]]), that are either more effective or work only for the player who has drawn fewer Prize cards (drawing all of which are the game's winning condition).

** In ''Mario Party 9'', most possible outcomes of landing on a Bowser Space will benefit the player in last, and one outcome is an ''extremely high-stakes minigame''[[note]]In case you're wondering, the extremely high-stakes minigame is that Bowser takes half of everyone's Mini Stars, and the player who finishes 1st will get most of the Mini Stars, which is ''a lot''[[/note]]. We're talking "whoever wins this wins the board" stakes, so it can cause comebacks.

** The first few ''Mario Party'' games had the Chance Time space, which had the player roll three dice. Two picked a player, and one picked something that happened. This could include everything from "give Player A twenty coins" to "give Player A all your Stars."

* ''VideoGame/PowerRangersBattleForTheGrid'' has the [[HumongousMecha Megazords]]. Once one of your fighters has been defeated, you can call in your Zord as a sort of gigantic AssistCharacter.

* When most characters get low enough health in ''VideoGame/JojosBizarreAdventureAllStarBattle'', they enter Rumbling Mode, where their health meter turns red, and they gain increased attack and defense.

* The PlayerVersusPlayer action game [[https://store.steampowered.com/app/1557740/ROUNDS/ Rounds]] gives the loser of the previous round a powerup to pick in order to even their odds against the winner.