Unwinnable Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

Some Guy: The SMB 3 image has been removed to be put on the Didnt Think This Through page, where it more clearly meets the trope specifications. I had a replacement image, but the wiki doesn't like hotlinks. So we're going to have nothing until or unless someone finds a new one.

Who deleted most of the page and why? (Disregard this. I didn't notice that the page had been split.)

Headcase: The current image of SMB 3 is funny, though it doesn't seem to fit the trope imo. You're trapped for the life, but the trope is for the whole game (or at least the save file). SMB 3 does have an example of Un Winnable; the rare airship in sky tower glitch. I don't have any better ideas for an image, just throwing that out there.

Pulled this example:

In King's Quest VII you must remember to scare the jackalope into the hole and get its fur before you leave the desert landscape, or Rosella ends up with the wrong prince. Or So I Heard.

I'm 99% sure that King's Quest VII has no dead ends. If you miss an item earlier, you'll have another way to get it later. If you miss the fur in paticular, you can always go back into the desert and get it.

Ingrd: I remember some instances in Banjo-Tooie where while the game was still winnable, not all jiggies could be obtained, like the Davy Jone's Locker glitch or the pigs' pool one I happened to find. Not sure WHAT I did, but I remember not getting anything. Would that still count or am I in the wrong entry?

Mike Rosoft: Lost Forever?

Andrew Leprich: I haven't played the game yet so I don't know, but isn't there some kind of temple glitch in Zelda: TP that does this?

anonymous: Yeah, in the original version there was a glitch with a cannon that I can't remember in detail, and is why I'm here in the first place.

Riff: The Hitchhiker's Guide example isn't a very good one, as it's possible feed the sandwich to the dog as Ford Prefect if you forgot to do it at the beginning of the game. Many people don't seem to know about that, though, so I'll let someone else decide whether or not to remove the example. ...Actually, tell you what, I'll just edit it with an actual example of unwinnableness from the same game.

Coolnut: Actually, Space Quest II is winnable without the cubix rube (the puzzle). Or the athletic supporter in the beginning. The former, you just leave the screen with the Labion Terror Beast and return. The latter, you have to hide from the guard and throw the rock from the previous screen, and wait for the guard to leave. You will get a low score for the alternate solutions, though.

Kizor: There's an athletic supporter? Dang!

Shire Nomad: Thinking about grouping the Sierra examples into their own sublist. I for one would love to vent at length about them...

Cassius335: If you do, may I suggest Sierrage?

Andrew Leprich: Now, I don't really play computer adventure games, but aren't intentionally-created ((Unwinnable)) situations a staple of the genre? Deleted the "at least Sierra made-ones" comment, because, while scanning the list of examples of unwinnable situations on Wikipedia, numerous developers seem to do it.

Cort Jstr: They are a staple but Sierra took it to the extreme. Generally you had to do everything 100% right with no room for error and limited or no ability to revisit areas to pick up an item you'd missed. And not having an item (or picking up a red herring) generally resulted in death. Hence their slogan "save early and save often." In one game even activating the Boss Key would lock you out of the game and require loading a save file. The game would even say, "boy I hope you saved recently"

Mark Z: Deleted the example of World of Warcraft battlegrounds as Alliance. This article is about mechanically unwinnable situations (either by design or due to bugs). For games that just require some obscure trick, see Guide Dang It. For games that are just very hard, see Nintendo Hard. World Of Warcraft battlegrounds are none of these.

Geese: But damn, do they seem like it sometimes. Even if the obscure trick is generally teamwork, coordination and some measure of actual desire to win. :3

Mike Rosoft: I don't know to what extent this belongs here, so I'll list it on the talk page first:

Jet Set Willy can also become Unwinnable through normal gameplay. In the original, if you die in a room, you re-enter it in exactly the same way as you entered. Did you fall or jump into a room, and die before you could do anything? Too bad for you; you'll now lose all your lives and it's Game Over. Yes, that's right: a single false step or jump can result in an entire game being lost. The sequel tried to fix the problem, but (due to a lack of Mercy Invincibility) made it even worse instead: you now respawn on the spot where you died, or from where you fell or jumped to your death, which works ... unless it's also the starting spot of some monster, in which case you'll enter the infinite cycle of death without any warning that it could be the case.

Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. If it's not an example, don't put it with the examples! (It looks like a Guide Dang It.)

Also in King's Quest II, if you take the logical puzzle solution of killing the giant snake menacing you rather than the illogical solution of mounting a bridle on it, the game becomes very nearly unwinnable, as you never get the item needed to circumvent a very nasty "walk along the path perfectly or you die" puzzle. Technically not an example, but worth mentioning — the fan remake removed the fake solution and reworked the original puzzle to be more obvious and logical, just because this was so tremendously unfair.

Mike Rosoft: I have removed "Otherwise known as Sierra Screw" from the very beginning of the article lead; the page is enough of a Take That to Sierra even without it. (I have left the mention of "Sierra Screw" at the end of the Sierra examples, where it's appropriate.) As the page shows, Sierra is by no means the only company to include unwinnable situations in their games - Infocom being an earlier and just as infamous example.

Curtmack: The picture for the article is actually not a "you're screwed" situation - with good enough reflexes, it IS possible to kill the goombas unharmed. Prior to Super Mario World, the Goomba Stomp only requires you to touch an enemy while moving downwards - you can "stomp" the enemies from the side with good timing. Just thought I'd point that out.

A K47x 2: To be honest, I'm just grateful. I've been looking for that picture for God knows how long.

megamcduck: Removed this example:

In La Mulana, it is possible to be unable to complete the game by transforming the Shrine of the Mother before getting the Death Seal, one of the four seals required to summon the game's final boss; transforming the shrine dramatically alters its layout, including the room where you can get the seal, making it impossible to solve the puzzle required to obtain it.

It's completely possible to get the Death Seal after transforming the Shrine of the Mother. IIRC, the two conditions to open the chest are 1: To kill the boss Tiamat to open the door to the particular room, and 2: To kill all of the enemies in the room with the chest. In fact, killing Tiamat is one of the required conditions to transform the Shrine of the Mother in the first place, making this one of the easier puzzles in the game.

This is true of Quest For Glory 2, 3 and 4, as well. For example: fail to get the saurus or the mirror, and you can't win QFG 2 (the game will default to Have A Nice Death if you do the first, and tell you what you need to do, though); QFG 3, for wizards, don't do the magic staff quest, which requires a lot of random events to occur without warning, and the game is unwinnable, for thieves, steal anything (which is their bread and butter as thieves) and the game is unwinnable; QFG 4, don't find the gravedigger in time, attack something that is admittedly scary, or fail to be in a certain place at a certain time, and the game is unwinnable.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

It's actually possible to finish Quest for Glory 2 without the saurus, but you get a slightly worse ending.
It's impossible to miss getting the mirror. The only way not having the mirror is a dead end is if you've been using warp cheats or if you dropped it after getting it.
Not having the magic staff isn't a dead end. You need it to progress through the story, but you always have a chance to go back and make it.
How is stealing a dead end when you flat out NEED to steal the Drum of Magic and the Spear of Death?
Letting the gravedigger die actually might not be a dead end, but thats getting kind of nit-picky, since you'd have to find ways to dodge the Nice Deaths. I'm not sure whats being referred to in the last two examples.

Don't want to put it directly in examples because I don't have the specifics at hand, but this should count for "unwinnable" and "Guide Dang it". Does anybody know the PS 2 videogame "Soul Reaver 2" glitch in which disturbing the sort-of-spirit-ravens outside the fortress (making them fly away) before entering the fortress-of-adding-elements-to-your-weapon (which was the only tenuous point of the entire game) makes it so that, after achieving all elements, the player cannot exit the fortress and must restart from a save prior to disturbing the ravens and entering the fortress?

Comonad: I've edited the Persona 3 entry, since it didn't take into account the scarcity of save points. Of course, now it seems like a fairly boring aversion. Wasn't sure whether or not to remove it.

Antwan: So, I managed to get this huge trope fitted with folders, but the video game section is really huge. I wouldn't be surprised if there are adventure games in there too. Perhaps we should separate the video games by genre?

Great Pikmin Fan: Oh god... there's just so much wrong with this. From the sonic section:

For that matter, Carnival Night Zone, Act 2 in Sonic 3, is pretty much impossible to escape if you get caught between two red and white swirling things without knowing the trick... and you will. Dear God, you will.
- This troper got stuck in that area every time for NINE YEARS because he refused to look up how to do it, then finally figured it out by accident. Cheating to skip past that level was the way to play.

Unless the entry was about a diferent area, that is a Guide Dang It, not an unwinnable. Let's just try to not put GDIs on the unwinnable page. No Just No.

Antwan: Okay, who brought back the examples? We divided the trope into two sections so we wouldn't have this...monster of a list. Permission to delete?

BritBllt: Absolutely, positively don't delete this page, it's a TV Tropes classic! The examples should be moved to their respective sections, but if nothing else, "unwinnable" makes a nice header trope for describing the concept and linking to the Unwinnable By Design and Unwinnable By Mistake subtropes.

Antwan: Not the page, bro. The list. But whatever, it's already too late.

Janitor: The Video game folder content is so long it is breaking the folder-ing code. Somebody want to take a whack at breaking it up/reducing it? Looks like there are a couple of games that can be pulled out into their own folder.

Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: I'll see what I can do...

Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Someone wants this page cut for being too short?!

BritBllt: I've done some splitting already, trying to balance which games have the most entries and which ones people would likely be the most curious about. Good luck with the rest!

Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Thanks! You did the hardest work there...

Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys