History Main / UnwinnableJokeGame

Certain gambling machines may fall under this trope, though most countries have laws against such machines, that never allow the gambler to win the jackpot, on the grounds that gambling is a game of ''chance'', of winning the jackpot, not throwing away money to play something that is ''literally'' unwinnable. And at that point, you may as well just throw money into an open fire.

Certain gambling machines may fall under this trope, but most countries have laws against slot machines that never actually allow you to win the jackpot.

* The hilarious [[GameMod game hack]] ''[[http://www.baddesthacks.net/?p=1153 Uwe Boll's Punch Out!!]]'' allows you (as "Little Tax") to take on Uwe Boll in the boxing ring. [[spoiler: Punches score points but do no damage and you can't run out the clock since it's not running. Possible subversion: if Little Tax survives long enough, Uwe Boll ''does'' eventually run out of moves. [[ShaggyDogStory Then the game crashes.]]]]

** One man who did this ended up in the ''WebOriginal/DarwinAwards''.

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* ''[[http://www.beepboopbitcoin.com/ Beep Boop Bitcoin]]'' presents itself as an IdleGame where you mine as many UsefulNotes/{{Bitcoin}}s as possible and make money off them. It only presents a means to obtain Bitcoin, but not a way to change it back unto normal dollars: The trading exchange has delays sending out payments, the bitcoin investment is a {{Ponzi}}, and when you manage to get Bitcoins from your miner, [[spoiler:it catches fire and causes your house to burn down.]] There is a "victory condition" after that, [[GainaxEnding but...]]

[[folder: Game Shows ]]

[[folder: Other Games ]]

* ''[[VideoGame/WarioWare WarioWare Touched]]'' includes several bonus mini-games based on table hockey, one of which is entitled "Eternal Wario Hockey". Wario is your opponent, and he will ''never'' fail to deflect the puck from his side, no matter how well you play.

->''"This is the Impossible difficulty, boys. 'Impossible' doesn't mean 'very difficult'. Very difficult is winning the Nobel Prize; impossible is eating the Sun."''

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'', Stu, Drew, and company go to a minature golf course, and are promised free games if they get a hole-in-one on the final hole, the Ice Cream Mountain. However, this is impossible, as unintentionally revealed by the kids, who sneak into the inside of Ice Cream Mountain (under the impression that actual ice cream to find exists in it) and remove the paper cover that blocks balls going into the mountain from exiting through the chute that results in a hole-in-one. As a result, they end up accidentally [[ForegoneVictory inverting this trope]], causing every player's ball to go into the hole for holes-in-one, much to the dismay of the course owner.

* The ''VideoGame/RiddleSchool'' series' fourth game is like this. You try to do anything and you promptly die. Which is actually the idea.
* ''[[http://www.beepboopbitcoin.com/ Beep Boop Bitcoin]]'' presents itself as an IdleGame where you mine as many UsefulNotes/{{Bitcoin}}s as possible and make money off them. It only presents a means to obtain Bitcoin, but not a way to change it back unto normal dollars: The trading exchange has delays sending out payments, the bitcoin investment is a {{Ponzi}}, and when you manage to get Bitcoins from your miner, it catches fire and causes your house to burn down. There is a "victory condition" after that, [[GainaxEnding but...]]

* The creators of ''VideoGame/TheRoomTheGame'' released what appeared to be the equivalent for ''Film/TheHungerGames''... on April 1st. It becomes a test to see how many times a player can take one of Clove's throwing knives to the head before giving up. See it for yourself [[https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/592902 here]].

** The intro screen promises that I-Mockery will donate money to charity for every player that clears 20 lines or more in A-Type mode (no such promises for ''VideoGame/RType'' mode). However, once you breach the 15-line mark, NES characters fall instead of Tetris blocks. They... can't fit together in any line-clearing fashion. Then the game's ending chastizes you for not even being able to clear twenty measly lines. Truly, one of I-Mockery's cruelest AprilFoolsDay jokes of all time. It's still possible to sneak in a Tetris after you clear line 16, if an I piece is next, clearing 20 lines total. However, you still do not advance to level 3, as the game refuses to recognize that last cleared line, and sticks the counter at 19.

* ''Segway of the Dead'', a game by the creators of ''VideoGame/RoadOfTheDead'', was presented as the latter game's sequel. Just one problem: no matter how fast you get the segway going, you cannot possibly break through the crowd of zombies. Never trust a game that comes out on April Fool's Day. ([[TrollingCreator The creators later put out a video of]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQJ3L88i05Y the angriest reviews Segway of the Dead got.]])

** Subverted, now that Creator/LeonardoDiCaprio actually won an Oscar, they programmed in an ending and a boss fight.

* and Ethan White (the guy who made Super Releasio Bros. and Super Releasio Bros. 2: The Lost Toads) and Shadow Mario made another hack called Super Releasio Bros. 2u which is a hack of Super Mario Bros. 2. [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6q2uCjVTVO-E0iCqRMgIqQ MadeForReleasio Toad]] (again) played through it and made videos documenting it.

* During the 2016 summer Olympic games, Irish boxer Michael Conlan was eliminated by Russian Vladimir Nikitin under controversial circumstances. Creator/{{RTE}} quickly released [[https://www.rte.ie/can-you-beat-nikitin/ a flash game]] based on the fight. Nikitin will [[ZeroEffortBoss stand still]] while Conlan beats on him only for Nikitin to always win by one point no matter how many times the player beats on him.
* ''[[VideoGame/WarioWare Wario Ware Touched]]'' includes several bonus mini-games based on table hockey, one of which is entitled "Eternal Wario Hockey". Wario is your opponent, and he will ''never'' fail to deflect the puck from his side, no matter how well you play.

* ''VisualNovel/HatePlus'' has an achievement that is absolutely impossible to achieve: [[spoiler:Level Four Revive Materia. According to the description, you must finish the game with ONLY the version of *Mute that you started with. However, *Mute is DrivenToSuicide at the end of Day 2, and the rest of the game is spent with the older version of *Mute that you restore, and there is no way around this. Note that using the Harem version, while allowing *Mute to survive, doesn't fulfill the conditions. As, it said only.]]

* I-Mockery's [[http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/tetris-charity/ Tetris: Charity Edition]].

** The intro screen promises that I-Mockery will donate money to charity for every player that clears 20 lines or more in A-Type mode (no such promises for ''VideoGame/RType'' [[CrowningMomentOfFunny mode]]). However, once you breach the 15-line mark, NES characters fall instead of Tetris blocks. They... can't fit together in any line-clearing fashion. Then the game's ending chastizes you for not even being able to clear twenty measly lines. Truly, one of I-Mockery's cruelest AprilFoolsDay jokes of all time. It's still possible to sneak in a Tetris after you clear line 16, if an I piece is next, clearing 20 lines total. However, you still do not advance to level 3, as the game refuses to recognize that last cleared line, and sticks the counter at 19.

* During the 2016 summer Olympic games, Irish boxer Michael Conlan was eliminated by Russian Vladimir Nikitin under controversial circumstances. Creator/RTE quickly released [[https://www.rte.ie/can-you-beat-nikitin/ a flash game]] based on the fight. Nikitin will [[ZeroEffortBoss stand still]] while Conlan beats on him only for Nikitin to always win by one point no matter how many times the player beats on him.

* Inverted with [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke_chess_problem#Self-solving_problems this]] self-solving ''TabletopGame/{{Chess}}'' problem as being an un''lose''able joke game. Its goal is to mate the black king in six moves, however all of white's legal moves lead invariably to checkmate after six moves.

[[/folder]]

[[AC:Video Games]]

[[AC:Game Shows]]

[[AC:Other Games]]

* [[https://youtu.be/MmGYPNlPLrI Super Releasio Brothers]] is a fanmade sequel to the above hack, and much like it, it's completely unbeatable under normal means as Mario (who has the top part of his head replaced with a mushroom) will speed up far too fast with the inability to slow down at all. [[Main/GameBreakingBug He even runs so fast that the game glitches up because Mario's not supposed to go that fast,]] which causes part of the levels to loop over, can put him in solid objects, run right into a pit or an enemy, etc. However, you can still go fairly slow and try not to intentionally speed up. You could beat the game like this... [[TimedMission if it weren't for the fact that the timer wasn't removed,]] so you wouldn't reach the end of the level by doing that unless you froze the timer or went at the normal (for Releasio) speed. It didn't help that in the original version, [[Main/GameBreakingBug level 7-4 was actually impossible to beat,]] as the game couldn't tell if Mario went through the right path or not due to how quick he was going, causing the level to loop endlessly. There's also even its own version of SuperMarioBrosTheLostLevels called [[https://youtu.be/QTPVEzFnWTo Super Releasio Bros: The Lost Toads,]] making NintendoHard into Nintendo Almost Impossible.

* The RiddleSchool series' fourth game is like this. You try to do anything and you promptly die. Which is actually the idea.

* The creators of ''VideoGame/TheRoomTheGame'' released what appeared to be the equivalent for ''Film/TheHungerGames''... on April 1st. It becomes a test to see how many times a player can take one of Clove's throwing knives to the head before giving up.

** "reallyjoel's Dad mode" is a running gag in RemarGames, though since the other games are [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfM3vtVlCTw technically possible]] we can't list them on this page.

* Shortly after Brazil was trampled 7-1 by Germany in the 2014 {{FIFA World Cup}}, a Brazilian programmer decided to enhance the SelfDeprecation with [[http://www.clickjogos.com.br/jogos/gol-da-alemanha-simulator/ "Gol da Alemanha]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh6nN_KbyTM Simulator"]]. There the player controls a Brazilian attacker, when one of the other players is a traffic cone, the other nine filled to the brim with ArtificialStupidity, and the opposing German team actually knows what is doing.