History Main / CheckpointStarvation

** The first UsefulNotes/{{NES}} game sends you back to Stage 6-1 if you die on any of the final bosses.

* Plenty of the old 8-bit games on the UsefulNotes/ZXSpectrum and the like had no save points (48K was barely enough RAM for the game, never mind save states, and saving on the tape was normally impractical). Most egregious in the space shooter-cum-word-puzzler-cum-history lesson ''Starion'', a 243-level (counting each time zone as one level, a fair measurement) marathon with, in the original version, a GameBreakingBug somewhere around the 200th. Allowing five minutes a zone -- easy when the word to assemble is "D", more difficult when it's "OBERAMMERGAU" -- you're still looking at [[BladderOfSteel the better part of a day's solid play]]. With no saves.

** The remake on the UsefulNotes/GameBoyColor ''VideoGame/QuestBriansJourney'' does it in a different way. You have to go through a very long extended cutscene, about 30 minutes or so. However, this is subverted since you can save at any time outside of a {{cutscene}}.

* ''VideoGame/BombermanActZero'''s single-player campaign had 99 levels with no save points whatsoever. If the player dies or shuts off their UsefulNotes/Xbox360 at any point in the game, they have to start the whole thing from the beginning.

* ''VideoGame/DeadRising'' features a little of this in its main scenario (there are no soft checkpoints between going between sections of the mall or before fighting bosses), but Infinity Mode does not feature a single checkpoint nor way to save your game. As the sole objective of Infinity mode is to survive as long as you can, this can lead to trouble. One achievement requires you to stay alive for the real-time equivalent of ''fourteen hours'' - and when the game was released, the UsefulNotes/XBox360 was going through incredibly high rates of getting the RROD. Thankfully, its sequels fixed this problem: ''VideoGame/DeadRising2'' introduced checkpoints before going into different areas or fighting bosses, and ''VideoGame/DeadRising2: Off the Record'' changed Infinity Mode to Sandbox Mode, adding the ability to save as well as checkpoints.

* ''VideoGame/DeadSpace2'': This trope is used deliberately in "Hardcore Mode". Specifically, it only allows the player to save three times in the whole game, and there are no checkpoints, other than at the disc change on the UsefulNotes/Xbox360 version.

* ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddysSecurityBreach'': If the player chooses to stay past 6 A.M., all the save stations are disabled, running the real risk of the player having to start all the way from the beginning of the endgame chapter if they die to an animatronic. A patch would later remedy this by reactivating one save station in the atrium (which isn't ''much'' better but it's not nothing).

** A lot of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld'' [[GameMod ROM hacks]] contain this due to having {{Marathon Level}}s, since by default, Mario World levels can only have one CheckPoint. Of course, players who want to can always [[DefiedTrope use save states]], which [[VideoGame/KaizoMarioWorld some developers count on]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Plok}}'': Not one single level in the game has a checkpoint. If you die, you go all the way back to the start of the level you were on, and while this might not seem that bad at first, ''Plok'' also has the distinction of being one of the most deceptively and unfairly difficult games on the SNES. Fortunately, when you die, dead Fleas stay dead, so doing the level over isn't as bad as it could be.

** In ''VideoGame/Persona5'', this initially isn't much of an issue for the first third of the game, as Kamoshida and Madarame's Palaces have Safe Rooms be relatively close together. However, starting with Kaneshiro's Palace, Safe Rooms start to become incredibly space apart, meaning if the player is killed by a Shadow before making it to the next Safe Room, they'll be sent to the last one visited and end up losing all their progress. It's possible to circumvent this by returning to the previous Safe Room after making progress ahead and saving, but this not only requires a sizable amount of {{Backtracking}}, but also comes with the risk of Shadows {{respawning|enemies}}.