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Platform Hell
alt title(s): Masocore
Oh, GOD DAMN IT!

"Here's an example of a typical scene: Trees full of apples. Unassuming, you stride under one, and an apple falls from the tree and crushes you, sending you back to the start of the screen. You approach again, this time cautiously poking your nose out under the tree in an attempt to goad the apple into falling before you pass. ... About halfway across, you notice an apple low enough you can jump over it. ... You jump over the apple, and the apple falls up and kills you. The apple falls up and kills you."
—Anna "Dessgeega" Anthropy on I Wanna Be The Guy. Note: They're really more like giant cherries.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a plumber jumping into an invisible coin block... repeatedly... forever.

Video game protagonists often have bad days. It's not uncommon to have to Double Jump between Floating Platforms over spiked pits, dash between three sets of synchronized fire vents, then bounce off a flying enemy to hit an item block, all while dodging those Goddamned Bats and Demonic Spiders. It may be fiendishly difficult, but it's still par for the course.

But not like this. Not like this.

The first item block? Falls and crushes you when you hit it! The pit spikes? Shoot freaking lasers when you jump over them! The safe platform at the other end? Suddenly tilts sideways for no reason at all! The harmless bush you just walked past? Grows teeth and bites your head off! The tiny white cloud that you thought was part of the background? Just blasted you with lightning! The secret Warp Zone you found? Sends you back to the first level of the game!

And when you finally, finally get that precious Super Mushroom? Makes you grow so monstrously huge that the floor cracks in half and you plunge into the center of the Earth.

Might I be the first to say... welcome to Hell.

This isn't Nintendo Hard; it's murder. Every platform has booby-trapped spikes. Every empty hallway has a wall of cannons waiting just offscreen. Every power-up will result in death, and every power-up that doesn't will result in death if you don't pick it up. And when you think you've figured out the twisted mind of the game designer, something incomparably worse gets thrown at you. The entire experience is a humongous, hilariously sadistic Kafkaesque Parody of a Nintendo Hard video game.

As a rule of thumb, a Platform Hell game should meet several of the following criteria:
  • Difficulty as slapstick comedy: these games try to make their sudden and completely unfair deaths so ridiculous as to be hilarious. The player engages in self-aimed schadenfreude.
  • Difficulty as Running Gag: The difficulty never, ever lets up, and after awhile it becomes ludicrous in its persistence.
  • Self-awareness: The aforementioned comedy often comes from the game knowing exactly what the player is going to do, and catching them when they least expect it.
  • Difficulty as parody: These games deconstruct well-known videogame challenges, such as Mega Man's disappearing blocks, taking them to completely unreasonable conclusions.
  • Twisted familiarity: The game levels generally fit the classic settings of the game they're based on, and theme their deathtraps and challenges appropriately. This also saves time in level editing. Even original games such as IWBTG are generally one big Nostalgia Level From Hell.

Typical "traps" in these games include:
  • Invisible blocks: Some of them will just be there to trip you up (as in the picture above), some need to be hit in order to pass a seemingly impassable obstacle, and some will leave you trapped between a rock and a hard place.
  • Background elements (such as seemingly distant mountains) actually being treated as foreground elements (i.e Spikes Of Doom).
  • Traps at the end of the stage which result in your death unless you've prepared something from the beginning of the stage, such as the famous "Kaizo Trap" in Super Mario World romhacks: if you don't turn the coins into blocks, the auto-scroll as part of the victory fanfare will cause Mario to die.
  • Traps at the beginning of the stage that will kill you a couple of seconds after entering unless you act immediately.
  • Trial And Error Gameplay, typically in the form of paths that appear to lead somewhere interesting but instead drop you into an inescapable Death Trap. (Of course, Platform Hell games also have areas that merely look like inescapable death traps.)
  • Killing you in the intro cut scene before the game actually begins, especially in Mario hack examples.
  • Pit Traps and Fake Platforms that look exactly the same as solid ground and real platforms, respectively.

They will also usually go by names that outright suggest the cruel difficulty and trickery contained within, usually with names based on 'hard', 'impossible', 'difficult' and 'unfair'.

For obvious reasons, very few commercial companies would dare release a game like this. Hence, this variety of videogame is almost entirely the domain of ROM Hacks and homebrew. Romhacks especially are made for game emulators, fully expecting and taking advantage of the fact that players will be Save Scumming.

Also known as "Masocore", after this blog post.  * This should not be confused with very Nintendo Hard games like Jumper, N, Super Mario Bros. 2 (the Japanese one), and Battletoads, which, while being immensely difficult, play (mostly) fair and straight. It should also not be confused with masochism-themed games like Mighty Jill Off, which are more homage than parody.

See also Classic Video Game Screw Yous, which these games generally take Up To Eleven.

Examples:

Mega Man inspired:

Super Mario Bros inspired:
  • The Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2  * is probably as far as a commercial game can go into this trope. Not only did it have the Poison Mushroom - a power up that killed you - but it had Warp Zones that sent you on a one-way trip back to World 1. (Apparently, it didn't sell very well.)
    • Oh, and that picture at the top of the page? Looks like a pretty childish hack right? Super Mario Bros. 2 JP does a trick as or more cruel than this at least once per world.
  • Super Mario Forever - this video was phenomenally popular in April of 2007, mostly due to the surprising amount of visible emotion and frustration in the anonymous player's actions. An English Gag Dub of that same video exists here (NSFW). And now you can try it yourself!
  • 1 Kaizo Mario World - colloquially known as "Asshole Mario". While Super Mario Forever had only fire bars, blocks and moving platforms, the many traps and devices of Super Mario World make their appearance here. Spawned a sequel in Kaizo Mario World 2.
  • Shobon no Action (sometimes called Cat Mario or dongs.exe, but most commonly known as Syobon Action) - seemingly inspired by both of the above. As it isn't a ROM hack, the designers were able to add even more preposterous traps and setpieces. Hint: don't eat the mushroom.
    • It also makes very clever use of the Invisible Block trick, most players would be genre savvy enough to check for invisible blocks, sometimes even being able to get an advantage in clearing the pit by standing on the block. The game knows this, and has a block that once you stand on, it falls.
    • What ever you do, DO NOT PRESS "0" the the title screen.
  • The Unfair Platformer - Exactly What It Says On The Tin, though more like a homage as many sections are rather easy once you've figured out where the traps are.
    • Although it suffers a bit from engine-imposed Fake Difficulty, with some slippery hit detection.
  • Super Kusottare World - That's just a video of the very end of one level, and a hack that's seemingly so badly designed it took said video maker about 5 hours to get past one jump. It's all but unplayable even with save-states.
    • This troper remembers that the maker gave the game to someone to review on You Tube. The reviewer became so incensed at the game that he abandoned the project halfway through and told the maker never to contact him again unless the hack was edited.
  • Super Mario Bros SpeedExpiation seems innocent enough—all the original levels are left as is. Then you notice how quickly the timer runs down, and how it's a bad idea to do a Goomba Stomp or even pick up a coin... It's basically turned normal game objects into instant death blocks.
  • The "gimmick" used by the above is also applied, with hair-rending results, to Super Mario World in this, Present Mario, as played by raocow.
  • Super Tabarnak World'' - A hack that actually requires you to get a Yoshi in the BONUS GAME to progress and whose last castle is basically 10 rooms of Kaizo traps on permanent super sped up mode. With more Kaizo traps in the middle. And tons of ghosts in the Bowser battle. Pretty much defines cruelty.
    • "Tabarnak" is, in Quebec, a very strong swear with religious connotations.
  • The Hard Level Compilation - Exactly what it says on the tin, and a compilation of about 20 of the hardest Kaizo styled levels people have contributed. This level linked below is just one of them, and took a video reviewer FIFTEEN videos to get past:
  • Pit of Despair. That's a Tool Assisted Speedrun of the level which has to utilize pretty much every glitch in the original game. It's also only one of three (Moltov Mario World and Lawler Mario World being the others) that the video creator has made based purely on being the hardest games ever.
    • And the sequel, Pit of Death. Apparently, it took over 5000 reloads using TAS to beat that level for the creator.
  • Springboard and Shells Hack. Yes, just that name, but freaking hard as hell. That video is a tool assisted speedrun the hack creator made of the last level, which makes you dodge almost endless halls of spikes while bounce on enemies, entering doors in mid air by bouncing of keys and blocks and having between only 50 and THREE seconds to beat each room. Then there's the boss...
  • Cool or Cruel A deliberately Kaizo Mario inspired hack/game which is also a parody of the Mario World Special World area (note the punny names such as Snarly instead of Gnarly, Way Cruel instead of Way Cool and Awful instead of Awesome). Platform Hell is pretty much the most common Mario World ROM Hack genre by now.
  • The Vein Popper Another hack that is Exactly What It Says On The Tin. It begins with having to move to the right after beginning the game or else you die at the hands of a Thwomp, and the first level involves getting a bunch of extra lives. This should set the tone nicely.
  • Mario's Evil Level is a really sadistic version. This level is tough as nut even with save states. In addition, it has multiple paths, some of them which take you to dead end and some of them which make you think they've taken you to the dead end. To add insult, almost every 3-up moon and often seemingly safe surfaces or air kills you without any indication before.
  • Many ROM hacks of Super Mario Bros 3, eg Ultimate SMB 3, are like this.
  • Mario's Masochistic Mission. That video being a perfect example. Nice relaxed Super Mario Bros 1-1 remake. Then a "tiny" fortress where the end usually is... which turns out to be a massive castle of doom, Munchers, death traps, pixel perfect jumps and instantly dodging about four falling Thwomps. And it kills you at the end if you didn't activate the red switch, which is later in the game.

Other Platformers:
  • A number of homebrew edits of the Spectrum game Jet Set Willy are deliberately written in such a way that you need to exploit bugs in the game engine to solve them.
    • As if the original game weren't hard enough: not just that it frequently requires perfectly accurate jumping, but a single false step or jump may well cost you the entire game: you fall into a room below, die with no way to avoid that fate ... and re-enter the room in exactly the same way as the time before, leading into an infinite loop.
    • And of course, the original was unwinnable without hacking the game.
  • Takeshi's Challenge. It says on the box (Or So I Heard) that it was made by a man who hates video games. It shows.
  • The hidden Hell Temple in La Mulana takes an already difficult game and sends it screaming right into the bowels of self-aware platform hell. It may seem fair, but you'll be going cross-eyed with grief once you step into an invisible pit again, or accidentally enter a one-way Door To Before. And the solution to the final 'puzzle' in the temple? Completing the whole temple again. Twice. And once you finally beat Hell Temple, what is your final reward for it all? A skimpy swimsuit. Which you then see Professor Lemeza wearing!
    • Did we mention the Hell Temple's LANDS OF HELL? The LANDS OF HELL are what you fall into if you fall into a pit. You have to defeat all the enemies in them, and then you can go back up to the room. Easy, no? No, because you go back to the first room that Land Of Hell(there are four) can be fell into. The third Land of Hell even has pits that lead to the second one. Did we mention that you HAVE to fall into the first three and pause in front of the land in each one to continue through the dungeon?
  • Pretty much any platform game on the Action52 NES compilation, as well as Cheetahmen 2. In fact Ooze(at least on a cartridge), Fuzz Power, and Cheetahmen 2 are literally impossible to beat, and Alfredo and Jigsaw are unplayable except on some emulators. A couple egregious examples: Streemerz, a Bionic Commando ripoff where touching any object, including money bags, causes damage, and Billy Bob, a crippled Prince Of Persia clone which is nearly(but not completely) impossible to beat due to the wonky jumping controls.
  • A Slightly Difficult Game really likes spikes, weights falling out of the air for no reason and Mega Man-style dissapearing blocks. The game over screen (which you are going to see a lot) also has a message mocking the way you died.
  • I Wanna be the Star is a Christmas themed platform hell game inspired by I Wanna be the Guy where you play as a blue ornament trying to oust and replace the star on the top of the tree.
  • You Probably Won't Make It is Exactly What It Says On The Tin. No traps, but LOTS of Spikes Of Doom, combined with obnoxiously difficult jumps, and a system that shows you where you died last. Expect the screen to be *covered* with red blotches.
    • Especially in Level 18. At least, until you realize that it is impossible, and the creator didn't add a level 19 or 20.
  • As mentioned above, it's possible for a game to be an example of Masocore and not be Platform Hell. Cave Chaos shows us how it's done. There aren't any violations of common sense, the short level length means you won't have to redo much when you get killed, and the traps are avoidable with foreknowledge and cleverness—but you'll still scream at the computer when the Mutually Exclusive Powerups doom you, or a mine cart falls out of nowhere and lands on your head.
  • Canabalt, but only because it loves you.
  • The Dirty Harry NES game is somewhere between this and Nintendo Hard. While a lot of the difficulty is standard, it also sports a number of cruel glitches, as well as things more in this category. Such as the "Ha Ha Ha" room. An area, impossible to tell from the outside, that once entered, requires you to reset the game, and a one-way maze leading back to the start of the game.

Non-Platformers:
  • Trope Maker: The infamous Dungeons and Dragons module, Tomb of Horrors. To just get into said dungeon you have to get past a literal Rocks Fall Everyone Dies. It's all downhill from there. Have fun, you jackasses.
  • The Impossible Quiz - a non-platformer example, only by virtue of the completely ridiculous and hilarious "solutions" that the game expects of the player.
    • A brief sampler of said "solutions:" Finding a completely invisible button to click on a white field, choosing an answer in a multiple choice question where the answers have nothing to do with the question, are not in english, or are blank, and right clicking on the window to deactivate the Flash control to keep the program from failing you.  *
  • The PC game based on The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is notorious for being very close to Adventure Game Hell. Many puzzles are ridiculous and insane, and the room descriptions contain outright lies. Not mistakes, lies. Many other Infocom Interactive Fiction games have even harder puzzles, but this is the only one (that this troper knows of) that uses its difficulty in the same ironic manner as other Platform Hell games.
    • In addition, it's extremely easy to make this game Unwinnable. Didn't pick up the junk mail at the start of the game? Didn't buy the sandwich in the pub? The game won't mind, it won't even hint that those things have any effect when you do them - but if you don't, woe betide you later on.
      • For the mail, the game indeed becomes Unwinnable, although you'll notice when getting the Babel Fish, which isn't too far ahead. However, in the pub, you can in fact replay this section using the Infinite Improbability Drive as Ford, and buy the sandwich that way.
    • Douglas Adams said in an interview "This is the first game that moves beyond user friendly. It is user insulting and ... user mendacious."
    • Dave Leary's games were notorious for their "lying computer" puzzles as well. Leary did admit to being heavily inspired by Infocom games.
  • Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna is RPG Dungeon Crawler Hell. You know how weak the average monster in a Random Encounter is compared to RPG heroes? Well, in this game, you're on the side of the monsters. Not only that, but the puzzles take Guide Dang It to an extreme; most players won't even make it out of the first room without outside assistance.
    • The same can be said about Samuel Stoddard (of RinkWorks fame)'s dungeon crawler Murkon's Vengeance, which is basically a homage to Wizardry IV in every way. Including the difficulty. Watch as your 10-hitpoint-1-damage-dealing character barely scratches the enemies less than half of the time and spends the rest "too scared to act". Thankfully, it gets easier once you find the summoning squares.
  • Chips Challenge is largely Nintendo Hard, but plays it straight... until level 131, which is called Totally Unfair and requires the player to remember the exact layout of an earlier level, given only a bare minimum time limit.
    • And level 140, Icedeath which literally requires you to use trial and error, instantly sliding chip into some fatal water every time you make a false move. And you can't see where the safe land is!
      • Of course some of the custom levels that people have made make even the hardest of the original levels look easy. Especially the Inanity level pack.
  • "Penn and Tellers Smoke and Mirrors" though unreleased, appears to be a deliberate play on this trope, especially the minigame where you drive a bus across the Nevada desert without exceeding 45mph. Oh, and the bus veers a little to the left. And you can't pause. And making it to Nevada is worth one point.
    • You neglected that the game is in real time. Like, actually real time. By which I mean, it takes 12 hours to play once.
  • Bastet, or Bastard Tetris, is a Tetris clone with a key difference. Whereas Tetris will select the next brick random(ish)ly, Bastet deliberately gives you the least useful brick.
  • Pandemonium Warden. Final Fantasy XI managed to take That One Boss and drive it into Platform Hell. Fifty times more people have beaten I Wanna Be The Guy than this nightmarish monstrosity. Hint: try running away or logging out and then returning to get yourself off it's hate list. Still belongs here.
  • Non-video game example: Ninja Warrior. Hopping around obstacles of varying difficulty within a time limit is harder than it looks, especially since only two people beat the obstacle course.
    • To be specific, there has been at least 22 Ninja Warrior tournaments held, each with 100 contestants. So 2 out of 2,200 people have passed it... less than 0.1% of the attempts.
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