History Main / MeaninglessLives

* ''Videogame/SonicUnleashed'' for the PS2/Wii does this one a little differently. You start with 2 retries, fair enough, but during the game you can get non-renewable 1up items that expand your stock on a permanent basis. Thus, you essentially have infinite lives; just a given number in any one stage. The 360/PS3 version is more in line with the trope, with extra lives lovingly scattered around the levels, many directly after checkpoints, all of which respawn when you die. Some of the Werehog sections, however, are so frustrating and so long, however, that those lives are far from meaningless.

Then came game saving, a feature that allowed the player to quit and start again later more or less where they left off. ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZelda'' and ''VideoGame/{{Metroid}}'' were among the first to do this, and note that they had no "lives", since the concept of having lives and the concept of saving are more or less contradictory. If you can save the game, it means the game can't force you to start at the beginning when you run out of lives. The farthest back it can take you is the last place you saved, reducing the ability of a GameOver to be any more damaging to the player's progress than any other death.

%%* ''SlyCooper'' (but only the first of the three) did this.

* The original ''{{Tomba}}'' had lives... and the game saved how many you had left when you saved the game. This could actually screw you if you ran low, as the game booted you back to the opening menu if you ran out. The sequel ditched it.

* ''RayCrisis'''s Special Mode drops so many extra life pickups, you practically have unlimited lives.

* ''[[SeriousSam Serious Sam 2]]'', a FirstPersonShooter, released in 2005, that you can have as many saves at any moment as you want in, has lives. Possibly as part of its DenserAndWackier theme that also harkens back to the old console games of yore. Still a rather pointless feature.

* The first ''VideoGame/RogueSquadron'' game had a variation on this trope, in which the player has three lives which are shared between missions, and could lose one if they failed a mission (in addition to dying, which is the usual way to lose one). However, failing a mission is pretty much the same as a Game Over (since you have to start from the beginning either way), and even if you ''did'' get a game over, your overall mission progress is still saved, so there's nothing stopping you from picking up where you left off with three fresh lives. Later games in the series [[AvertedTrope did away with this system]] and gave you three lives which refreshed after each mission, as well as an instant game over for mission failure.

* The first ''VideoGame/RogueSquadron'' game had a variation on this trope, in which the player has three lives and could lose one if they failed a mission (in addition to dying, which is the usual way to lose one). However, failing a mission is pretty much the same as a Game Over (since you have to start from the beginning either way), and even if you ''did'' get a game over, your overall mission progress is still saved, so there's nothing stopping you from picking up where you left off with three fresh lives. Later games in the series [[AvertedTrope did away with this system]] and gave you three lives which refreshed after each mission, as well as an instant game over for mission failure.

** ''VideoGame/MegaManX5''/''VideoGame/MegaManX6'' were especially ridiculous, as getting a Game Over did not even make you lose your level checkpoint. Also, the littering of hostages in many stages, ''each'' of whom granted an extra life, meant maxing out at 9 lives was too easy.

** ''VideoGame/EryisAction'' does the same, being a PlatformHell game that draws heavy inspiration from ''Syobon Action''.

* There's no punishment at all for running out of Lives in KirbySuperStar. The score isn't even reset.

* The GBC version of ''DonaldDuckGoinQuackers'' rewards you with one life per 20 blue pegs collected as well as one per... well... "[[OneUp Donald]]". By the end of the game, you're likely to have stocked up on roughly 90-99 lives, making a desperate chase for more quite redundant.

* Having a "game over" serve no purpose besides making you lose your level checkpoint and returning you to the title screen, where you can simply re-load your game and pick up where you left off. (Basically any time [[Main/{{DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist}} Death Is A Slap On The Wrist]].)

Somebody who [[IThoughtItMeant takes the trope name too literally]] is a StrawNihilist.

** Downplayed in the Lost Levels, as even though you can max out your life counter at 127-8 (depending on the version) in the first level, you can still easily lose them all before beating the game. Played straight in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioAllStars'', in which ''Lost Levels'' is the only game in the compilation where the player can save his progress at the last stage he played, a benefit not featured in the other games in the compilation.

** The SNES version of Super Mario World allowed you to quickly rack up lives by replaying certain levels, but the life counter was not saved. The GBA remake saved it and also extended the life counter to three digits. It was not uncommon to accumulate hundreds of lives without even trying by the end of the game.

** ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'': Getting a game over was only marginally more time consuming than losing a life (dying drops you at the level entrance, game overs kick you to the front of the castle). There was the occasional checkpoint now and then, but again, it didn't take long to reach them. It's not hard to get upwards of twenty lives in one sitting anyway, and 100% completion was [[AWinnerIsYou 99 of the bloody things]].

** VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy2 is this to about as much degree at the first game. The hub has the usual five odd lives, as well as an infinite supply in the basement via the Chance Cube in the casino (aka, about 20 possible lives to get for about a 100 coins apiece). And the standard five from Princess Peach's letters to Mario. And the Chance Cubes in most levels. And the fact unlike most 3D Mario games, you keep any lives you gain in a level if you exit without beating it, meaning easy 1-Up farming.
** ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBrosWii'' and ''U'' have over a dozen intentional ways to get infinite (or high numbers of) 1-ups, and in ''Wii'' they're all documented in videos in the game. In other words, the game tells you how to get them. Although getting lives is trivial, losing them holds a little more weight as 7 deaths in one level (except on hard levels) makes the Super Guide block pop up which means your file can [[LostForever never]] have shiny stars. Also, in multiplayer there isn't time to collect as many 1ups unless everyone cooperates, and running out means you need to sit out the level until it's completed or everyone dies.

** In ''VideoGame/MarioVsDonkeyKong'': Minis March Again, which was the first game in the series to even HAVE lives (aside from the [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness completely different original]]), losing all of them causes you to... gain five more. Yeah...

* ''MonsterBash'' may not save your exact location in a level, but it still invokes this trope via the easy-to-remember cheat code in the registered version for full lives. Of course, considering the DifficultySpike in the registered episodes, anyone who has finished this game will almost certainly have used said cheat a few times. Especially on [[ThatOneLevel the swamp levels in episode 3]].

** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy'' is guilty of practically every single point listed above. The Lobby has about 5 1-Ups scattered across, most of which are easy to reach (and of course, they are back every time you return), and you frequently get letters from the Princess with free 1-Ups attached. And most levels have 1-Ups as well, and you get them for every 50 Star Bits ''or'' coins collected. And of course, exiting the game resets your life count to 5 (and Peach's letter is always available when you reload). And the most difficult challenges don't have checkpoints anyway. Strangely, Mario loses a life for losing races, as well. It gets to the point where on some levels, the number of lives you have is actually directly proportional to how ''badly'' you're doing, since you get more lives than you lose on the tough challenges.

* ''{{R-Type}} [[CompilationRerelease Dimensions]]'' offers an "Infinite Mode" in which you have infinite lives and respawn in place (contrary to every other ''R-Type'' game in existence, save for ''[[GaidenGame R-Type Leo]]'')...but you have a life counter that goes ''up'' every time you die, and the object is to complete the game with as few deaths as possible.

[[caption-width-right:194:Yes, the game lets you go into negative lives. [[PlatformHell Be glad it does.]]]]

** ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'': Getting a game over was only marginally more time consuming than losing a life(dying drops you at the level entrance, game overs kick you to the front of the castle). There was the occasional checkpoint now and then, but again, it didn't take long to reach them. It's not hard to get upwards of twenty lives in one sitting anyway, and 100% completion was [[AWinnerIsYou 99 of the bloody things]].

** Or the sub-tanks from ''VideoGame/SuperMetroid'' or ''VideoGame/MegaManX'', ''[[VideoGame/MegaManZero Zero]]'', and ''[[VideoGame/MegaManZX ZX]]''.

** Or the sub tanks from ''X''/''Zero''/''ZX''.

* ZigZagged in [[VideoGame/OneThousandAndOneSpikes 1001 Spikes]]. You go from being confident when realising you have 1001 Lives, to [[NintendoHard realising you don't nearly have enough]], to the glee from the huge amount of 1ups you get from completing a chapter, to [[spoiler: Ultimately discovering due to the lack of checkpoints in levels, all a game over does is waste 20 seconds of your time.]]

* The first ''{{Ty the Tasmanian Tiger}}'' game was pretty fond of this. Sure, lives weren't exactly dotted around like raindrops, but they were juuust frequent enough (that combined with the lax difficulty), that you were never really in any danger at all.
* ''{{Glover}}''. [[SoBadItsGood Oh Lord, Glover.]] See, there was a [[ClassicCheatCode cheat that turned you into a frog.]] In the hub, there were insects flying around. Eating them as a frog gained you an extra life. And they respawned. It's possible to ''break the life counter'' - it starts showing powers, then ''gives up'' and letters and symbols appear instead. In essence, you had infinite lives.

* With the easy availability of emulators for older gaming systems, complete with the ability to save and load a state at any time, even games in which lives were once desperately needed for success have fallen prey to this. Games in which you could save only at certain checkpoints now have those checkpoints as Meaningless Saves.
* OlderThanTheyThink: The NES version of ''Section Z'' gives you three lives every time you begin the game. You lost a life and five energy points every time you physically touch an enemy, forcing you to restart the stage. However, losing all your lives does nothing other than resetting your score and forcing you to restart the section where you died and the only way to truly "lose" is to lose all of your energy, which happens every time you're hit by enemy bullets: in such cases, you simply warp back to the very first section of your current stage.

** In ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountryReturns'' and ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountryTropicalFreeze'', the Kong Temples are incredibly relentless, but they include millions of bananas and banana coins, meaning you get one extra life for every two halfway attempts, and enough coins to buy back all the lives you have lost and then a couple hundred more at Cranky's/Funky's shop. And the hardest challenges make sure to offer you a pretty obvious life-farming chance via bouncing in several enemies in a row- in the World 2 temple in ''Tropical Freeze'', you can get half a dozen lives that way.

** The early Mega Man games didn't let you keep your energy tanks if you decided to go dancing on the spiky floor until game over, but not to worry: if you grabbed of a copy of ''Wily Wars'' back in the day, you'd find that it had not only forgotten that little downside and also gladly saved your tanks between plays.

** Be honest, is anyone ever going to use up over 400 freaking lives?