History Main / MeaninglessLives

** 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. The original is just as bad. The only negative effect getting a Game Over will have is resetting your score when you're on the second half of a level. If you were aiming for a high score, this isn't any worse than dying normally -- you lose the time you accumulated from the previous area, so your high score is now moot, meaning Game Overs technically have ''no consequences whatsoever.'' Of course, that doesn't stop the game from forcing you to play bonus games if you get all the presents to win... Get this... More lives.

* ''VideoGame/KirbySuperStar'': There's no punishment at all for running out of lives. The score doesn't even reset.

** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'' has two of the easiest spots to rack up InfiniteOneUps in the first world. One is in the second level! Furthermore, getting a game over respawned all beaten levels (but not wandering foes) ''and'' Toad Houses, so getting a game over right after opening a midway shortcut was actually more harmful than good. This actually means you have unlimited tries against the final level, as there's a shortcut that bypasses all the actual levels in Dark World while all the tank-type levels stay beaten.

** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'' has two of the easiest spots to rack up InfiniteOneUps in the first world. One is in the second level!

* ''VideoGame/GhostsNGoblins'' (at least, the Genesis version) has infinite continues, making what was a near-impossible game merely really really hard.

In the beginning, there were NintendoHard games which you had to finish in a single sitting. To make these games more fair, creators implemented "lives" so that you wouldn't have to start all the way at the beginning of the game if you failed -- only when you ran out of lives. It was a good idea, and it added an extra element of strategy to the game as it made characters [[OneUp collect these extra lives]] along the way to save them up for the harder levels near the end of the game.

** 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...
** The original is just as bad. The only negative effect getting a Game Over will have is resetting your score when you're on the second half of a level. If you were aiming for a high score, this isn't any worse than dying normally -- you lose the time you accumulated from the previous area, so your high score is now moot, meaning Game Overs technically have ''no consequences whatsoever.'' Of course, that doesn't stop the game from forcing you to play bonus games if you get all the presents to win... Get this... More lives.

* In the PSP game ''VideoGame/PrinnyCanIReallyBeTheHero'', your character starts with 1,000 lives and the game consists of 10 levels. The game can be pretty hard at times, but you won't ever expend the 1,000 lives you start with, with most people losing somewhere between 100 and 300 over the course of the entire game.
** Speak for ''yourself'', [[VerbalTic dood]]! Seriously though, the game also allows you to learn an ability that allows you to attack enemies with your life stock (That is to say, ''launching'' the other Prinnies at them).

** The original is the only one to truly avert this trope, to a borderline unforgiving degree: there are only a handful of extra lives you can pick up, the typical level has only 20-30 coins when you need 100 for a life, and running out of lives resets your progress entirely. The only way to get this trope into play is to use the InfiniteOneUps exploit.

Whatever the case, you never look at your life counter because you just don't need to care.

May overlap with GrandfatherClause. Some VideoGameLongRunners began in the era when lives were meaningful, and have lasted into the age when they are not. If the OneUp is a beloved part of a series' legacy, it will stick around, and fans won't mind that it is obsolete.

* Every ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' game since ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3''.

Whatever the case, you never look at your life counter simply because you just don't care.

** The SNES version of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld'' allowed you to quickly rack up lives by replaying certain levels. (The life counter was not saved, however.) 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/SuperMarioWorld2YoshisIsland'' took this even further, since it features bonus games which could reward you with ''dozens of lives'' each play. If you get exceptionally lucky at spinning the wheel in Roulette mini-game, these prizes might increase to '''hundreds of lives'''.

** ''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 the reward for getting 100% completion was [[BraggingRightsReward 99 of the bloody things]].
** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioSunshine'' specifically had 1-Ups that respawned every time one entered a level and came back. This means every time you die, you'd get that life back if you start near the 1-Up spawn.

** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld2YoshisIsland'' took this even further, since it features bonus games which could reward you with dozens of lives each play.

** The later NES 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.

* Attempted subversion in ''[[Videogame/{{Gex}} Gex: Enter the Gecko]]'', where running out of lives would erase all your progress and force you to start again. At least, that's the theory. The problem was that the game had to prompt the player to overwrite their save file, making it incredibly easy to avoid the punishment.

* ZigZagged in [[VideoGame/OneThousandAndOneSpikes 1001 Spikes]]. You go from being confident when realising you have 1001 Lives, to [[NintendoHard realizing 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.]]

* ''VideoGame/CrashBandicoot''
** Lives are not quite as meaningless in the original ''Videogame/CrashBandicoot1996'' as they are in future installments. Loading the game or using a password resets your lives to 5, and [[NintendoHard you're going to need as many as you can get]]. However, collecting the green gem opens a shortcut in the level "Castle Machinery", which will take you to the exit in 10 seconds and give you '''25 extra lives'''.

* ''VideoGame/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 the cheat a few times. Especially on [[ThatOneLevel the swamp levels in episode 3]].

** It seems Creator/{{Nintendo}} simply doesn't care any more with ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBros2'' - the central theme of the game is [[GoldFever collecting as many coins as possible]] and the game is filled with ways to collect massive amounts of them very quickly, including: gold fire flowers whose massive fireballs turn anything into coins, gold enemies that drop extra coins when defeated, blocks you can wear on your head for a steady coin output and even bonus levels that literally have coins raining down from the sky! In addition to this, the game is about as generous with the 1-Up mushrooms as Mario's other recent outings, so it's very easy to reach a life count in the triple digits without even trying. And in fact, [[UpToEleven maxing out your life counter is needed to earn one of the stars on your save file!]]

** Much like Mario, ''VideoGame/KirbyAndTheForgottenLand'' chucks this trope and incurs a 100 Star Coin penalty if Kirby goes down.

** 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 on several enemies in a row- in the World 2 temple in ''Tropical Freeze'', you can get half a dozen lives that way.

** The original is the only one to truly avert this trope, to a borderline unforgiving degree: there are only a handful of extra lives you can pick up, the typical level has only 20-30 coins when you need 100 for a life, and running out of lives resets your progress entirely. The only way to get this trope into play is to use the InfiniteLives exploit.

** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'' has two of the easiest spots to rack up InfiniteLives in the first world. One is in the second level!

A SubTrope of VideoGameLives. May operate with PowerUpLetdown, in games that think lives are a bigger deal than they actually are.