One Hit Point Wonder - Television Tropes & Idioms

"It's like you touch the top of the building, you die, you touch the ceiling, you die, you touch the floor, you die, too far to the right, you die, too far to the left, you die, you die, you die, you die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die!!"

—The Angry Video Game Nerd on The Silver Surfer for the NES

Games in which the protagonist has no Hit Points stat, and the character dies from a single incident of damage. Bosses, of course, are exempt.

More common in older games, and part of what makes a game Nintendo Hard. Also common in modern tactical shooters.

Examples:

Dungeons And Dragons 4th editions has Minions, which are as powerful as any creature of theur level, except they have just one hit point.
Super Mario Bros and its Platform Game offshoots are probably the most famous example of this. The various power-ups would generally allow you to take an extra hit, at the cost of losing the power-up.
- Of course, Super Mario Bros. 2, the USA game, has heart points, but this is only loosely a Mario game; it is a modified version of a game that in Japan was called Doki-Doki Panic.
- Super Mario Galaxy does this in its daredevil runs, where Mario's Life Meter has only one hit point. This is usually reserved for a repeat of a completed boss battle.
- While not a Mario offshoot, Commander Keen was designed with Mario in mind, and the title character is just as vulnerable. Ditto Dangerous Dave, another early John Romero game.
As quoted above, Silver Surfer, exacerbated by the fact that touching walls will kill you. Made even more annoying by the fact that one of the Silver Surfer's superpowers is being Nigh Invulnerable!
The Pokemon Shedinja is a unique example of this in a game that doesn't usually use it. While lifebars do exist in-game, Shedinja only ever has a single hit point, making its own life bar rather pointless. It's kept from being a Joke Character by its ability, "Wonder Guard", which protects it from all damage that isn't Super Effective. Nonetheless, the first attack that damages it defeats it outright. (See The Law Of Diminishing Defensive Effort.) It's also completely vulnerable to damage from things like Standard Status Effects, recoil, spikes...really anything but regular damage. Still, it gives Shedinja the odd honor of being not so useful in the standard metagame (due to the popularity of entry hazard Stealth Rock), yet fairly useful in the Ubers metagame where few things even carry anything to kill it.
The Contra series faithfully used this trope for most games; when Contra: Hard Corps did have a life bar, the US version dropped it, making the already difficult game even harder.
Every single classic 1980's arcade game, from Asteroids to Zaxxon, was like this. Back then, the whole idea of gradually taking damage didn't even exist in video games. It's probably easier to list the exceptions:
- 1943: The Battle of Midway (and in the 90's, the sequels 1941: Counter Attack and 1944: The Loop Master.) But do note that these games give you just one life - lose it and it's game over.
  - The recently-released 1942 Joint Strike gives you a life meter and multiple lives.
- Gauntlet was the first arcade game to have a Life Meter system (though your health was displayed numerically, rather than as a bar). Later, Rampage had a Life Meter as well.
- In Crazy Climber, a falling object doesn't kill you if both hands have a secure grip. (It dislodges one hand.)
- Some games allowed you to take two (or more) hits before dying. Usually, the first hit destroys your shields/armor/whatever, and the second kills you. Arcade games of this type include Ghosts n Goblins, Blaster, the Star Wars and Star Trek arcade games, and Black Tiger.
- Variant: Some classic arcade games let you command multiple ships at once, or join ships into a more powerful ship. Each ship was a One Hit Point Wonder, but losing one ship didn't end your turn if you had another. The most famous is Galaga, but Space Duel, Moon Cresta, Eagle, Tac Scan, and several Galaga sequels also worked this way.
- Variant: The obscure Namco game Rolling Thunder does have a life bar with eight segments, but it's nothing more than a cruel joke - 95% of the time, one hit kills you. Only by touching the weakest of the Mooks is it not instant death - in that case, it takes off a paltry four segments.
  - The NES version replaced the eight bar life gauge with a more honest two bar gauge, as did Rolling Thunder 2, while the Genesis-exclusive Rolling Thunder 3 actually allows you to take three hits on the regular difficulty.
Bushido Blade is that rare Fighting Game where both you and your opponent are a One Hit Point Wonder... at least in theory. In practice, only a couple of moves had this quality, and it usually took a few hits before the lethal blow.
In the Lion King video games, you had this working against you when you were riding the ostrich in the second level. Touching anything - even the air, if you jumped too high - would throw you to the ground and instantly kill you. (The water in the same stage also applies - although you never encounter any when ostrich-riding, it functions like a Bottomless Pit.) Take note that the rest of the game featured a life bar.
- "The Stampede", from the above game, was just as bad. While touching a rock takes away one notch of your life bar, being hit by a wildebeest takes away three. Unless you've found enough life-bar extending bugs, two hits from a gnu will instantly do you in.
  - And let's not forget the rolling boulder in "Simba's Exile", which will KO you instantly if it touches you. Combine this with the boulder moving faster than Simba can run and a porcupine sitting between you and the escape hole, and...
Most games in the Rainbow Six series use a variation. It only takes one solid hit to incapacitate a character—and, in the single-player campaigns for your team, possibly kill them, permanently removing them from the game. Less solid shots, such as to extremities, take two hits instead, and hamper the target on the first hit.
Operation Flashpoint also plays this one in a similar way; as a result, there's not even a health bar.
- However, not every hit is always fatal: depending on where the player is hit, it may make him unable to stand up and run normally (if hit on the legs) or render the aimpoint extremely wobbly (if the arms are no longer healthy).
A Stripperiffic bonus outfit in PN03 has this property, for expert play.
The "Heaven or Hell" difficulty in Devil May Cry 3 grants this quality to every single character - Dante and all of his enemies. Yes, even the bosses. What makes it tricky is that Dante can die from taking damage off environmental obstacles, which of course do nothing to enemies. And then there are some enemies which need to be struck at a weak point, whereas Dante has no such advantage.
- "Hell or Hell" mode in the fourth game plays this the traditional way.
Most early Bomberman games made the titular hero a One Hit Point Wonder. He can survive one hit if he has the "Heart" power-up, which acts as a shield. Bomberman Generation was the first game in the series to give him a Life Meter, which allowed him to withstand more of his own hits before dying.
- Bomberman Hero, Bomberman 64: The Second Attack, and Bomberman Quest all had Life Meters before Bomberman Generation.
A late mission in Zone Of The Enders sees Jehuty's AI Ada infected with a virus. While in this condition, any kind of damage will instantly destroy Jehuty, forcing the player to resort to sniping enemies from afar or risk a game over.
The Eric Chahi game ''Another World''(known as Out Of This World in US) worked this way. Some combat elements, such as the blaster pistol capable of creating blaster shields, made it rather complicated to get through certain firefights, almost qualifying it as a Puzzle Game. The unsuspecting player is in for a surprise if he tries to run past the worms crawling on the ground in the first area.
I Wanna Be The Guy, a freeware game made from various NES and SNES sprites, takes this as far as possible. Almost everything that touches the player character causes him to explode in a shower of red pixels, except the medusa heads and Cheep Cheeps which knock him around. Being hit by a flying ~~apple~~ giant cherry is just as deadly as crashing into one of the innumerable Spikes Of Doom. This is exhibited quite hilariously in a replication of a cutscene from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, where, unless you move, Dracula accidentally kills you in the middle of a conversation before fighting by pausing between statements and throwing his ~~wine~~ blood glass at you.
Speaking of Castlevania, Haunted Castle version M on default settings comes close; two hits from a skeleton's bone throwing attack will kill you.
- There is also a way of becoming a One Hit Point Wonder in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon - use the Black Dog and Pluto DSS cards together and you turn into a skeleton. However, while in this mode, one attack will kill you.
Final Fantasy VI actually plays this trope the other way around at one point. About halfway through the game, you will be controlling one character on a small island. The random battles consist of monsters that have a single hit point each. On top of that, they start the battle with a HP Sap effect, meaning they often die before anyone gets a turn. They're almost completely useless for anything but decursing an item that requires you fight 255 battles with it equipped, but you can steal Elixirs from them if you're fast enough.
- They do have one extremely useful benefit; if Gau ever ran into them in the Veldt (where almost every enemy in the game would reappear), he could imitate them. If Strago was in the party when Gau did so, he could learn a couple Game Breaker spells (like Mighty Guard, which made boss battles a complete joke).
The NES version of Dragon's Lair features a unique(ly stupid) variation, in which the player actually has a life bar, but most hazards in the game kill him instantly, such as touching a stationary, ordinary door.
After Mega Man X 5 the X series started getting so full of instant-death hazards that X's life bar was an anachronism. Apparently the clueless hacks that took over from Keiji Inafune enjoyed Trial And Error Gameplay.
In the Delta Force games, you can only take one, maybe two shots if you have armor. However, the enemies also can't take more than 1 high-powered shot, even to limbs (which is more realistic than other games, if you think about it), and they tend to be uninteligent, relatively stationary, and terrible shots.
The shmup RPG Sigma Star Saga is an odd example. Your character has a lifemeter, but the animation for getting hit shows his ship exploding and a new one flying in from offscreen, like in most shmups.
- Averted with the onset of a two hit wonder: a boxy-carrier. One hit causes it to crack open and fall apart, revealing a small and nimble warship.
- It is justified/handwaved by the plot: The Alien Empire for which the hero works has enough resources to build countless living ships but is lacking decent pilots, so the pilots are teleported from ship to ship and can sustain the teleportations.
In the Delta Force PC games by Novalogic, you can only take one or two shots (maybe 3 if you have a vest and they're just using pistols) to die. However, all enemies take two shots at the absolute maximum (shooting a soldier in the leg instantly incapacitates them), and they're stupid and terrible shots.
The old Sega Genesis/Megadrive game Ristar featured this. The highest (secret) difficulty level not only turned the titular character into a 1HP Wonder, but also a One-Life Wonder; one touch is literal instant death, and all health and 1ups are converted to gems. However, as compensation, the game gives unlimited continues in this mode, meaning death only sends one back to the start of the level.
In the freeware PC game La Mulana, if you equip the F1 Spirit 3D and Contra ROMs (in that specific order), you will die after taking one hit; this is in stark contrast to the latter half of the game, where you have (should have) so much health, the EXP-doubling Scripture, and damage-reducing Body Armor that dying becomes completely irrelevant, except against a boss.
Ice Climber had many strange creatures and things kill you in one hit, such as the Topis, falling icicles, and a polar bear with pink shorts and sunglasses! No, really!
The very first Grand Theft Auto game had anything that was harmful kill you in one hit. Body Armor let you survive up to 3 bullets though.
Similar to the Devil May Cry example above, Winback featured an unlockable "Sudden Death Mode" wherein a single bullet was all it took to send you or any enemy to an early grave. Amusingly, this led to encounters with simple guards becoming white-knuckle standoffs, while most boss characters wound up on the floor before they even finished taunting you.
On the last level in Combat School, you have a life bar, but everything in the level (being shot, touching an enemy, touching something on fire, etc.) kills you instantly. Except the final boss, whose hits aren't fatal — so that's what the life bar is for...
The titular ninja in N: The Way of the Ninja is about as flimsy as wet cardboard - there's an X-Box Live achievement which requires you die 2,000 times in the single-player mode. It's easier than it sounds.
One More Extra Stages in Dance Dance Revolution force you to play with the "Sudden Death" modifier; if you get one Good, Bad, Miss, or NG, you instantly fail the song. The same applies to Dance ManiaX 's Extra Stages. DDR's Oni/Challenge mode is like this as well, but you get three chances to screw up, and you get a chance back after clearing certain songs.
- Normal Extra Stages in Dance Dance Revolution X could be anywhere from this to a four-hit-point-wonder. oh, and let's not forget you have to pick a specific song as your "final stage" and get a specific grade on it on a specific difficulty to get one. Considering some of the songs are loaded with Fake Difficulty (Pluto on the CS version being a major offender - stops are less predictable than CHAOS from DDR SuperNova), you're kinda screwed.
The titular Butt Monkeys in Prinny: Can I Really Be A Hero? have only one hit point. But you'll have a lot of them.
- That's only if you played it on Hard Mode. Easy Mode allows you four hit points. Doesn't make the game any easier.
In Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, there is an accessory known as Death Ring. It boosts your stats up by 44 each, but one hit kills you instantly with it equipped, regardless of your health. It's useful for acquiring the various boss fight medals, since you have to win without taking damage to get them anyway.
Original edition of Knights of the Sky, WWI-style air combat sim from 1992, had 1 HP planes (including yours, of course). To be honest, their real counterparts were not much more durable either.
Three of Apogee Software's early CGA games: Arctic Adventure, Pharoahs Tomb, and Monuments Of Mars. One hit from anything would mean losing a life
- Not to mention that to run the game faster, enemies are circumscribed by their hitboxes to simplify collision detection, so you had to compensate for invisible death-squares around every bad guy. The game even calls this "F.A.S.T. technology" and brags about it in the instructions.
Minesweeper. No, really. Uncover just one mine and the game's over. No Damage Run is a necessity here.
Bubble Bobble series. Even wind-up-toys can kill you. Keep in mind that Rainbow Islands and Parasol Stars ditch the bubble dragons for human protagonists. Who also die when they touch anything. This carries on when the bubble dragons return for Symphony and Memories, both made in 1994-95. And in Symphony, when the characters turn back into humans, they can still die easily. Does the Involuntary Shapeshifting curse from the first game change people's body structures forever even if they return human?
- If this curse exists, we'd be dead by now.
- Subverted in NES and Game Boy game Bubble Bobble Part 2 and DS games Revolution and Double Shot: You start with hearts. But in Part 2 (NES version) you'll have only one heart on you, and you'll have to catch hearts yourself.
- To access any secrets, No Damage Runs (and thus, No Death Runs) are a necessity too.
Another Harder Than Hard mode example- Rocket Knight Adventures' hardest difficulty setting starts you off with one life, no continues, and everything kills you in one hit. Take any damage at all, and it's an instant game over.
Bullet hell games, such as Ikaruga or Touhou will kill the player if a single bullet touches the hitbox. It helps that the hitbox is significantly smaller than the sprite. Kind of. Well at least you can bomb just as you get hit to save yourself.
Similarly to Super Mario, Sonic The Hedgehog is a One Hit Point Wonder, except when he has at least one ring on him, or a barrier.
Shining Force has this in the form of Jogurt, who has exactly one point in every single statistic. Though his hit points can be raised through items.
- Jogurt was largely a Self Imposed Challenge, though successfully defeating an enemy with him awards you with the Jogurt ring, which doesn't do anything but change the sprite of another character into Jogurt.
Gaiares, at least until you get a shield, then your a 6-or-so-hit-point-wonder. unless you die on the final stage, which has no such shield item, which is one of the reasons why that stage (which is ONLY a boss fight) is That One Boss. Oddly enough, your TOZ can block some bullets.
All the Glider games. The sole exception was if you had aluminum foil in Glider PRO, which did protect you to some extent.
In Gradius, if you don't have a force field, the only things your plane can touch without blowing up are power-ups.
Bubsy. Every death gives you a different death animation though.
Genzo from Daiku no Gensan in the original arcade game and Hammerin' Hero. In most of the other games, he does, in fact, have a health bar of some sort... but in those games, he's down in one hit unless he has a hard hat to absorb it.
Metal Slug characters die in one hit from bullets, melee weapons, or getting run over by a tank. Unless you pick one particular character in Metal Slug 6.
If Harder Than Hard mode examples count, player aircraft in the Ace Combat go down with just one missile hit when played on the highest difficulties. Enemy aircraft, on the other hand, remain just as durable as on normal difficulty.
The infamously Nintendo Hard Flash game Owata (aka The Life-Ending Adventure) features a 1HPW with a Punny Name ("Owata" sounds like "Owatta", which basically means "it's over"). You will not be able to get to the end without Trial And Error Gameplay and/or a guide.
The very Embodiement of this trope: Transformers
Adventure Island does this. Even though you have what looks like a Life Meter, it's actually the timer. One hit kills you. Averted in Adventure Island: the Beginning, in which taking hits knocks time off the meter.
Little Big Planet has Sackboy, who basically explodes if he comes in contact with any of the various hazards in the game. The exception is fire, which he can bounce on once before being burnt to a crisp.
Golden Eye had this as an optional game mode in multiplayer, aptly named "License to Kill"
In the DROD series, you and everybody else has one hit point, with the exception of very large enemies that shrink when you hit them (serpents and the rock giant). In addition some enemies can't be killed with any of your own weapons. Added to this that it is a turn based tactical game with tiny turns, to the point of being a puzzle game, and it was designed by a bunch of total sadists, the series is one of the hardest around. DROD RPG subverts this, which only serves to make things even more difficult.