The Computerisa Cheating Bastard - Television Tropes & Idioms

The original Civilization for the PC has a lot of ways for the computer to get a huge advantage over you:
1) Improvements in the Emperor Level are about a third of the cost for the computer.
2) Technologies are discovered at alarming rates.
3) Wonders can be built almost instantly.
4) The computer's caravans are transported instantaneously.
5) The computer never has production penalties despite city-wide riots.
6) Your Triremes sink if they end their turn too far from shore. Computer controlled ones can sail across the Atlantic with no problem.
7) The computer can build spaceships without the required technology
Et cetera.
- In the Civilization sequels, the game manual actually details exactly how much the computer cheats and in what areas at various difficulty levels.
- It also seems that the game tries to force averages to occur. Try using saves to make sure you always win. If your win chance is 50%, your chance of winning the first fight is 50%, right? Right. Second fight (after your unit is healed), displayed chance to win is still 50%—but try saving before it and loading. Your chances are closer to 25%. Winning a third fight in a row is likely to have even worse odds—but the displayed chance to win is still 50%. The question exists, does it work in reverse also? Sacrifice a dozen or so units for a run of good luck?
  - What you're seeing here is a bug in the game due to a programmer who doesn't understand probability theory. The displayed battle odds are calculated by the naive method of multiplying each unit's hitpoints by the odds of winning a single round of combat, and using that ratio as the odds of winning the battle. The actual odds of winning, based on the battle mechanics, are much harder to calculate, and can deviate significantly from the displayed odds: your "95% victory" fight might actually be a "0.1% victory". Once you do them right, though, it becomes clear that the computer isn't cheating in battle, just lying through statistics.
  - For context, units fight multiple rounds within a single combat until one dies. Thus winning one round in actuality only reduces the opponent by a certain amount of HP. So while a unit with low life may have a 50% chance of winning a round, if they can be killed with one hit, the first hit they take in combat (pretty likely at 50%) will kill them.
- You can't see strategic resources on the map in Civ 3 until you have the skills to use them. The AI can see them all right from the start of the game though, and will make an effort to build cities next to them to give itself an advantage later on.
  - Often, the AI will have building towns in the middle of the desert for oil as a very important priority during the expansion phase.
- Also in Civ 3, the Ai have their production phase after their turn instead of at the start of the next turn. This means that they can hurry units and have them produced before your next move, while you have to until next turn like a chump. You can tell when they did this because they haven't had the chance to fortify the unit yet.
- If you cheat so that you can control the enemies cities, you will see that despite have far inferiorly built cities, they have HUGE commerce and production bonuses, making them far better than yours.
- However, in the interest of fairness, the player can cheat mechanically too - one of the ways lower difficulty levels are made easier is by giving the player free Happiness and Health.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has some boss enemies who are granted immunity from the game's law system, while you're stuck playing by the rules. Ice abilities are illegal for the battle? The boss will laugh while casting Blizzaga every turn and the judge will just yellow cards him repeatedly.
- Weakly adverted since the game at some point tells you via notices in pubs that certain people obtained ribbons (it's never known how they got it) that grant them immunity to red cards so it's not exactly them cheating if you already knew ahead of time. Not to mention the balance would be broken further if you could force a boss to do nothing thanks to you rearranging the laws.
- What's even worse is that in the Judgemaster extra missions, you almost got this yourself. But since Good Is Dumb, Marche and Cid bust the Judge before he could bestow you with it.
  - In fairness, after completing the main storyline of the game and continuing on the bonus missions you have the chance to add Judgemaster Cid to your party. Let's not mince words: Judgemaster Cid isn't just a cheating bastard, he's a cheating bastard who enables the rest of your party to be cheating bastards. Cid's most useful ability is hands down Abate, which skips the Judge's turn, allowing you to break any laws you want without any repercussions until the judge's next turn (given that judges average one turn to three turns for every other unit on the field, this adds up to a sizable chunk of the battle).
Inverted in Final Fantasy Tactics A 2 where you're the cheating bastard. You start each battle with an advantage of your choice (later ones can be pretty damn powerful with the right team), and the ability to use revival spells and items on fallen allies, two things none of your opponents ever get. You're only on par with your opponents if you break the law.
In the PSP remake of Final Fantasy Tactics, the Onion Knight job is marked by being able to use any piece of equipment, being unable to use abilities, yet having extremely high stats when mastered. However, in one link mission, you and your partner must defeat a team of master Onion Knights who have a full range of powerful abilities equipped. They'll hit you back and more than likely screw you over.

Everything is stacked against you. Everything.
- I'll let SA speak for me on this one..
  - And then you realize that that post refers to the easiest difficulty level, and that there are two more to beat. And those are the ones that net you the unlocks.

In the first Super Mario Kart game, the AI opponents didn't just have Rubber Band AI, but had infinite stores of super-special weapons and items that in several cases the player was never able to use — namely, the poisoned mushrooms, dinosaur eggs and meandering fireballs. For the items the player could launch, the AI opponent also had the ability to dodge by jumping the kart its own height above the track.
- And they're invincible to the Thwomps, including the electric ones on Rainbow Road.
- Furthermore: the Grand Prix mode would select an order of skill for each of the computer-controlled players, based on your own character selection. If one of the Mario brothers were picked as the "champion" racer (which happened if you chose Bowser or Koopa Troopa) you could expect perfect racing lines and cornering coupled with infinite and arbitrary use of the Super Star, allowing them to go at increased speed with no slowing down, plus invincibility. Having one of the plumbers trigger this on the final stretch, powering either past or through the player and being unable to stop regardless of what's fired at them (or even more annoyingly, just as that red shell was about to knock them out of first place) meant that it was often easier just to start a new game and hope you didn't get one of them as the top racer again.
  - The computer was actually even smarter than simply choosing one "super-racer". I recall working out who the super-racer was in my grand-prix, and deliberately setting out to make sure they came last, and I first. After dozens of attempts, I managed to do this, which would give me enough points to have a bit of lee-way. All it ended up doing was making the character who came second in the first race the NEW super-racer. You just can't win!
  - The game is programmed by rankings. Every racer is designated to finish in a certain position depending on who you play as. When the game starts your natural position is always 8th, and by progressing you screw up the natural order that they try to maintain. You'll notice that if you spin an opponent, they will RUSH back to their natural position at lightning speed, even if that position is something useless like 6th. If the race is influenced so that a racer's place in the rankings shifts, that's the place that they'll fight for. So if your designated 1st is a bastard racer like a Mario brother (i.e. if you play as Bowser or Koopa Troopa), you should take advantage of the first race to smash them out of the frame at the last second. They'll recover quickly and come 4th, but they'll be much less of a threat from then on. The person who starts the first race in 1st is always the 'Super Racer'.
Mario Kart Wii cheats, players exaggerate it but its still there. The entry in the series gives the best items to people in the back of the pack. What separates human and computer players is the computers timing and accuracy for hitting people crossing the finish line.
- Mushroom Gorge. Imagine this: 30% of the track is nothing but gigantic toadstools you bounce from and to over an abyss. 20% is a different kind of toadstool you drive across, rather than bounce off of. Using Mushroom powerups or Super Stars will give you too much velocity when you move from one toadstool to another, making you overshoot the next one and fall into the gorge. (Wrong! I have managed to deal with high speed in the jumps. It isn't easy, but it is doable). Now imagine yourself getting nothing but Mushrooms in this track and being unable to force yourself to use them while toadstool-hopping because you know that you will throw yourself into the pit if you try to boost while jumping. (The answer: Use the mushrooms AFTER going through the mushrooms). To simulate a stroke, just watch the computer drivers use Spiny Blue Shells (items that seek out the first-place driver) and Thunderbolts (shrinkage!) in the middle of a jump so they make you fall down. Get a Bullet Bill (ridiculous speed, invincibility, and guided driving)? Better pray that it will last you over all the mushrooms in the next batch.
- Mario Kart Wii. 12 Players. 11 AI. 150cc, any cup. Expect a Spiny Blue Shell to hit you on the last lap when the finish line is in spitting distance. Even better, imagine one hitting you in the middle of a jump. And for more fun, try getting hit a Spiny Blue Shell, followed by a Red Shell, then a Thunderbolt, and for kicks, a POW Block in the middle of all that action. Item Rape doesn't even come close to defining it.
  - It's not much better on the lower levels, where the computer usually lets the effects of one attack (usually a Thunderbolt or Blooper) wear off before immediately nailing you with a POW or Red/Blue Shell. One advantage of being hit all at once—you generally only spin out once, no matter how many attacks hit you.
  - Rapid fire attacks following a POW block warning are actually what you'd see with human opponents because POW blocks make you lose your items, so the computer fires them all off to make sure they're used for something instead of lost.
  - The computer drivers are so cheap they will always manage to strip you of a powerup you're using for defensive purposes with the most lame brained maneuvers imaginable-maneuvers you can't duplicate for the life of you, such as taking out all three bananas dragged behind a racer by ramming them once.
  - And let's not forget the AI's tendency to ram you just as you're recovering from a crash (Super Star optional), along with the aforementioned sequence of homing items. For extra fun, you will just happen to be close to a ledge when they hit you...
- The computer players are also able to activate items quicker. Picture this: You start in the first position (via winning the previous race) and get the maximum possible starting boost. You keep your first place position through and beyond the first set of item blocks. Now, by the given rules of the game, it should be impossible for someone to have a red shell ready to throw before you can drag an item to block it, but invariably a computer in second place will hit you with one before your item roulette stops.
- Ever notice how the computer cheats with the race times? Usually when you finish a race in 1st place the driver who comes in second will be one to three seconds behind you according to the "score screen" that lists placing and time. Even if they haven't finished the race by in the five seconds it takes to get from FINISH to the score-screen. This doesn't always happen, but it happens a whole lot, and is very annoying when you're trying to get two or three stars in a cup and you need those time margins.
- Another ability the computers have in Mario Kart 64 and earlier is the ability to instantly recover from items as long as they weren't on screen when the item hit. The best items would simply stop computers for a moment if you couldn't see them, while the same items used on you would make you fly through the air. If the computers still do this in more recent versions, it isn't as noticeable.
  - The rubber-band AI in Mario Kart 64 is the most egregious in the series. If you'd like to see for yourself, switch the map view to the lap mode (the whole track is in a square) and watch your hard-earned lead evaporate. This is particularly noticeable if you take one of the massive unintended shortcuts - Rainbow Road or Wario Stadium, for example - and the AI players will suddenly go like the clappers of hell to catch back up in record time.
  - Choco Mountain. The final part of the track involves a few item crates, a 90 degree turn, and then three "hills". You better be lucky and get a mushroom from those crates, else once you jump from the first hill, you'll collide with the second and third ones, while the CP Us that are right behind you (thank you rubber-band AI) magically have enough speed to jump both. Not getting a mushroom in those crates indeed makes the difference between being first or fifth in this race.
As if the Rubberband AI wasn't bad enough, the computer drivers in Mario Kart (all games) have an uncanny timing to hit you right when you are in the air over a Bottomless Pit (or an earlier part of the track, which is even worse as you lost all your velocity and thus can't make the jump, losing even more time), as well as having a noticeably better chance to get the really good items in the lower places than you do. (It should be noted that the physics in Mario Kart is greatly simplified—if you're hit with an attack in midair, you simply stop. Take That, conservation of momentum!) And then you're hit with Thunderbolt from the last placed AI driver so you lose the item anyway.
Double Dash's AI seems to entirely ignore the weight system and kart stats - heavy karts (the only ones available to large characters such as Bowser) all have crappy acceleration but high top speeds. Go ahead, knock Bowser off the track. Invariably, he'll be right on your ass in no time flat - despite the nice long stall that getting put back on the track gives you, and the fact that his crappy acceleration should leave him far behind a cart that's already running at top speed with no slowdowns.
- Ditto Piranha Pete, often a thorn in the side in two-player GP races at 150cc due to his ludicrous bursts of speed and acceleration.
- In fact most of the karts in Double Dash can reach ridiculous speeds trying to keep up with a human player in first, which can give a second human player further down the pack an extremely hard time when it comes to clawing their way back to the front.
Apparently, the computer player chosen to be the first-placer in Mario Kart DS always has a maxed-out speed stat, regardless of what the kart they're driving should have. This makes characters that drive karts with already high acceleration (Dry Bones) nearly impossible to beat.
This sums all of the above up quite nicely.
This reveals how much Mario Kart one's played. Just gauge their reaction on the final panel.
The AI being a cheating bastard makes the bits towards the end of this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEtmhArbXB4 so much more satisfying.
The AI in Mario Kart Wii takes less time to go through the item roulette than the player. If you're neck-in-neck with an AI racer and they go through a row of item boxes right after you, don't be surprised if you get nailed with a red shell before you even get your item.
A recent episode of Robot Chicken had a skit where Toad does a parody of the The Transporter. His car has a dashboard with buttons for bananas, green shells, mushroom boosts, stars, and blue shells. As one might expect, such a layout allows him to absolutely destroy the police trying to catch him. All the AI drivers have dashboards like this, except with even more features that probably work twice as well.

If a move has an accuracy of less than 100% in Pokemon, you can guarantee that your likelihood of missing is the listed value, while the computer's likelihood of missing is half that, at best. Further, if there is a positive secondary effect that can kick in with a move, you can practically guarantee the computer will get it twice as often. And to top it off, the three status ailments that have a chance of preventing a Pokemon to act (confusion, paralysis, and attraction) will be much more likely to afflict a human player than a computer player.*A move that has multiple hits such will get more hits for computers than humans. The frustration with this is so great, human players refer to Pokemon built to take advantage of these as "hax" and most are dismissive of those who try to use such tactics in Pv P environments.
- The real reason for this might be more to do with a poorly-seeded random number generator. For instance, when you play Pokemon RO Ms at 500% speed on a game boy emulator, catching Pokemon becomes significantly more difficult.
- If your Pokemon is confused then you're in for about a 50% chance of dealing damage to yourself. The computer does not go by this rule - although admittedly, Pokemon does a better job with this than some other RPGs, most notably EarthBound, where feeling strange affects your party members nearly 100% but almost never affects your opponents.
- It doesn't help that random computer players with no plot significance tend to have Pokemon that learned powerful moves about five levels early, either.
  - And let's not forget that Gym Leaders don't seem to be governed by the same rules of evolution as the player.
  - In later games, Pokemon learning moves early is actually justified - a skilled breeder can get level-up moves bred into level 1 Pokemon if both of its parents know it, so presumably the computer-controlled trainers bred their own. While the player can't do this at first, many Tournament Play fans abuse this in the Metagame.
- The battle tower in the latest two games screws with odds to the point where your low odds of success never work and the AI's always do. This is most notable with any instant-kill effect, which theoretically all have 30% success rates. Experienced Battle Tower players key in on anything that could conceivably learn Sheer Cold, Guillotine, Fissure, or Horn Drill first, or lose their entire team in as many rounds as they have Pokemon.
- The Stadium games deserve special mention, where the most common (read:only in all but a handful) method of loss for someone with a decent team is cheating computers.
  - The Mewtwo that serves as the boss of the first Stadium (or second, if you're Japanese) has infinite PP.
Lance's Dragonite in the original games has Barrier. Go on. Check. Done? Yep. Dragonite's line has forever been incapable of learning Barrier. Another example of the games LITERALLY cheating.
- And it's not only in Red, Green, and Blue. In Silver/Gold/Crystal, he cheated extensively. Not only did he delevel his entire party from in the 50s-60s to the 40s with a cap of a Lv50 Dragonite, he EVOLVED his two Dragonair from the earlier games into Dragonites, despite the fact that they can't evolve until Lv55. What's more, his Aerodactyl knows Rock Slide, which it couldn't learn until FireRed/LeafGreen. So he is forever the cheating bastard.
  - Though Nintendo did at one point offer a Lv50 Dragonite at a Nintento event for the Diamond/Pearl generation, which could be a subversion of this for players that obtained said Pokemon.
In Generation II, when you face the Rival in the Burned Tower, he has a Haunter... at level 20. Gastly is supposed to evolve at level 25. Stupid Cheating Computer Bastard.
- And while were on the subject of our favorite Jerkass rival. In the second battle with him (same game duh), and you chosen Cyndaquil, the rival has a Croconaw...at LEVEL 16, and Totodile doesn't evolve until level 18. At least they fixed it in the remakes.
Pokemon Colosseum has one particularly annoying thing that the opponent gets to decide his moves after you use any items or send out any Pokemon. It leads to the very annoying thing of not being able to cure a pokemon of confusion as, when you do, the opponent uses Confuse Ray on him again, despite that there's no way he'd use it normally!
- Some of the Gen IV pokes will do this as well. This can lead to an entire team being put to sleep or poisoned.
And there's Bertha's Quagsire in Diamond and Pearl. He continuously spams Protect (which is supposed to fail when abused) and Double Team. It's blockable via Taunt, but taunt wears off pretty quickly for some reason.
The games even cheat out side of battles. In the casino in the original games, the slot machine is rigged to randomly (frequently) make you lose even if your timing for the slot reels should cause them to line up correctly.
- Truth In Television here. Japanese Pachisuro machines can and do slip in real life. The key to winning on them is to know when they aren't making the reels slip, signified by seeing a Winning Sign, which is a combination that, while not winning, will never show unless the computer stops making the reels slip. These Winning Signs are usually easier to hit than true winning combinations, allowing a skilled player to try and create them on the reels. Then once you finally get a Big Bonus, the game starts cheating on your behalf, leading in wins for you.
- A Lets Play player hacked the game to make for a rather humorous run. At one point, he plays the slots, and after losing quite frequently, he slows the game down, first to about 1/20 speed, then to about 1/500 speed. HE STILL KEPT LOSING. The game would always either stop short or slide down to the next one, even with save states. Eventually he hacked the game out of frustration, to automatically give himself 9999 tokens as a form of payback.
I swear in Platinum, in a battle tower one of the opponent's pokemon attacked twice in the same turn.
- This is actually a bug that can affect either combatant. Meaning while the AI can effectively get an extra turn at random, so can you.
In Generation II, the first Gym Leader Falkner has a Lvl. 9 Pidgeotto. A LEVEL 9 PIDGEOTTO. Pidgey isn't supposed to evolve into Pidgeotto until level 18.
- This is the case for Gold, Silver, and Crystal, but not in Generation I. In the Yellow Version, you could actually catch a wild Pidgeotto in the Viridian Forest as low as Level 9. You could theorize that maybe Falkner got his there.
Ugh. In Platinum's Battle Factory, after each round, you can trade one of your (randomly selected rental) Pokemon for one used by the opponent in the previous round. The more times you trade, the more chances you have to select a more powerful Pokemon at the beginning of each 7-round session, making your going easier. So if you trade after each battle, you can choose two really powerful Pokemon by the time you face the Frontier Brain, Thorton, for the first time. But even if you do, he'll still hand your ass to you despite the fact that his Pokemon are also randomly selected.
Gym leaders and other elite trainers will often use Hyper Potions and Full Restores to heal their Pokemon when their health is low. This doesn't become this trope until they heal their Pokemon nearly every turn and have seemingly unlimited healing items, too. This doesn't seem annoying, until you're fighting a battle which you could easily win, if only the computer realized "Crap, I'm gonna lose whether I use potions or not."
Last Resort introduced later in the series is a powerful move usable after every other move has been used by the Pokemon at least once. Computers can use it early though.

While the AI in Super Smash Bros Melee and Brawl isn't of Rubber Band variety, it still can always see everything in the stage and possesses reflexes well beyond any skilled human player, including, but not limited to:
- Being able to parry/reflect any projectile with just the shield, something that requires frame-precision timing, thus rendering projectiles largely useless. Naturally, this is not an issue if the human player is using a character who does not possess a useful projectile. (This has been remedied in Brawl, where the computer AI, even on the hardest difficulty, is not capable of consistently pulling this off.)
- The computer also knows what effect clocks will have. If you see a clock, and don't see the computer gunning for it, when you pick it up, it will slow you down. It can also tell apart mushrooms, which is difficult but not impossible for the player, as well as pokeballs and assist trophies.
- This tends to work AGAINST the computer in Brawl. There are times when the computer will use Smash Balls to block attacks. Of course, this leads to them using Diddy's peanut gun to deflect the ball into a fully charged Aura Sphere...breaking it, and changing their problem from "Heavy hit" to "Intensely painful hit that's almost a surefire KO".
In the Street Fighter series, there are moves known as "charge moves" which require holding the joystick in a certain direction for a short period. The computer, however, doesn't have to do this and can often perform a charge move in the middle of moving in the opposite direction, such as using Blanka's charge-back roll attack while walking forward. This also applies to "spin" moves (moves which require a 180 degree, 360, or more cycle of joystick motion). Most obvious the 3,000th time Zangief hits you with a full-strength spinning piledriver (the "air" version, triggered by any upwards joystick click, is approximately 3/4 the damage of the ground version).
- Worse yet was Balrog. He could execute dashing punches faster than the player could recover from a block. He had the option of using them exclusively until the player's life was bled away. This made him potentially the most difficult boss in SFII Classic, where the player would still be hit when ducking under these punches. Only a perfectly timed Dragon Punch, Flash Kick or Spinning Lariat could stop the nefarious beast. Or just invert it back on him: use E. Honda and bulldoze him right over with the fierce hundred hand slap, the only punch attack faster and with longer reach.
  - Fortunately, Balrog was pretty dumb and would rarely do this. You could usually beat him by just crouching and sweeping.
  - His uber rushdown of doom is an anti-turtle tactic of his. He's actually easy to beat in a straight up fight. Chun Li and Guile, for example, are very good at fierce punching him in the face. But if you try and block and wait for an opening, you will be chipped to death.
- Guile also became a game breaking character in Classic, due to him lacking any projectile recovery time for his sonic booms. With human players, this was balanced by the charge time. With the computer, not so much. Jumping forwards over one would result in a Flash Kick. Jumping in place or using a projectile against it and he'd have time to close the distance while you recovered. Possibly resulting in a flash kick.
- The charge move behavior has been fixed in later Capcom fighters, such as Vampire Savior. But perhaps as a throwback to the cheating AI in Street Fighter 2, ~~Little Red Riding Hood~~ Baby Bonnie Hood has a super move that enables her to use her high-damaging charge attack, Smile & Missile, without charging (replacing her normal punch attacks) for a short period of time.
- Seth Seth Seth Seth FUCKING SETH.
  - In Street Fighter IV's defense, you can unlock every character in about an hour (everyone but Seth in about half an hour) by setting the difficulty to "easiest", which is Capcom's way of saying, "We know our AI is ridiculously cheap and not everyone likes being frustrated by that. Just play it on easiest".
  - But at least the other fighters understand what "easiest" means, whereas Seth, the cunt he is, believes himself to be above the rules and barely changes his tactics from "normal" AT ALL.
- In Street Fighter: The Movie (the game of the movie of the game), when fighting M. Bison at the end, there was a fairly high chance that if the player was winning, Bison would stop taking damage from player attacks, or insta-kill the player with a weak attack, or the player would take damage from his own attacks. The game just starts making up rules as it goes along.
- Another from Street Fighter II: AI opponents could deliver a barrage of crouching kicks at lightning speed. Fortunately for the player, the AI will usually only connect once, which sends the player's fighter flying away from the opponent.
In the Mortal Kombat arcade series, the computer player often blatantly cheats. Given that this is the game series that gave the name to MK Walker, you will find a good number of examples here.
- One textbook case vessel of the trope and a bane to most players is Jade in UMK 3 who activates her invincibility technique THE INSTANT you throw a projectile at her. It doesn't help that when she activates this, she actually runs at you in the instant she does without any warning whatsoever and devastates you with her uber-long combo with no resistance and does so with impeccable timing.
- In the original Mortal Kombat, computer characters ducked and slowly slid across the floor to counter a barrage of player fireballs.
- Here are some gems for Mortal Kombat 2.
  - On ANY match after the first few, you cannot throw the computer unless it's stunned or immobilized. It would ALWAYS throw you instead. In early revisions, it would even throw you when it was incapacitated. You could freeze the cpu solid with your ice ball, but if you tried to throw it, it would throw you back WHILE STILL LOOKING FROZEN. Opponent dazed for "Finish Him!" if you accidentally did a throw, he'd STILL throw you back. And if that took you to no life, you'd lose. Absolutely hilarious, unless you are the one it happened to.
  - Whenever you did Scorpion's screen side shifting teleport, the computer would turn around and send a projectile your way... before you even left your side of the screen. Humans can't do this, but actually have to wait for you to wrap around before they turn around. However, if your screen wrapping teleport failed because you were backed into the corner... it would STILL turn around and fire the other way! Unless you were playing against a character with a really fast projectile recovery, this resulted in you getting a free chance to harpoon the computer. Hilarity Ensues.
Dynasty Warriors games have the bad habit of allowing the computer controlled opponent to recover or receive random power-ups in a duel...where there is no feasible manner in which they could have obtained these items, as there are no boxes or dead enemy soldiers in duel mode.
Dragonball licensed games have this during story missions. For instance, some characters in later stages are programmed to automatically dodge most combo attacks (like throwing your enemy in the air and teleporting to hit them up there, more than one energy attack, etc.). This becomes a problem in levels where you can get a Ring Out. Because the enemy will doubtless be able to break your guard and counterattack whenever he feels like, you'll be easily knocked out the ring by him, while he can simply decide not to be hurt by your attacks.
Soul Series has their moments of blatant cheating, but Soul Calibur III has the most notorious examples.
- The AI will suddenly block every throw, land their throws on your character despite being theoretically out of range, block or counter every move the player has used so far in the "set" of battles (even if the CPU character's back is turned, and it's not Voldo!). Read: The computer opponent will read your controller inputs. Every. Single. Time.
  - Did you try changing controller ports?
  - Smartass.
- If you get knocked down even once, you'll usually NEVER get a chance to fight back, unless the CPU decides to ease up.
- SNK Boss Night Terror is an egregious example, nulling the time-honored Ring-Out defeat by flying back when knocked out of the arena (sure Word Of God stated they're trying to de-emphasize the use of Ring-Outs...), and a stance that rendered it invincible.
- Setsuka, when controlled by the computer. Just... Setsuka. She is the destroyer of controllers and the crusher of souls. Not only is she incredibly fast, but she's able to land devastating combos while the player character is still in midair even when using air control, giving said character absolutely NO CHANCE of fighting back! She can also block almost all throws, exploits your weak points without mercy, and almost always makes it impossible to get to Night Terror, since you have to follow a certain path AND not lose a single battle in the process!
- Even when you DO actually have a good chance of winning, the opponent will suddenly go completely batshit insane in terms of speed and power, and will demolish your entire life meter in two or three hits. Really, really noticeable in Chronicles of the Sword. Chronicle 5 and onward will make you snap your controller in sheer frustration. Even worse is that you have to beat this mode once in order to unlock some of the custom parts for custom fighters that cannot be unlocked via abuse of versus mode.
  - Thankfully, a handy fix for most of this can be found, Anti-Ai moves
  - Soul Calibur 3 takes this to a cruel level with a few bosses in Chronicles mode. These bosses take ludicrously low damage from attacks and never flinch. While this seems like it would lead to a long, hit-and-fade battle, it tends to lead to the computer MK Walking towards you, since you can't push it back, and knocking you off the ledge. Repeat for your whole army. You lose and have wasted the last 30 minutes.
  - Thankfully, there's a sort of fix for that too. Don't send all your troops at the foe at once. As long as at least one of your characters is still alive, your others will respawn, and you can keep sending them at the cheating bastard until you get lucky and win. It'll take a while, but since you can't logically lose with this method, you'll have to win eventually.
- The AI's blatant cheating is why no one minds spamming the handful of moves (example:Iron Sword A+B/L2) they can't block or dodge. Even when doing this, though, the above stipulation will still give you trouble; same goes for "ice," which tends to send your fighter careening off the edge of the ring at the slightest provocation, instantly taking 50% of your health no matter how high your level.
- At least in SCIV, when your enemy Soul Crushes you, they rarely use Critical Finishes.
Guilty Gear is very... well... guilty of this. On top of the usual array of unfair SNK Boss attributes for the "boss" versions of otherwise regular characters—dealing dramatically more and taking dramatically less damage compared to their playable counterparts, doing even the most absurdly impossible-to-input moves in the middle of combos completely at will, gaining a full bar of tension with a thought, etc.—all AI characters on high enough difficulty settings or close enough to the final match of Arcade mode gain the ability to psychically read controller input. Many characters rely on having a good mix-up game, placing continuous pressure on an opponent until they finally make a mistake in their blocking, and going from there. It works pretty well against humans so long as the attacker doesn't get too predictable. Against the CPU, though, mix-up characters are almost completely useless, as every attack is more or less a polite request for the computer to please consider allowing this next one to actually connect for once. Which is usually denied.
- There is also, notably, Boss I-No from Guilty Gear XX — she happens to have a boss-only move (which has recently been added to the player moveset, but not in the game she's a boss in) called 'Megalomania' which spams heart-shaped projectiles, and if you so much as graze one the entire swarm will mug you. It has three ranges — one that's fairly easy to dodge, one that's kind of like a wave and needs to be walked through, and one that fills the entire screen in front of her. The obvious solution to that last one might be to block or to leap over and behind her before she lets it go . . . but tell that to the guy who's freaking out at the sight of innumerable 'warning' signs covering 90% of the screen (the attack, it should be noted, is kind enough to tell you where it's going to hit).
  - Incidentally, the way you beat that last iteration? It doesn't last long, so it's actually easy to, stand right next to I-no and time a double jump. Don't jump behind her. That's the cue for the projectiles to change direction and swarm you.
- Gold Johnny is also a big offender. For some reason, his Mist Finer attack is a One Hit Kill while he's in Gold Mode. For those who haven't played a GG game, Mist Finer is an incredibly fast attack that's almost impossible to see coming, and has a surprisingly good range for a simple sword swing. And unlike the ACTUAL Instant Kill attacks that characters can use normally, he can use it over and over, with no penalty for missing with it. Chances of the player getting beaten before they knew what the HELL just happened: astronomical. Especially vexing in XX, where one of Testament's storyline paths requires him to fight Gold Johnny as his final opponent.
  - Interestingly, Gold Johnny can also do this when controlled by the PLAYER, which can make him an utter Game Breaker, but don't expect anyone to play you when you use him, given that only Gold Sol can eat a Mist Finer and live.
- AC+ seems to have relaxed the unfairness a good deal. The EX versions are easier to unlock, and gaining a full Tension bar instantly is done with a mechanic that's accessible to the player from the very beginning. The boss AI is still brutal, although it can be beaten when you learn to recognize its quirks.
Those who played SNK vs. Capcom (also known as "SvC Chaos") learned to dislike Goenitz, an SNK sub-boss with an attack targeting one of four areas on the screen (close, close-mid, mid, far) that always knew exactly where you would be, canceled projectiles, and was spammed constantly, making getting close enough to hit an exercise in frustrating patience.
- Even Goenitz's bastardhood paled in the face of Ryu's, whose anti-air Dragon Punch special had easily abusable invincibility frames A player can learn to take advantage of this, but not with the CPU's efficiency. What made Ryu a nightmare was that he used it all the time and could counter literally anything but projectiles with it. The only way to win against a late-level Ryu was to wait for him to attack and pray you could counter before his move ended (when he would inevitably Dragon Punch).
  - In a couple of ways, Goenitz was even worse in The King OF Fighters '96, since he could do desperation moves without restrictions while giving more and receiving less damage to/from the player.
Eternal Fighter Zero is full of this. On 3 or 4 difficulty, CPU-controlled characters do things that simply are not possible, such as dodging your attacks the frame they come out. Also, CPU Akane seems to have the ability to combo any attack into any other attack, which never works when you play as her.
- Just as annoying was Ayu, who would parry and counter up to 80% of all your attacks on high difficulty levels.
- Kanna takes the cake and eats it by doing what Ayu does, except that she's got the Game Breaker damage and priority to go with it.
In Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee, the AI opponents will often head towards powerups that are offscreen, that the player has no idea that they're there.
If your attack is blocked by the computer in Fatal Fury 2, the computer will throw you. Doesn't matter what difficulty level, or how strong the attack and the subsequent blockstun is - the computer will throw you.
The nigh-forgotten Eternal Champions games on the Sega Genesis and Sega CD were 2D fighters that took the unusual approach of requiring "inner energy" for all special moves. Theoretically, this forced the player to learn the characters and apply specific strategies in every possible matchup... Except against the AI, which could always execute specials with sheer and utter disregard of its own energy levels.
- Even more, well, insulting, characters have an ability called Insult which allows them to sacrifice one piece of their special gauge to destroy a little more of their opponents. The computer, especially the final boss (bosses in the Sega CD version), is quite fond of repeatedly Insulting you from a distance to render you impotent — usually shortly before, with a blatantly flashing EMPTY gauge, they execute their ultimate full-gauge-requiring attacks, some of which doing things like rendering the character completely invincible (the final boss(es) have these, naturally). Did we mention if you lose in the final battle, you can't continue?
The SNES game Dragon: the Bruce Lee Story probably deserves a mention. Whether or not the Demon with the halberd represents Bruce Lee's historically unalterable death, it is basically invincible, there is no way to avoid it, and it will end up killing you no matter what you do.
- While the Demon's abilities certainly are an example of this trope, it is possible to win that fight. Have full health and finish its health meter by using the nunchuck choke.
The Game Boy Color fighting game Power Quest has one character (known as the "Announcer") who randomly shows up out of nowhere and forces you to fight him. It's possible to run away from him, but he's slightly faster than you, so fighting him is almost inevitable.
In that same vein, Richard Wong in the Psychic Force games can become unbeatable in a fight by spamming his magically-appearing sword move.
The King Of Fighters suffered this terribly in the '94 and '95 incarnations. There was an ability called "Evade" that, if timed right, allowed the character to dodge attacks. This translated to "The computer is immune to projectiles". And in a callback to Fatal Fury 2, getting blocked when you jumped in would lead to an instant throw. '96 pulled Evade completely, replacing it with the trademark "Roll", one of many reasons it's considered the first high point of the series.
- Another nasty SNK Boss advantage is one that the bosses of XI have. In addition to the usual SNK unfairness, the game uses a gauge system that goes up when you hit the opponent and down when they hit you to measure how well you do and decides who wins at time out based on that. The bosses gauge takes an ENORMOUS leap if they so much as brush past you, you however barely make it twitch even if you hit them multiple times. Combined with the fact the timer acts like it is on speed combines to add yet another layer of evil to the mix.
Tekken 5's Jinpachi Mishima was a great example of this trope. He had The Stomp, an auto-stun move that didn't do damage but left your character floating and unable to block for at least seven seconds, an eternity in a fighting game. This was even worse in Dark Resurrection, when the computer learned how to do juggles with three signature uppercuts in a row, which took off about half your health. The version of the character given to the player, of course, did not have nearly as much priority for the stomp, which also had to be timed with the enemy attack (unlike the AI version which could just be done whenever).
- Tekken 6's Azazel wasn't quite as bad, but had one very specific cheap cheat trick: he blocks while attacking. While attacking. Normally, characters are vulnerable when performing an attack, and an opponent can interrupt them by landing the proper hit on them first. The only way to reliably hit Azazel is to get behind him and hit him while his back is turned, where he can't (usually) defend.
In the Xbox remake of Dead or Alive 2, if you are playing Hayabusa (yes that one), Ein will block and counter pretty much every move that you ever make.
- While we're on the subject of Dead Or Alive, here's a message for whichever DOA4 programmer thought it would be funny to make the CPU opponent immune to throws during stagger animations: I hate you so much... so fucking much...
  - And I will KILL whoever made Alpha-152. 70% of my freaking HP?
Virtua Fighter's Dural will severely punish you for ANY mistakes, though without being an SNK Boss exactly. She's still bound by the game rules (she does have a mix of the best moves available and is terrific at juggling) and won't down attack you.
In Castlevania Judgement, Dracula WILL put his back to the screen, and thus you will not see what attack he is going to make.
In Naruto: The Broken Bond, not only will the computer use Substitutions with perfect timing, but they are also seemingly able to use the Rage Mode (which speeds them up and makes them take no damage from anything but damage-dealing jutsus) in the middle of a combo. Combine this with the fact that, if they beat on you enough, they CAN have Rage mode at full, or nearly full, health, and the game gets very frustrating.
- Nevermind that if you make one mistake you get totally owned. They'll juggle you, never letting you even block. If the computer makes a mistake it doesn't matter because you have to have pretty much perfect timing to hit them at that moment anyway. Not to mention that they'll almost ALWAYS be able to charge up their jutsu but you'll never get even one chance.
- The Clash of Ninja series (also Naruto) avoided this for the most part, usual computer tendencies aside. Then English releases began to be developed by American developers instead, and now we have story mode enemies who have no stagger animations and MK Walker mindsets- sometimes in 2 on 1 matches against you. These aren't even optional challenges- you HAVE to kill these people to proceed. The optional challenges involve similar things, only with the difficulty turned Up To Eleven by better AI.
Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo: It takes tournament level skill to match the AI's comboing ability... on the default difficulty setting ("2: Very Easy"). One hesitates to think what it's like on "8: Hardest."
- Not all that much different, actually. Eventually, as you increase the difficulty, the computer stops getting smarter, instead increasing the damage you take and decreasing the damage you inflict.
The first Samurai Shodown game was very guilty of this: The CPU could knock you out in as little as 2 hits/attacks, dizzy you repeatedly, connect more hits with the same attacks you used, stun you for more time than you could, or all of the above at the same time.
Super Godzilla for the Super Nintendo did this against, well, pretty much everyone. Your own fighting spirit (a measure of how strong your techniques are) rises pretty slowly, compared to the UFO which is nearly permanently at maximum, or Mechagodzilla, who can go from nothing to max in a heartbeat, and teleport-body-slam you in the process. He will then use eye lasers just to mess with you.
TNA iMPACT! the game. Anyone who is an established wrestler will automatically be twice as good as you, no matter who you choose. Certain matches in story mode can consist of you spending 90% of the match beating the hell out of them, only for them to come out of nowhere with enough counters to use a special move, hit it once, and win.
- WWE Smackdown Vs Raw 2009's career mode suffers the same issue above when facing the "higher level" wrestlers.
  - Note that it's a Justified Trope in Professional Wrestling games: in the modern era, most actual wrestling matches have one person kicking ass for most of the match, then suddenly the supposedly beaten opponent busts out with their Finishing Move and wins.
  - ... Uh, it's only justified because the match is scripted to be that way. It's not scripted in the video games, not to mention that this sort of match doesn't happen ALL THE TIME.
GOOD LORD, STOP SWEEPING ME EVERY SECOND, SENNA!!!
In Dissidia Final Fantasy, the computer opponents don't have to worry about annoying trifles like "human reaction time" and can quite often display godly levels of blocking and dodging prowess. Especially annoying when you play a projectile specialist, like Terra, because blocking a projectile means reflecting it back at the one who fired it. And if the enemy is higher leveled then you are, the attack will do a crapton more damage to you than you could do with it, usually causing an instant break.
- The enemy doesn't even need to be of a higher level. Got your projectile reflected by an opponent of the same level? It will do at the very least twice the damage it normally would, and that applies to basically every other Brave attack the computer does; Of course, you don't get the same privileges.
- HOW DID HE GET 9999 BRAVE? WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN?!
- The AI also ignores equipment and accessory rules. Every piece of regular equipment (swords, shields, etc) has a level requirement that your character must meet in order to equip it, but almost every AI opponent will be wearing at least one item above their level. Accessories work somewhat differently. They are ranked from D to Star. The higher the rank, the fewer of that accessory you can use at the same time. Many AI will have three or four of the same Star-ranked accessory.
- Plus the way dodging works, even completely cornering an opponent so they have literally nowhere to move isn't enough to prevent them from dodging everything you throw at them. Add in the fact that computer also ignores ability equip rules, going up against a computer using the same character you're using at the same level with the same equipment doesn't mean that you'll be able to match the computer at dodging, no matter how good you are.
  - "How the hell did he dodge my attack by dodging THROUGH it?! How the hell did he still hit me when I clearly dodged his attack?! Arrrrrgh!" *ragequit*
- And we won't even mention Chaos, who cheats like a cheating cheaty-thing, especially with his Summon. (Every single other Summon in the game can only be used once per fight, except in one specific, rule-based case. He however can use his purely at will, as often as he wants.
- What makes Chaos even worse is that his attacks are extremely wide-ranging, and you have to fight him on an EXTREMELY small stage, making actually dodging said wide-ranging attacks next to impossible. His unique summon can be used as many damn times as he likes, and it can copy the effects of about fifteen other summons, but with more exxagerated effects (ie, his version of the summon that cuts your Brave in half, then raises it by 60 per second for the next 30 seconds raises his Brave by 99 per second instead), essentially allowing him to freely manipulate his Brave stat, allowing him to pull last-minute victories out of thin air. And his Hp attacks can get seriously ridiculous, including one that can only be dodged if you 1.Don't move when he summons a bunch of flame pillars around you and 2. Perform a dodge roll at the EXACT moment after the pillars disappear.He is also INVICIBLE while using the attack. That takes a while to get used to. And to top it all off, you have to beat him THREE TIMES IN A ROW TO WIN, with him getting a free heal between each fight. Naturally, you're not given this courtesy.
  - Actually, the attack you descibed (Divine Punishment) can actually be used quite effectively against him, if you can the the timing down, as for the very last part of it, Chaos is still immobile. This Troper used Warrior of Light to hit him with Shield of Light after dodging out of the attack, which, thankfully, happened quite frequently. Of course, it still took roughly 2 hours' worth of soul-crushing defeat for This Troper to finally beat him, though.
In Bleach: Blade Of Fate, the human character can only Flash Step or use RF Special Attacks when they have enough Spiritual Power to do so. The AI opponents have infinite Spiritual Power.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords: From the item forging mini-game going dozens and dozens of turns before dropping a needed anvil to the same happening with the Learn Spell mini (swapping anvils for scrolls); every player, no matter the platform, has horror stories of the game AI basically flipping them the bird. There's "Random Chance" and then there's "LOL Player". Puzzle Quest is lousy with the latter.
- And then there's Spell Resistance. An enemy with 10% resistance to a mana type is supposed to mean "Your spell using that mana has a one-in-ten chance of getting blocked." In practice, it turns into "Your spell using that mana has a one-in-four chance of getting blocked". It does not work the other way around.
- Interestingly, the programmer for the game was asked about the problem with the CPU getting crazy combos earlier in the game, but it seems it wasn't any sort of malicious programming; the AI simply doesn't make human mistakes (such as not seeing groups of 4) and the random nature of the falling bricks is just as likely to help the player. As a matter of fact, he's stated that he doesn't even know how to rig the game beyond that point.
  - The truth or falsehood of that claim notwithstanding, there is one aspect where the computer demonstrably cheats. Every time either combatant makes a move, there is a small (5% or less) chance that they will get an extra turn. The AI knows when its "random" extra turns are coming and, when they are, it moves gems in ways that would directly conflict with its normal priorities if the player was going to go next. It also seems to know in advance what the "random" gem spawns will be.
  - And anyone who's played the game can tell you firsthand that falling bricks aren't just as likely to help the player. It has nothing to do with skill - things simply fall into place for the computer opponent five times as often as they do for the player.
- Most of the game's "hints" for the next move are really bad advice that will either harm the player or cause them to make a less than optimum combination.
A certain chess program, when it was close to losing, would actually flash the message "The [piece] has escaped!" and that piece would appear back on the board. Obviously, only the computer's pieces ever 'escaped'. One suspects this isn't how Deep Blue beat Kasparov.
- Watch the chess in Kubrick's 2001 very carefully: HAL declares a checkmate that doesn't actually exist, and his human opponent is either so bored or has so strongly assumed that HAL would win, that he doesn't challenge the mistake.
  - Actually, HAL really did have forced mate. Frank could have delayed it an extra move, but that's just nitpicking. Presumably, HAL was merely referring to the move obviously mating pattern, and didn't feel like listing every possible line.
- THAT'S how Deep Blue beat Kasparov. It at one point made a mistake, Kasparov assumed that there was no way such a machine could make such a stupid mistake, did not exploit it, and lost.
Even old handheld toys based on game shows like Wheel Of Fortune and The Price Is Right had the computer cheat. If the game was based on luck, you would be screwed over quite often. If you went against a computer opponent, they would always know the answer to the questions very early in the rounds or simply be much luckier than you.
In Yakuman DS, a Mahjong game from the same people at Nintendo who make the Mario Kart and Mario Party games, the tougher computer opponents have ridiculously good luck. The AI performs Double Reach (only possible when your opening draw is one away from a winning hand) numerous times, often multiple times in a single match, not to mention a suspiciously high rate of Tenhou/Chiihou hands (i.e. when your opening draw is a winning hand. Tenhou and Chiihou are basically the equivalent of being dealt a Royal Flush in poker). More details on Double Reach, Tenhou, and Chiihou here.
The Mahjong Fight Club series, on the other hand, completely subverts this trope. Konami's official web site for Mahjong Fight Club actually has an entire page dedicated to assuring fans that the random number generator is not rigged or biased, the CPU doesn't cheat, and multiple CPUs do not collude with each other.
In Peggle's Duel mode, the harder AI difficulties basically get a Zen Ball every single turn. In a game where the slightest adjustment in angle can mean a radically different bounce, this means the AI has a ridiculous rate of accuracy as to where the ball goes after 2-3 bounces.
- The computer can rotate the ball shooter off the top of the screen to make shots. No joke.
This is the whole point of Bastet, a Tetris fan clone with a ~~random~~ piece generator designed to ~~not give you pieces you really need~~ always give you the worst possible piece for your situation.
In the NES game Anticipation, computer controlled opponents can guess the string's length of letters and can screw up as many times as there are letters in the word(s) while humans only get two chances to guess a letter before their turn is over. On the hardest difficulty, the opponents buzz in the instant the die shows the number of spaces they want to move and can guess the answer correctly without even knowing what the category is, how long the word is, or even before anything is actually drawn.
In the Dokapon game for DS you can the computer will get the exact role it needs 99% of the time.
Panel De Pon ( Tetris Attack ) has a specific design to it, in which the CPU can't actually see blocks created from Garbage blocks until they drop. However, for the N64 Pokemon Puzzle League, they thought this made it way to easy, and decided to give the CPU the ability to know. On Hard mode, you can expect x6 Chains, and we won't even get started on the Harder difficulties.
- Mewtwo is without a doubt the BIGGEST cheat in this entire game! You can only reach him if you are playing on Very Hard, or Intense mode, and to defeat him, you must first best Gary right before (who is himself a pain in the arse). As for Mewtwo himself? I once got hit with a x17 by him, This added to the fact that Losing to Mewtwo means you need to fight Gary, AGAIN before you get another shot at Mewtwo makes this quite literally the most infuriating puzzle game boss of all time. Oh, and did we mention how fast the stack will be rising by this point? No? Well, don't ask!

The yellow car from RC Pro-Am exhibited signs of Rubber Band AI during certain races. Well, not exactly... the rubber band outright snapped, making that car move nearly twice as fast as all of the other cars on the track (including your own, even if you collected all of the upgrades). When you heard that tell-tale high-pitched squeal around the beginning of the second lap, it was your ass.
In Simpsons Hit and Run, whenever you race the lead opposing car is always superior to any car you can access in the level. It's actually a simple observation - the player will notice in each level, the lead car in the races is the car the player starts with in the next level. So the player can actually look at the car's stats, and will see for themselves that it's superior to their old car in pretty much every way.
Burnout 3: Takedown features broken one-way Rubberband AI in many of its events. When you're in the lead, driving perfectly and constantly boosting, the AI will be, as a helpful yellow pop-up caption exclaims, "right on your tail!" no matter how many times you wreck them. The moment you crash, they start to take an insurmountable 30-second lead that is nearly impossible to catch up to.
- In Burnout Paradise, the computer drivers will always get a head start in race events, allowing them to boost past you before you even get control of your car.
Abused to a bizarre end in the Super Nintendo game Super Off-Road: The Baja. Each and every one of your competitors had their own preferred place in the lineup, and Heaven forbid you should attempt to take that place from them. For example: Should you take third place from the AI driver who typically came in third, he would become a super driver fueled by rage; he would gain speed, cut corners, ram your truck mercilessly, and pretty much suddenly become the Uberdriver in his efforts to dislodge you from third place. Once you dropped back to fourth place, though, that driver would return to normal, and never challenge Mr. Number Two for HIS place. (Of course, then Mr. Fourth Place would have his turn at harassing you.) Coupled with the tendency for the AI in first place to absolutely obliterate you should you dare violate his sacred position AND stage last-minute comebacks at speeds approaching those of a low-flying jet fighter, winning any race at any difficulty level became far more based on luck (and your ability to keep from being rammed into oblivion) than skill.
The racing game Wipeout Pure is guilty of rubberbanding, starting the player in last place in every race and of unlimited item use - in the first lap of every race, every NPC racer gets unlimited turbo boosts, making a first place after the first lap a matter of pure luck in obtaining a Quake weapon in the first two or three weapon pads. Even if you do, you still have to contend with turbo boost-powered rubberbanding...
- On the other hand, Wipeout 3 (not sure about the others) is nice enough to prevent the AI from even getting the two most powerful weapons available. Somewhat justified in that said weapons are extremely destructive, one of which is an instant kill. Given some thought, thank everything holy and sacred the AI can't get that. It would be too much, as instead of rubberband AI, they just have god-like skills all the time.
Sega GT 2002. While not necessarily rubberbanding, in the later races you can be assured that one tiny crash = no chance of winning. Even if you're driving newly-repaired, mint condition cars that are at the very top of your price range (and thus better).
Classic F1 racing game Super Monaco Grand Prix featured a version of this that kicked in only after you'd become World Champion. In order to speed up the process by which a driver rose in the ranks, the game featured a system of "challenging" whereby if you beat someone in a better team twice in a row, you'd be offered their place (and thus, a better car). Once you'd won the championship, you were automatically placed in the best team (McLaren ersatz "Madonna") and then promptly challenged by some unknown newcomer in a team halfway down the rankings. Scoffing as the first race of the new season begins, you can only watch in horror as his blatantly inferior vehicle accelerates past you and proceeds to completely destroy you. Two races later, he's driving your supposedly top car (even though he shouldn't need it...) and you're stinking up the field in the crappy blue and turquoise thing he started in.
In Ridge Racer 6 for the Xbox 360 (and perhaps other Ridge Racer games), the computer cheats so often it's almost pointless to even try the harder difficulty levels and race types. Special races, for example, pit you against a car that you can win if you beat it. This car is always better than any car you have available at the time. Also, the "Reverse Nitro" races are well known for rampant cheating. In a Reverse Nitro race, your car cannot gain nitro from drifting like it can normally, so you are given an extra two tanks to work with and the only way to get them back is to go into what the game calls "Ultimate Charge" (coming out of a nitro blast while drifting). Somehow, all computer-controlled cars in these races can gain nitro simply by driving in a straight line for a couple of seconds, completely ignoring all the rules for nitro boosts set out for you. This means they can, suddenly, blow past you with a fully charged 3-tank nitro boost just after they finished another 3-tank nitro boost.
- In Ridge Racer 64, not only did the rival car have ridiculously effective Rubber Band AI but if you crashed into it, you stopped dead while the rival wobbled a bit but basically carried on unaffected. This was the case even if the rival crashed into you from behind, in which case it would drive right through your motionless car.
Every Tokyo Xtreme Racer series game has nearly invulnerable AI, with impossible handling abilities. "Boss" racers will always catch up with and pass you, regardless of your cars' relative stats. If a race starts with you slightly in front of another car, there's a chance you will accelerate faster. If you start a race behind the exact same opponent, they accelerate into the distance and are never seen again. Also, another game in which the traffic is actively trying to destroy your car, changing lanes to block you in and adjusting the timing of their lane changes to hit your car at any speed.
In Midtown Madness, some racing modes involve competing against computer-controlled cars, and since you are always in danger of smashing into vehicles or obstacles, it helps greatly that they are too (not to mention that it's gratifying to see them smash head-on into oncoming traffic or miss a critical turn). Except that if they ever leave your immediate surroundings and end up in a part of the city of Chicago that isn't currently being "simulated," they go into cruise mode and move quickly and safely wherever they are meant to go next. In one of the races, a single computer car takes a very different route than the rest, meaning that in order to win you must be very lucky to have it crash during the parts of the race when it ends up being near you.
The game based on the Dragon Booster television show is guilty of this. While you only ever have five energy points, and have to recharge by getting powerups, the AI racers have unlimited energy, ignore obstacles (offscreen, at least; onscreen, they just charge into nearly all of them), and even have equipment that is unable to be obtained by the player. It's made up for in that the AI is dumb as a post.
In Red Baron Arcade (as with many, many flight/driving/racing type games), if there is any penalty to being rammed, you can bet that the computer has any number of planes or cars (or whatever) cheerfully lining up to ram the absolute crap out of you as soon as you start targeting the thing that will let you win that level.
- CURSE YOU RED BARON!!!
Need For Speed Underground combined Rubber Band AI with your opponents always having just slightly better cars than you. Because of that it was easier to deliberately downgrade your car in the endgame by using a weak engine and so on. The AI would be downgraded as well so that relatively everything stayed the same, but the race would be a lot slower and therefore more forgiving.
- Furthermore, Underground 2 and Most Wanted also had an egregious feature whereby even if you managed to build up a decent lead in spite of the Rubber Band AI, in the last lap of the race one of the opponents would make a miraculous comeback and pass you unless you managed to block him or had a lot of nitro to burn. This was presumably done to make the races more dramatic, but of course the end result was just more frustration.
  - Most Wanted was nowhere near as bad as Underground 2, but can be a lesson in frustration if you haven't mastered getting an apex turn or don't abuse speedbreaker.
- In Most Wanted, it is possible to drag a car with it facing the opposite direction, because it got its rear wheel caught on your front end, and then not only free itself, but proceed to gain magical turning abilities where it obtains a zero-degree radius turn, and speed off. Past you.
- The car damage thing is inverted, since cop cars can be taken out fairly easily while your own car is indestructible. This is ~~balanced~~ outweighed by the fact that the computer has an infinite supply of them, though.
- The cops also rarely go after the computer players. There may be one or two occasions where if you deliberately slow down and give up your position so the other can get the cop first. Otherwise, the cop will usually go after you, and completely ignore everyone else.
  - Speaking of cops, try this: Start a cop chase and go into reverse. The cop will drive alongside you. Now stop, go into first, and punch it. Even if your car can go from 0 to 100 in 0.5 seconds, the cop will stay right on your tail, despite having to go into reverse, make a 90 degree turn, and then make another 90 degree turn going forward to even drive in the same direction as you.
Speaking of Most Wanted, once the backup timer has run out, the cops are free to respawn anywhere they want. Nothing quite beats seeing a cop car flicker into view on the golf course. Of course, if you try to respawn by using R, it's an instant bust, no matter where the cops are.
- Not to mention the effect in latter tollbooth challenges, where if you take the shortcut through opposing traffic, there always ends up being traffic there. If you take the long way around, surprise, surprise, no traffic!
- Need for Speed Most Wanted actually cheats in multiplayer mode. You can upgrade every car in the game to 100% on all three stats (acceleration, speed and handling), except for the game's signature car, the BMW M3 GTR which cannot be upgraded at all and is therefore pretty bad in single player. However, as bad as its ingame performance is, its listed stats are worse. And in multiplayer mode, the game attempts to ensure a fair race by equalising the stats of all cars in the race. The result is that your shiny Porsche Carrera GT that ordinarily blows the doors off the M3 GTR is detuned to a limping piece of junk with the same stats as the M3 GTR... at which point the M3 GTR is the better car and will proceed to beat you. This is probably a design flaw, but ironically the M3 GTR is driven in career mode by a cheating bastard who took it from you after rigging a race through sabotage.
  - Also, because of the craptastic way the game measures handling, the M3 GTR is probably one of the best vehicles you get in the late game for turning. The game's handling stat doesn't measure how well it turns, but rather how well your car stays gripped to the road, which can be really bad if your trying to make a tight turn at 140 MPH(~225km/h, for you metric users)
- Every PSP version of Need for Speed seems to put a lot of effort in ensuring that its AI has a new annoying trick at its disposal. By the time of NFS Undercover, the cpu cars could drive faster than you, no matter what was your car and how well it was upgraded, were not affected by crashes (they were back on your tail in just few seconds), could TELEPORT if you somehow managed to make them stay really behind, or TURN MID-AIR! In one of the urban stages, there is a 90 degrees turn just after a really long straight that ends with a significant bump. To drive past it you simply have to slow down, but the cpu cars can drive into it at full speed, jump and turn in the air. Funny sight when you are looking behind at that time.
In Star Wars Episode I: Racer, the AI racers never crash, never run into walls, always hit turns perfectly, and never have to use the boost.
While most of the time, it doesn't really help the AI, computer players on Carmageddon 2 can sometimes do stuff limited to human players, such as passing through the walls (when the player is far from them, their clipping is off), run past pedestrians without smooshing them, etc. Also, sometimes the AI can recover by themselves (which is normally impossible, except by a glitch of sorts) and can inexplicably change directions in a mere number of frames and speed up from 10 MPH to 250.
- The same is also true in all other games in the Carmageddon series. HOWEVER, the computer cars cannot make use of their "no clipping" cheat-ability when the player has the main map-screen up; their location is always shown and they move much more player-like.
Cel Damage's AI players can make sharper turns than the human player. This can be seen when the player is killed, and for the brief seconds until the respawn, the computer player (most likely the assassin) can make some incredible curves, even while standing on the same place.
Test Drive for PS 2, Xbox and GC. This game exhibits extreme Rubber Band AI. No matter how skilled you are or how powerful your car is, the AI will always gain a ridiculous speed boost and catch up, sometimes "teleporting", making races a Luck Based Mission. And they almost never crash or make other mistakes.
Midnight Club 3 seems to be malevolent and benevolent at the exact same time. In races, your opponents are always in better cars unless you have an A tier car(to the point that races can play out with you in a D tier and your opponent in a B tier BEFORE you've completely upgraded it.), you're opponents always have more nitrous shots than you (or in the case of bikes, HAVE nitrous shots.), and, somehow, obey the copenhagen interpretation, because even if you overlapped a car, if you are not watching him on the minimap, he will warp right behind you and be able to put you back into second place. However, you can outrun them on straight-aways, they cannot use slipstream turbo, and cannot use any special abilities.
Wii Sports Resort is a partial subversion. The Champions have flaws in their techniques, making them realistically beatable, but are still blessed with ridiculous reflexes and reaction times—they're Champions, after all.
Forza Motorsports 2 exibits several of the stated examples (not to extreme levels, but they appear). But the worse offense is when you end up with the car in 2nd place pulling a PIT Maneuver on you, giving them and their 6 other AI buddies a chance to speed off as you are forced to get back to the track WHILE THE PENALTY METER IS GROWING. The worst part is that you can have this happen with the AI set on Easy.
Forza Motorsports 3 is a little different. The AI players aren't bastards, they're assholes. Even on Medium difficulty, they'll bump you to-and-fro in a pack-like manner, cars in front of you will seemingly drive in a tandem formation to block you from overtaking, and they're not afraid to ram you off on their way to first place. Combine this with Realistic-level damage modelling, and you can kiss your credits goodbye.
Gran Turismo 4. In the rally races, if you hit the wall, you get a 5 second penalty. If you run into the computer opponent, you get a 5 second penalty. If the computer runs into you, you get a 5 second penalty. And of course, the computer can pinball down the track without so much as applying the brakes, let alone catching a penalty for tapping the (occasionally invisible) track barrier.
- The computer will also use cars that it specifically disallows you the use of. (Cadillac Cien and VW Nardo W12 Concept in a race specifically limited to Production Vehicles Only, for example.)
Full Auto for the Xbox 360 suffers from this a bit. Rubber Band AI, while prevalent, is not the biggest problem - enemy cars in Career mode are also equipped with what appears to be much, MUCH stronger armor than the player's vehicle, making blowing them out of the way a time-consuming task. For example, it takes an enemy vehicle approximately 3 rough hits with the hood-mounted shotgun to completely annihilate the player (the same number it takes a player to destroy another player in Multiplayer mode), but it takes the player 5 precise hits to a single side of an AI car at minimum to take them down. Also, the player's car can completely lose its front armor after hitting only 2 mines dropped by an enemy and explode when hitting the third, but enemy cars can run over multiple mines and suffer no visible damage. They also may or may not be subject to the "Weapon Overheat" period resulting from firing a weapon too rapidly without a break. Factor in the AI cars' exclusive ability to destroy the player simply by ramming them and their unannounced ability to change their driving pattern while the Unwreck function is used (designed for the player to undo mistakes by rewinding time), and it's quite a bit to handle. Fortunately, the AI cars are also busy blasting away at each other, often leaving them damaged enough for the player to swoop in and finish them off.
- The cheating AI seems to be exclusive to Career mode. Multiplayer and Arcade modes appear to give the AI cars the same speed, abilities, and armor as the player (only 3 shots from the shotgun before exploding, 3 mines = death, etc.), but Career mode steps it up with the cheating elements. Very odd...
On a number of car racing games the opponent drivers are essentially invulnerable. If your car hits theirs they are unaffected while you are sent flying. The AI drivers are driving a preset course and you are not allowed to interfere. The racing side missions in Brutal Legend are an example.
Motorm4x is one of the few games that feature Rubber Band AI in time trial mode, whereby at the end of each trial you're treated to a results table with the other drivers' times, some of which are likely better than yours. Beating those times, however, you find out that the other drivers have improved as well and you still didn't win. A particularly ridiculous example exists in one of the last races, where the developers even make a big point in the race description of how the best time so far of just over 6 minutes is extraordinary for this trial, the average being around 11. Finishing at just under 6 minutes, you find out that you've didn't even make the upper half of the results table, nobody posted a time over 8 minutes, and the time you really need is 5:30.

An ancient (well, 8-bit) version of this trope is the way the AI put together bands of random wandering monsters in Pool of Radiance. If you created characters with maximised stat scores, you often found yourself facing wandering monsters more numerous and more powerful than half the "set" encounters in the game. Battles when simply travelling from place to place therefore often turned out to be epic struggles against 50+ goblins or kobolds compared with the typically 10-15-something encounters which were part of the plot. The reason was that the AI took stat scores heavily into account in generating random monster encounters.
The Triple Triad card game in Final Fantasy VIII had another blatant example of cheating. Normally, the human player and the computer can see each other's hands, making the card game fairly easy to win. However, whenever the hands are concealed, the computer's win rate goes up more than tenfold, as it seems perfectly aware what cards you have, and its cards are not so much "hidden" as "the computer's single remaining card has the exact combination of three values, in three specific locations, needed to win." This is especially frustrating as you watch it happen ten times in a row.
- Made even worse when you're on the Lunar Base, where practically every card rule is in effect.
  - There is a way to limit the ruleset, involving initiating and then canceling card games until your opponent offers to play by a different set of rules. Do it enough, and you'll spread favorable rules from earlier in the game to a new area. However, it took a disassembler to find the mechanics of this, making it something of a Guide Dang It.
- The ever-hated Random rule. Exactly What It Says On The Tin, it picks out completely random cards from your collection for the current match. Whereas most players are trying to complete the collection and therefore have a LOT of weak cards and a few strong ones, it's to be expected that you'll end up with 2 or 3 (or more, if you're really unlucky) low-level cards, but you'll almost never see the computer with the same weaklings you just drew. There's a reason everyone loathes this rule, and god help you if you let it spread...
The big battle at the end of Tales of the Sword Coast (the expansion for the first Baldurs Gate) had an ability that allowed a save—but blatantly overrode the results of the save to affect the target anyway, every single time to every single party member in over a dozen tries. Even when not a single one of the main character's saves was greater than 1 (and some were less than one). Without a save penalty on that ability of at least -10, it is...highly improbable at best to miss all the saves. Oddly, though, around the thirteenth try, something weird happened at the ability ended up reflected at the creature... and it didn't make the save, either. Heh. (The ability in question is a gaze attack, and a potion of mirrored eyes offers complete and infallible protection from it, but those are rare.)
- In Baldurs Gate when you're robbing houses, there's a good chance of you getting that awful "Somebody has spotted you and called the guard" even when there's nobody on the floor. This is because the cats are spies for the Flaming Fist. Yes, that's right, you can be reported to the guard if a cat can see you.
- From Baldur's Gate II and onwards, all high-level mages (and there are a lot of these) get something called a 'tattoo of power', which is a spell trigger that can activate any number of defensive spells instantly and without any action from the user and stacks on top of existing spell triggers and contingencies. Oh, wait, did I say 'all mages'? Silly me, I meant 'every mage except you and the ones you can have in your party'.
- Speaking of teleportation, nearly every mage in Baldur's Gate II can teleport — except for you. No one in the universe has a dimension door scroll for you to buy, with no explanation given at all.
  - This isn't The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard, this is the developers removing the spell and citing 'potential abuse' as the reason. Jerks. Fortunately, there is a downloadable mod (the D0Tweaks mod) that'll restore dimension door to the game for player use.
  - Nonetheless, Dimension Door only allows you to teleport within a certain short range; how mage after mage uses the spell to teleport seemingly all over the world goes unexplained. (The game actually has them teleport into nearby shadows using the spell; they then dissapear.)
- Teleportation Shmeleportation. Jon Irenicus at the end of Baldurs Gate 2 has INFINITE MAGIC MISSILE SPELLS MEMORISED. Not even the best MinMaxed builds in the tabletop game can pull that off.
  - On the other hand, if you've got the one magic item in the game which reflects spells back at their caster, it can make for a hilarious final battle.
  - Oh wow, the archmage who currently is running off of stolen power from two gods can cast a first level spell at you as much as he likes. How terrifying and unfair.
  - This is 2.5 DND rules, where Magic Missile scaled to levels bordering on ludicrous and you could sequence a dozen of them together to fire at once if you felt like it, dealing well over 200 points of damage without batting an eye. Combined with all the other lovely spells Jon has in that fight and the Magic Missiles become filler in between his time stops, stuns, fears, and various other shenaningans.
- Also from Baldurs Gate 2, any time you see a Lich (or god help you, a Demi-lich), expect to reload at least four times. The spells these horrible mages open up with is probably dependent on luck.
For reasons never explained in-game (which is a rare occurrence), the Krogan enemies in Mass Effect can regenerate to full health in two seconds when you destroy their very last HP. Now, Krogans are clearly labelled as "natural super soldiers" by the in-game encyclopedia, but that doesn't explain why your Krogan buddy, supposedly a badass among the badasses in his kind, can't do the same. Basically, it's an auto-regen power that pops out of thin air.
- You can shut this little trick down with Polonium or Sledgehammer Rounds, though. Not only do these ammo mods inflict poison damage, they prevent regeneration. And these mods are fairly easy to get.
- Mass Effect 2. Just, the whole game. Sometimes you will come out of cover for no reason, other times it's simply ignored. The computer likes to Zerg Rush with super strong, hypercompetent enemies, they will appear from behind in areas that had been cleared, and they are only too happy to kill you while your attention is on other threats. On, and the kicker, you cannot even respawn upon dying until after the game is patched. Was this released broken?
- And here's yet another cheat: most games will pause if you need to reconnect the controller. Not this one, you're a sitting duck.
Surprisingly enough, Chrono Cross suffers from this. When in battle, the party can only use their element magic attacks when they have generated enough "Combo" through basic attacks to charge their element grid, and they can only use each slotted element once per battle. Your enemies are not limited by this. It is especially frustrating when fighting bosses, because they can immediately use high-level elements without generating a single normal attack, and they can use any of their elements, even the unique special-attacks, as many times as they want. The longer the fight goes on, the less you have to work with as your element grid runs out... not so for your opponent!
In Final Fantasy XI, at least for most jobs, in order to unlock the ability to level from 70 to 75 on a character, you must defeat Maat, a geriatric yet powerful fighter, in combat. It normally is somewhat challenging, and for some job classes, an important test of their fighting skills. The cheating comes in the form of Asuran Fists, which has the potential to take a player out in one shot. The problem, however lies in his ability to use the attack consecutively, WITHOUT END, until you are a pile of fine paste. Horror stories of Paladins using their Invincible 2-hour and getting smacked in the face with Asuran Fists for 0 damage each time repeatedly(Until said Invincible wears off, then they die) pretty much confirm that no matter how hard you try, it's the old fart that decides if you win or lose.
- That is, unless you play the Thief version of the fight and steal the old fart's Warp Scroll...and WIN INSTANTLY. WHAT?!
  - White Mages can also win by hunkering down and healing enough to outlast him (having to duck Asuran Fists somehow), and Samurais can win by performing a third-level skillchain against him (which involves switching between two weapon types and using many abilities with perfect timing). It's basically him saying, "Wow, you're so good that I'm just going to give up now." Except that outside of these very few jobs, the only way to make him give up is to get him to low enough HP (below 25% or so).
In Eve Online NPC ships such as pirates have no capacitor (energy) which means capacitor warfare is useless against them. This means you can't prevent them from firing energy-based weapons and can't stop them from running their shield repairers, armour repairers or afterburners. Additionally, they never have to reload their weapons. It's not THAT irritating because NP Cs are pretty stupid, but it is more than a little unfair.
- Then Apocrypha introduced The Sleepers who have all of the above advantages, much more HP, and much better AI than standard mooks.
In Golden Sun, some enemies can use Psyenergy, and generally have huge amounts of PP. Now, you have an ability called Bind that seals it off and a Djinn that can do the same thing, but this only stops attacks that start with the word casts, and not with ones that start with used. Not to mention that attacks that start with used are more frequent that ones that start with casts and aren't tied to PP. Did I mention that some enemies can seal off your PP and you have no abilities that can be used after that?
- This is subverted. The computer may seal off your psynergy... but by the time you got that late into the game already, you would already have enough money or would have found or forged the Infinity Plus One Sword and put a whole load of hurt on them that makes psynergy relatively irrelevant for anything other than healing.
In World Of Warcraft, there's a boss whose story leans toward this. When he was first introduced, one of his actions was to turn the entire raid facing him into sheep and sit down for a drink to restore mana - a parody of the mage class. However, burst damage would break his concentration, so one of the Shaman's newly-introduced Elemental Totems (short-term summons) could keep him from restoring mana. The dev team didn't like that, so if he gets hit while drinking he'll just pop a mana potion instead to get the same effect, and use the time saved to get a head start on blasting everyone.
- On this very same boss you used to be able to use a pvp trinket to break free from his sheep, that suddenly stopped working. Rogues used to be able to use their cloak of shadows ability (a move that gives them a 90% chance to outright ignore harmful magic) to block the move, that too suddenly dropped to a 0% chance to ignore magic. Druids can change shape, removing any other polymorph effect, except his. The AI is a cheating bastard indeed.
  - Although the AI IS a cheating bastard in this sense, he doesn't break you out of the Polymorph, it wears off just as he casts. A sufficiently fast Mage, Rogue, or Paladin can Ice Block/Cloak of Shadows/Divine Shield themselves out of the damage at the last second.
- Some bosses can be manadrained but exept for a few where keeping their mana down is part of the fight strategy. They can cast spells even at 0% mana.
- At the Argent Tournament, the jousting opponents will run in random directions to set up a charge or a ranged attack, which is fine, except that sometimes they will choose to run right off the tournament grounds. Guess what happens. Hint: it doesn't end in a tie.
Blue Dragon's Final boss is a God damn cheat. It summons a monster that attacks outside of its own turn, and it can use the same attack twice in one turn. Including full on, unique-to-that-monster attacks.
The RPG Metal Hearts: Replicant Rampage, is just this trope incarnate. First off, the attributes are not explained, and there's 18-20 of them. Each one covers something specific, in fact they're more like the skills in any other conventional RPG. For example Evasion does not affect your ability to dodge attacks, that's covered by luck, and for some reason applied mostly to firearms and only a few melee attacks. When the player gets to the first part of civilisation they will note the following: By moving, the P Cs will be penalised and completely lose their dodge bonus to range attacks - yes, BY MOVING THEY LOSE THE ABILITY TO DODGE ATTACKS WHICH WOULD NEVER HIT THEM IF THEY STOOD STILL. The local Stormtrooper knock offs must've have seen Star Wars and thought that hitting the enemy is better than flailing about and dying as they will hit the player nearly every time, excluding cases of a massive Luck stat, and when the guards are moving, the player has a better chance of shooting a single atom from the other side of the city with a handgun. The entire stat system and how things are calculated verges on the impossible as even after extensive play the game will throw up weird results like 1 when the observed action is determined by multiple dice... Or getting a 1 when the players bonuses after penalties is +2 or higher. At least, that's how it seems, as the player isn't able to observe any numbers other than their stats. It gets better - small evil scorpions with a "Fuck You For Buying This Game" poison at the start are easier to hit lying down from about 10 metres away with a handgun than point blank with a shotgun, SMG, or Sniper Rifle. Allies with firearms are less likely to hit than the players, but they tend to have weapons and gear that give bonuses to marksmanship, have the weapons strong enough to hurt evil guards. The players can't use those weapons due to stat requirements.
Whilst technically not an RPG, the UFO series use RPG mechanics for pretty much everything in the first 2 games, UFO: Aftermath and UFO: Aftershock. The computer cheats when it comes to pretty much anything explosive. Grenades in Aftermath are chancy but if the character's Throw skill is high enough it can clear entrenched hostiles, but the character is still going to be using the shotgun as the grenade throws fail in spectacular ways. Most often the player's soldiers will fumble the grenade and drop it under them, throw it behind them into the civilians being evacuated, overshoot the target by half the map, Lob onto a higher floor inside a building behind them, with no windows or doors on their side. This applies to rocket launchers, unless the user is in a heavy exo-skeleton, which is a waste as there are better Machine guns that can only be fired with those suits and don't run the risk of failing the mission by destroying the objective and entire team in one shot. In Aftershock, these effects are applied 2 at a time and also to rocket launchers and grenade launchers (Actually by adding an underbarrel grenadelauncher to any weapon the player will have corrupted the savegame their running, and also result in a more explosive fumble when the character drops it from a fricking launcher). Needless to say the aliens, mutants and cultists from the second are immune to this and can be reliably expected to incapacitate if not kill at least one character a shot.
- Worse still is the Reticulans in the first game have no weight-to-speed penalty with their launchers which are listed as significantly more accurate and faster firing than anything the player can manufacture and just better in all other stats.
- Sniper Rifles in UFO: Aftershock are strangely inaccurate unless the user is a level 3 sniper, then combat becomes a joke, however hostiles are all able to fire them like normal weapons without any penalties for stance or injuries. On the plus side they don't get any bonuses for these either and Cultist psychics almost never wear Trueshot aura Bracers.
- In Aftermath, there is a bug which stops the 'Retrieve a sample of Biomass' mission appearing. Given that without that and some research time, the stuff can infect the entire planet, or just the player's territory, thus ending the game. Even with the sample the player still needs time to discover biomass repulsers and 24 hours to convert bases to repulser bases, which leads to effective failure if its the last base/s the player has, due to the requirement of a single military base needed to launch missions that acquire territory or defend against invasions.
  - There is a way around this though, by initiating a mission over area with biomass by yourself by send a fighter to take on strong UFO so that it will get shot down over that area, initiating rescue mission.
All Yugioh games have a list of restricted cards, just like the real card game, and usualy matching the official one when said videogame came out. But computer opponents were not bound by it. The computer could have 3 copies of Game Breaker cards that you were only allowed to have one of (many of which would later be outright banned with the introduction of the real-life game's "Advanced" format used in official tournaments). This was probably to make up for AI so stupid that it often seemed like it was trying to lose.
- This runs rampant in Forbidden Memories, where the computer not only has better cards than you, but can also play fusion monsters as single cards. In other words, the CPU can play a powerful fusion monster without fusing other cards like you would normally have to.
- Another universal hax cheat that the CPU abuses is their complete and utter disregard for the banned/limited list. Oh, sure, you might expect the NCP duelists to use cards on the Banned list (such as Premature Burial), and they generally only use one copy of those cards...but then you duel against Jaden or Aster or someone else with a Hero deck, and they use 3 copies of a Hero card that's limited to 1, and you'd be want to scream at the PSP or DS in outrage. Heck, the only way the player can do this, is if they hack the game themselves and remove the list physically, which just shows you how bad this is.
- In WCT 2008, you ca enlist the help of an AI Tag Team Partner. They hurt you when they can, like sacrificing your monster for their Grandmaster when they could play it for free. It often feels like they are trying to help out your opponent.
The old Microprose game Master Of Magic initially had a shapeshift spell that would disguise one unit as another. The manual noted that this illusion would not affect the computer players. Too bad Master Of Magic was a one-player game with no network or internet play capabilities.
In the Star Wars Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy games, all Force-using characters (enemies and friends) but you possess immense (though not bottomless) Force batteries, have bullshitime perfect reflexes and cannot be surprised. Furthermore, their Force powers don't cool down and can be reused instantly. (Theoretically, this is how a Jedi should be anyway, so it's more that the player's been nerfed than the NPCs have been buffed. Regardless...) All this is designed to make them impossible to kill without a lightsaber, since they will deflect blaster bolts and telekinetically redirect missiles and explosives straight back at you. (Theoretically, one could lure them into a heavily-mined area, but that's more trouble than it's worth.) When you have a Jedi NPC, a Dark Jedi NPC and a missile launcher (or better still the concussion rifle) in the same room, it is actually possible to get the two to play a deadly game of Force Push tennis.
- With certain tricks, it is possible to kill a Dark Jedi with a ranged weapon. For example, a moderately-charged blast from the Tenloss Disruptor Rifle (effectively the game's sniper rifle, which wasn't blockable with a sabre) aimed at the targets crotch would cause a force sensitive enemy to leap into the air. If you were quick, or if they had leaped high enough, you could then catch them in midair with a second blast. If you had a way to predict which way they would jump, you could also make them jump into an abyss.
- Another lightsaber alternative: enemy Jedi can't be killed with Force Choke—they break out of it after a couple seconds. They can, however, be moved about while held. Jedi Academy, in particular, has a great many Bottomless Pits. . .
  - They also can't dodge the shock gun thingy's secondary blast, as it's an area effect.
  - This gamer always used the Force Speed and then Force Choke into death pits method. Even then, you only had a few split seconds before they broke free.
City Of Heroes has a whole slew of difficult enemies, although most of the difficulty comes from what they're supposed to do in the first place — for example, the Malta group would be a much easier enemy if the Demonic Spider Sapper wasn't included among its ranks. One clear example of the cheating computer, however, is when you face enemies that can teleport. Player characters can teleport too, but only a few hundred yards at a time and only line-of-sight, meaning you can't teleport through walls in mission maps. The computer has no such line-of-sight restriction, however - which leads to teleporting enemies going halfway across the mission map in order to escape. It's more prudent to sit tight and wait for the computer to decide it's had enough of being cowardly and teleport back to you to continue the fight, rather than run halfway across the mission to chase it down.
- What's especially infuriating is when enemies teleport next to one of their allies the second they're injured, heal them, and then teleport away before you can even target them.
  - And you can't target about 50% of anything that's not basic floorspace for no apparent reason...
- Even the lowest level mook can jump five stories straight up when either coming at or escaping from you.
- Not to mention several enemies have power combinations that are simply impossible for a player to have.
- Ghost Widow cannot be beaten without several Break Free (anti-mez) inspirations or applications of Clear Mind (a defender anti-status power), as she has holds that are several magnitudes above any hold available to the player in a game. (Made up for, slightly, because in the new Mission Architect, you can have her as an ally with the same powers in your mission).
- But perhaps the most irksome case of this trope can be found in the Carnival of Shadows faction, already annoying to begin with, feature the Illusionist and Master Illusionist enemies with access to the "Phase Shift" ability. Phase Shift is meant to be a "can't touch this" button, which makes a player invulnerable for a few seconds at the cost of being unable to use their powers on anyone else. Illusionists ignore this limitation entirely and continue to attack you even while phased. Master Illusionists can also summon more illusionists who can also use this trick. Needless to say, not many people like Carnival of Shadows missions.
When a boss, the Devil-Triggered Vergil in Devil May Cry 3 is Implacable, not flinching from the player's best blows and apparently invincible. Not so when playing as Vergil, who flinches much more easily and takes conspicuous damage.
- He goes back into Devil-Triggered mode 5 times faster than you can. And stays there longer.
- Used in a slightly different way during the second Dante boss fight in Devil May Cry 4. The player might figure he'll be as easy as he was during the first encounter as the game's tutorial level, but this Dante is viciously fast and is capable of using every one of Dante's styles to their greatest effect. It's not so much that the computer Dante is more powerful in boss form than the playable Dante that immediately follows the fight; in fact, he is a carbon copy (except for the life bar). No, it's that he can use every one of Dante's moves without the slightest error, especially when it comes to the Royal Guard style, which, when coupled with computer precision, essentially makes him invincible and Nero a dead man. In short, his computerized reflexes are far superior to yours, and there is very little you can do to compensate for this disadvantage. Even Devil Trigger is nearly worthless.
  - If you've ever seen any expert DMC4 videos, you'd realise that if the computer used Dante to his greatest effect, Nero would last about three seconds. Point stands, though.
Tales Of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World has a unique example, in that you can beat the computer at its own game. You see, by Spellbinding multiple Mons in battle, you only get the option to attempt to add the weakest to your party... but the mechanics of Spellbind are such that it's easy to only bind the one you want.
- Hell, it isn't even good at rubbing it in your face - by turning down a pact, you'll get a useful item.
In Luminous Arc, one enemy, Iris, the Steel Witch, has the ability to dodge attacks that are listed on-screen as being 100% sure hits. That's on top of the fact that said enemy starts with the ability to perform a Limit Break at the start of battle. Obviously, neither ability is available to your characters.
Fire Emblem also contains arena opponents that have stats higher than the stat caps their particular class is supposed to have...
- Also, in FE 1 enemies have a tendecy to get silver weapons while you still get stuck on iron, to "balance" the damage output, so both you and your opponent do about the same damage.
- Case in point:Solders (low level enemy only cannon fodder) with enough HP it can't properly be shown.
- Fire Emblem also has numerous stages that are blocked by the Fogof War. You cannot see enemies through this, yet they all know EXACTLY where you are.
- Also inverted, Fire Emblem uses a two-RN calculator for hit percentage, this method generally favors the player as it means high accuracy attacks hit more.
  - Can not count the times that a 90-99% chance to hit MISSED (aka 1-10% chance to miss succeeded). Fire Emblem's RNG is a first class cheating bastard.
  - Well, sucks to be you.
- Additionally, all combat outcomes are determined at the beginning of the turn (At least in the first GBA Fire Emblem). That means that if you load the game to try to save a character from certain death, he'll just repeat his futile action over. And over. And over.
  - Now, hold on. That's not because The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard. That's because the game uses an auto-save feature. After EVERY action, the game saves. That's why you can turn the game off at any time and come back to the exact moment in time (or action) that you just entered/made. That's why you can't save a character from death; you are already dead.
Final Fantasy X has this in a few areas, but the most obvious use of this trope would be the Blitzball mini-game. Though at first appearing to be a pure sports-like mini-game, it actually relies quite heavily on numbers. Also, during skirmishes against other players, the numbers aren't always accurate; the actual value in the calculation used is partially random, being anywhere from half the listed value to getting a 50% increase. Naturally, the computer will favor the enemy by lowering your values while giving the opposition favorable boosts. To no one's surprise, it happens far more often in close matches. And if that wasn't enough, one team in particular, the Al Bhed Psyches, are so ungodly powerful that playing against them is just asking to lose unless you're very, VERY good (or several levels higher with cheap techniques).
- The Blitzball game is fairly counter intuitive with what players end up having the best stats, since stat growth always is more important than starting stats (one of the best goalies starts out as one of the best shooters, then becomes one of the better defenders, and then only later becomes a good goalie due to his stat growth). It seems far more likely that most people simply don't get past the early point where the player team is actually the worst in the league (this is a storyline point, after all). Under fairly even conditions a competent player should almost always win because the computer is actually quite reckless about shooting and passing.
- One minor way the computer does cheat is that in computer vs computer matches, goalies tend to get more xp then seems logical compared to what the player goalie tends to get during matches (unless you are getting shot on a whole lot). This isn't too big of a deal since the player can poach goalies from other teams and most goalies can respectably play other positions to earn xp.
- The player also hands down gets the characters with unique shooting abilities that are absurdly powerful, while the computer characters only have the generic abilities. Tidus can eliminate defenders from blocking shots and Wakka can potentially boost his Shot stat to ludicrous levels if the original Aurochs are on his team.
The Monster Rancher series suffers from the same cheating as Pokémon, that PC simply ignores the missing rate, and top on this, your monster has far more chance of doing "foolery" instead of attacking, even when both are supposed to be equally unloyal due to master inexperience.
Two Words: Forced Evasion. For those who haven't played OG Saga: Endless Frontier, let me clarify. Forced Evasion is a Scrappy Mechanic that kicks in when an enemy either hits or is about to hit the ground, whereupon three things will happen: First, the rest of the damage they receive during that character's turn is reduced to 0. Second, the character's turn ends immediately, ruining any chance of a combo and bringing the otherwise speedy pace of combat to a screeching halt. Finally, it allows the enemy a chance to counterattack, every bit as powerful and unblockable as their normal attack. Meant to be a mechanic that punishes players for not juggling enemies in the air well enough, it's partly-justified that only the enemy gets it - after all, they don't get to use items or Spirit commands to heal, and can't combo with their allies. It becomes ridiculous, however, when enemies hit Forced Evasion without ever being knocked up into the air. How exactly does a juggled enemy hit the ground if they were never juggled in the first place?
- Whether or not they look or feel like juggles, the fact is that every single hit that your characters make bounces the enemy upwards, meaning that every single combo you try to do on them is ultimately a juggle combo and as a result, the enemies can always do a Forced Evasion regardless of how and where you hit them. What's even worse that if the enemy touches the ground during a wallbounce (usually caused by the wallbouncing hit hitting the enemy too close to the ground), they can do a Forced Evasion off THAT as well. They really should've thinked the system through more or at least made it far less severe.
Several enemies in Tales of the Abyss screw the rules on numerous occasions. You have to be in overlimit to use a mystic arte. Several bosses that have them can use it randomly. They may also not only go into overlimit numerous times in a row. The final boss does both - when you take out half his health and get a cutscene mid-way through the boss battle, he may use Celestial Elegy without even going into overlimit or immediately go into overlimit twice in a row.
The major antagonist of Tales of Vesperia , Alexei is famous for ripping out his Mystic Arte, Brilliant Cataclysm, multiple times in a battle. It Gets Worse, he can do it up to 10 times on higher difficulties. Did I mention that Brilliant Cataclysm has a huge area of affect and does enormous amounts of damage?
Thanks to the Useless Useful Spell logic, enemies in Final Fantasy Legend 2 cheat when skills like Erase and Chainsaw work on you 100% of the time.
In the Game Boy advance version of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, enemies that shuffle their decks like you do have infinite CP and find numerous ways to cheat.
- In order for the player to use Dark aura on Riku mode, you have to stock three 9s. When you are fighting the Riku Replica, he can use it with ANY combination.
Freelancer is unique as an RPG in that it features a racing cheat used throughout the game. Enemy ships have the rubber-band effect preventing you from outrunning them so long as they are behind you. By hitting the afterburner hard, going into freefall and turning around while adrift, you can watch them quickly revert to their natural speeds and lag behind. This becomes the primary tactic when playing the merchant game, since turrets are comparably ineffective, and one can avoid combats altogether.
Fallout 3: Wondering why the Tribals and Swampfolk of the Point Lookout DLC are kicking your ass despite their ordinary weapons and your fancy armor? Because they get additional 35 points of unresistable damage per hit. Why? Only Bethesda knows.
- It's not THAT unreasonable. If it weren't for that, you'd take no real risks, and that'd ruin Point Lookout's atmopshere.
Dokapon Kingdom is infamous for doing this with it's CPU players. Since the game is meant to be played as a party game with real people, it doesn't affect the fun of the game as much, but when playing a single player campaign, one may be sent into a tirade of obscenities. The computer frequently rolls exact numbers and receives items that perfectly help it in any particular scenario. Of course, since even the "sneaky" CPU is really dumb, this could be seen as an (annoying) balancing factor.
The somewhat "Pokemon"-esque Jade Cocoon has a post-game enemy that will eventually appear in threes and does nothing but stand in place and cast the game's Death spell. This spell costs 30 mana in a game with a hard-coded limit of 999, but they never run out.
In Wizardry VIII the NPC AI can cheat at ludicrous levels at "Expert" difficult. Just to give an idea, the game is virtually impossible if you don't match your party specifically to only do ludicrous amounts of damage without chance of missing, giving preference to spells and skills that damage groups of enemies at once to maximize damage potential, while completely disregarding any skill or spell that do anything other than damage, which in fairer difficulties are key to your tactics. The spell that could give a itch at half the enemies in the cone? Will affect 2, if you're facing 10. The spell that could blind everyone in an area? Will blind 1 or 2. The other that would paralyze half a group? Now you're lucky when it paralyzes one enemy. The best part is that NPC casters now have super reliable spells. The same spell that won't paralyze a single monster of a group after several tries will paralyze your whole party, leaving you completely defenseless, in the first try. Needless to say, the only conceivable strategy here is to power up all of your party's speed and then rain down all the most powerful damaging abilities at NPC casters the second you see them, because they'll only cast a fireball that'll kill your mage and just mostly kill the rest of your party when you're lucky.
In Suikoden III, there are quite a few rune spells that, while they may seem like useful area-of-effect spells, are quite hampered by the fact that Friendly Fire Proof is not in effect; if your melee attackers are in the area, they're going down too, meaning that they will rarely see use by you. The computer, however? When the computer uses them, the enemies that would get hit run out of the way of the incoming spell. Exceptionally annoying in the boss fights against the big bad team.
- This is actually the effect of a magic skill called "Precision". The higher the skill level, the less likely your own team is to be fried by a spell cast by the possessing character. The bad part? Only THREE characters in your entire army can learn this skill. The three main characters (i.e. the candidates for the True Fire Rune, which would be the biggest offender in the matter of roasting your own team with non-friendly fire) are not included in that list. It's still possible for your allies to run out of the way of your spell without the skill, but the chances are so low that most players plan around half their team dying if they need to cast one of these spells.
In the Mother series, it's not uncommon for higher level enemies (particularly bosses) to make two moves per turn, as opposed to the player's one per character. This is taken to egregious levels in Mother 3, when the Miracle Fassad boss can performs actions such as PSI Shield >> Luxury Banana >> Foul Smell. The Luxury banana being a healing item, this boss is absurdly hard.
- You want more cheating from Miracle Fassad? How about this? "Kumatora tried PK Magnet Alpha! Miracle Fassad has no PP left to steal! Miracle Fasaad used PK Starstorm!"
The Struggle in Kingdom Hearts II. When you get your opponent down to 0 HP, they are frozen for a few seconds so you can collect more orbs, before reviving with full health. When YOU get knocked down to 0 HP? You lose instantly.
The wrestling minigame in Final Fantasy VII's Gold Saucer. It's set up in a rock-paper-scissors style of punch-kick-block, but at stage 4, the AI will land a hit when previously your attacks would cancel out. And if you manage to beat Stage 4, Stage 5 takes the cheating to a whole new level - the opponent in invincible, and all of their attacks cancel out yours, so it's physically impossible to win!
In Final Fantasy X, the final boss comes in with two minions that heal it every turn and charge up its Overdrive meter so it can use its ultimate attack. And if you kill the minions, they just revive a couple turns later with more HP than they did before. In fact, if you kill them enough times, they'll have more HP than the actual boss!
- Revive Kills Zombie, my friend. Use Zombie Attack on the main boss, and the minions' healing will actually hurt it! Granted, its Overdrive guage still charges, but Tidus still has the Talk command to reduce it twice. If you don't kill it before it gets a third charge up though? Go grinding.
Pretty much every boss in The Last Remnant. Normally, characters can attack once per turn and engage one enemy group at a time. Bosses can engage three or more groups, can attack all of them (essentially gaining extra turns), and typically get "in-between turns" where they often attack all of your squads, often inflicting status ailments in the process, forcing the player to waste their turns. Combined with the more or less randomly available commands (itself an example, since whatever algorithm decides these things clearly hates you personally and especially loathes the idea of healing your squads, a problem enemies do not share), bosses tend to become either protracted wars of attrition or outright curbstomps, irrespective of the player's strength.
- This is actually a result of the game coming from some of Sa Ga's design team, where bosses getting multiple turns is an extremely common occurance (or even normal enemies, like the Krakens in Sa Ga Frontier, would sometimes get 4 or more attacks per turn. Thankfully, at least the Krakens had high-vulnerability to instant-death moves)
- Then there's Arcana, spells that require 3 or more members in a Union to invoke. Some enemies and bosses are allowed to cast these all by themselves.

In Star Wars Battlefront II the AI soldiers will almost exclusively target the player should he/she make themselves visible, regardless of how far away they are, and despite there being dozens of more threatening units on the map.
- In Expert mode they WILL exclusively target you, and not only to the total exclusion of your own troops, but your own troops will be utterly useless. I've had countless incidents where, even with a Jedi on my side, I've slain 50 enemy soldiers, only to LOSE because my side has only killed less than 50, and the enemy has killed all 150 of us.
Bioshock: In the second level of the game the player is introduced to Spider Splicers. A nigh-unkillable enemy who can climb on the ceilings and throw hooks at you. They also come down to attack with melee on occasion. They're nearly as durable as a Big Daddy(though not as strong), perhaps more so because of their smaller size. This difficulty is put into place to give you a reason to be interested in the research camera found later in the level. After getting only 1 level worth of research on the spider splicers they suddenly have less overall HP than leadhead splicers do, and magically go down in just a couple hits.
- In numerous parts of the game it also has scripting take precedence over the players interaction to the extent that enemies who are needed for dramatic effect may ignore fatal or crippling attacks, or in some circumstances the player is unable to use their weapons while the enemy relocates to a more dramatic location.
- Additionally, enemies with firearms seem unburdened by the need to reload them. This is most notable for enemies with revolvers, who can continue firing way past 6 shots. Enemies do occasionally reload, but this doesn't seem to correlate in any way with their usage of ammo.
Soldier Of Fortune 2. The AI can even cheat grenade timers! A player's experience with speedrunning the game describes the myriad ways they cheat.
- On Soldier Of Fortune difficulty, the enemies are Demonic Spiders, most notably in Colombia and Kamchatka, due to the jungle underbrush and fog, respectively, which they can apparently see through, while you can't.
- The enemies in the first game can also see you through fog and also cheat somewhat, although not as much.
Halo: Enemies with plasma pistols can rapid-fire them faster than a plasma rifle on the higher difficulties, at least in the first game. Enemies can sometimes home in on you and flank you out of your cover before they even see you. Those grunts(particularly Ultras) have deadly accuracy and range with plasma grenades, and of course, if you're stuck, you're fucked (if only there was a grenade warning indicator). In Halo 2 Legendary, Ultra Elite's shields recharge much faster than yours and other Elites, Jackal Snipers can shoot before they aim, and even ricochet their beams off walls(which you can't do), and while both allies and enemies can take multiple Beam Rifle shots, they insta-kill the Master Chief if they so much as graze him. Direct melee hits from Elites and Flood kill the Master Chief and the Arbiter instantly even with full shields, while the enemies themselves can take multiple melees, except if it's an "assassination" while they're not alerted(except Ultra Elites, which will just go berserk). And the Infection Forms kill you instantly if they touch you with your shields down in 2 and 3, with not even a chance to shake them off.
- Don't forget that enemy Fuel Rod Guns home into you slightly in at least Halo 3 when held by an enemy, which you can't replicate with your own Fuel Rod Gun.
  - The same can be said about marines with fuel rod guns in Halo 3 and ODST. Giving the marine in the passenger seat a fuel rod gun often gives you homing fuel rods, you just can't control them.
  - In fact, most enemy weapons are Nerfed when you wield them.
Enemy Navis in Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge always have more Program Deck space than you do — even when you're using that same Navi. WoodMan, for instance, only has room for a couple of the best Wood-type chips when you control him. When Sal is controlling him, expect to be hit with those chips every round.
In the Descent: Freespace series, the AI ships (friendly or hostile) can target even in scrambled radar situations that make stuff "untargetable." This means that the AI ships can use their normal aspect-seeking missiles on targets that you wouldn't be able to do the same to. However, this can be exploited with the "Target my target's target" key. When you're in a mission where the enemy has some Applied Phlebotinum that prevents you from targeting them, you can select a friendly ship that's engaged with an "untargetable," press the "target my target's target" key, and viola! Start firing away those Interceptors. This is highly useful, for example, in the missions when you first encounter the Shivans, the Shivans being untargetable supposedly due to your ship's lack of information on Shivan electronics, or in the Silent Threat missions that feature the stealth Lokis.
- This is a near useless ability, non-targetable ships are only in a couple of missions and usually do not require being shot. Freespace 2 also seems to eliminate this issue because most enemy fighters do seem to have trouble just identifying stealth fighters as targets unless they are severely harassed.
Goldeneye: Rogue Agent had this in the form of the Omen gun, a weapon that, if it hits, kills anything in one shot. When wielded by the player it has a slow trigger-to-shot time, the glow obscures the aim, and misses 50-90% of the time. When equipped to the faceless, nameless guards, however, it became game-breakingly annoying to the player, as even being winged by it leads to having the restart the section repeatedly. To clarify, by the time it takes for you to shoot one slow projectile, the enemy has already fired three much faster instadeath projectiles and reloaded, ready for another burst of three, oh, and they have infinite ammo.
The Arena in Armored Core 2 features Humongous Mecha that fight against you, outfitted with weapons and equipment that don't exist. The real kicker is that even if you could buy said equipment, you couldn't put it all on one AC without that AC being incapable of fighting to begin with.
- The Armored Core series, as a whole, is notorious for this, exempting the AI from many restrictions that players have to contend with. Some of the AI's bonuses: Nigh Perfect accuracy, an energy gauge that recharges faster than normal (meaning they can maintain flight for the entire battle), the ability to fire heavy back weapons not only while moving, but in mid-air too(these same weapons require the player to crouch and remain stationary in order to fire), and increased damage output for virtually every weapon. Admittedly, earlier games in the series gave you the Human+ part, which granted the same abilities, but only after you had completed everything else in the game.
  - In Armored Core 2 you could get all of the Human Plus enhancements by getting the "too deep in debt" nonstandardgameover repeatedly.
  - In the later games on the PS 2 the payer's mech had a much more realistic feel, as in boosting caused heatup just like bullet impacts ect. The AI on the other hand seemed completely exempt from that limitation, boosting all over the place and spamming their heavyest weapons in midair at best, and doing so from low orbit at worst.
In Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries,you can be alpha-striked by an enemy 'Mech while it was still prone. The player can't shoot anything while their 'Mech has been knocked down, no, but the AI does it all the time. The AI has also occasionally been known to alpha-strike with weapons that are no longer physically attached to their mech — i.e., firing its arm-mounted weapons even after you've blown its arms off.
Dark Sims (a type of multiplayer bot) in the original Perfect Dark were meant to be cheating bastards: they headshot perfectly out of the side of their gun from over a hundred yards away, they always know where you are, and they spawn with the best available weapon in the match.
Bomberman Blast. Well. ANY Bomberman game, to be honest. Why, you ask? You grab power-ups. Bomberman Blast has many power ups. Many tiny, similar looking power ups that you sometimes can't distinguish from one another. This leads to you running into a power up that increases bomb range...and accidentally killing yourself. The computer, however, even on Normal difficulty, seems to have an omniscient view of the field, how a bomb will explode (timing it within milliseconds to drop a bomb, break through, and move just as their other bomb goes off. This unerring feat allows them to trap you and themselves without ever being in a tough spot. Yeah.
- AIs do always know exactly where every power-up is; but, since the power-ups are in the same places every playthrough, a player with experience or a guide can know this as well.
In the Unreal Tournament series, bots will always know where the player is if there is a line of sight. Even if they're so far away you can barely see them with the sniper rifle's scope, or if there's vision-obscuring (for you, anyway) non-solid stuff in the way, or if you're directly behind them.
- Not to mention the near-perfect accuracy especially at long ranges, automatic triangulation of projectiles based on distance and your movement, always knowing where and when pickups spawn, a specifically fiendish brand of Rubberband AI that gets better based on team size, your lead, your kills, and so on, and general competance when compared to your useless AI team. Did I mention that every time you grab an item the AI knows where you are for the next couple seconds? Cheating bastards indeed.
- Also, the bots can see in the dark while you can't. Even if it's pitch black they can still see perfectly.
- This seems to occurs on a high difficulty levels only... CTF-Facing Worlds had a sniper position on the upper tower that allowed you to get Monster Kill combos or an extended killing spree; and it would work on Godlike for a while until a bot finally picks up a sniper rifle and counter attacks.
- A particularly nasty instance of the cheating AI makes itself evident in the higher bot difficulties in Unreal Tournament 2004- the bots can track you through walls, meaning that the moment you round a corner, there's a high probability that you'll be taking a rocket to the face.
Resident Evil 5: I know its to make you treat him more like a puzzle, but how the HELL does Wesker dodge buckshot?
- Try firing a rocket at his feet, go on, just try it...
- ...or at his face. He catches it.
- Whoever thought that it would be just awesome to have Wesker's double punch attack a death blow pretty much as soon as your hit on Pro mode, even if your buddy is literally 2 inches away from you with a healing herb out, I have this message for you: I'm going to kill you. I will violently kill you. You do not know how many times I want to hurt you for that bastard. I hate you!
Killzone 2: The final boss can teleport at will, has a one-shot kill unblockable knife, instantly teleports after being shot or stabbed, and yells constantly with a scary german accent.
Left 4 Dead has mild example in a boss zombie that can throw rocks. Unfortunately, the check that determines whether the rock hits a survivor is determined at the moment the rock is thrown. Thus the rock will always hit a survivor (barring the rock hitting something else, the survivor changing direction, etc) even if the survivor is moving laterally. Of course, when playing as said boss zombie, ones rocks do not track the player, presumably because the player can better aim than the AI.
- In addition to this, AI Hunters and Smokers are not subjected to charge up/cooldown on their respective special attacks. This often isn't a major issue though since AI special infected tend not to attempt to make an attack as often as their player counterparts.
  - And then there's the AI survivors if there any in VS mode. While they do seem to reload, they never seem to run out of ammo ever. In fact, they rarely even use pistols. Of course, if you join a game online and take control away from the computer, you will see that ammo had been used.
  - Not to mention that the survivor AI has deadly accuracy as they are able to kill any special infected from many yards away with almost any weapon. While players welcome this in co-op mode, they will shout "How the hell is that even possible!?" when the AI shoots their zombie selves from all the way across the train yard.
  - Don't forget their ability to teleport when a teammate is in trouble and they can't get there. To their credit, at least they don't do it when they aren't able to move at all (i.e. when constricted or incapped). They can also be stupid about it; I once saw Louis hanging on the air for dear life, and Bill teleported up to save him, falling to his death shortly thereafter.
  - AI Survivors can also see special infected straight through objects that serve as visual (but not physical) obstructions - trees, corn, and so on - for human players.
  - The AI special infected in both games have the ability to spawn within the safe room at the end of the levels. When you play as the infected, the safe house is considered a restricted zone and you are not allowed to spawn inside it, although you are allowed to spawn outside the room and wander in.
  - Hunters and Jockeys have this uncanny ability to slash at you immediately after missing a pounce where as you do not have the ability to slash after a missed pounce so fast.
  - The Jockey under AI control also has the ability to mount you even though you're just 2 feet away from it, whereas when you control one, you have to be on top of the survivor directly in order to ride the,.
A blatant example of this is in the Call Of Duty 4 level "Heat." Midway through the battle, while the SAS are holed up in the farm fighting off the Ultranationalists, the Ultranationalists will drop smoke grenades to cover their advance at about halfway across the field. The player can't see through it. Nor can the player's SAS comrades. The Ultranationalists, however, can, and their snipers take horrible advantage of it; the only way to get out of the farm is to take a side passage through a pasture, and you'll still be getting shot at by Ultranationalist soldiers who you can't see.
- Actually, you can get out of the farm by going through the field. It's just more difficult than going cutting through the pasture (which is infinitely preferable).
In Call Of Duty: World At War on veteran difficulty causes the enemy to cheat not only like a bastard but mercilessly and without fail.
- Enemies will aim for you and only you
- Enemies can and will throw tens of grenades in perfect throwing arcs at your position
- Enemy weapons can reload instantly if at all
- Enemies can snipe you without the benefit of a scope... perfect aim at 900 yards (naturally)... while reloading... while retreating... facing the other way... using a shotgun.
- The above effect is instantly removed as soon as you get the weapon they were holding.
- All friendly NPC soldiers will completly ignore an enemy and actively refuse to kill him unless the kill is pre-scripted.
- Enemies become incredibly resistant to bullets despite that they are nameless faceless goons and you're "The hero of stalingrad" who has "cheated death time after time"
  - During one mission you must kill a sniper who is blocking your route, after sniping him right between the eyes your sergeant will say "Ah you only grazed him" shooting him again he tells you "only wounded him" despite this your target can kill you in one shot seemingly effortlessly.
Every single Call Of Duty game in Veteran mode is like this, from Call of Duty 2 to Modern Warfare 2! The enemy suddenly has 90-100% accuracy, and CAN and WILL shoot at you as soon as you so much as sneak a peek out of your cover. You can be 100 feet away, peering between an inch-wide crack between three alleyways and a rooftop, and they'll STILL manage to hit you with an AK 47. Even worse, when you get shot, your gun bounces wildly, making your aim horribly inaccurate. Not so for the computer! They get infinite grenades as well, and will freely grenade spam you any chance they get.
- The Stalingrad levels of Call of Duty 2 in Veteran mode tend to border on completely impossible save for a completely random twist of fate or luck. One such example involves having to go up BY YOURSELF across a train track, with infinitely spawning Nazis, and stick a bomb on a tank, not ten feet away from the spot where enemies spawn. Even worse, in other levels, as soon as you get close to the tank, it will INSTANTLY START UP AND START RUNNING. I've literally been in a level where we spent the whole time picking off soldiers, then I spent a good two or three minutes CHASING A TANK AROUND IN CIRCLES AROUND A DESTROYED BUILDING.
Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 has this in many Spec Ops levels, even on regular mode. The worst offender I've encountered thus far is where you must assault the estate, all alone, against 50 or so enemies. At least 5 or 6 of them are Juggernaughts—enemies in super armor that can take three or four full rounds from an assault rifle without dying, and are not only armed with high-power machine guns, but don't even bother taking cover, and RUN UP TO YOU to bash you over the head and then shoot you nonstop. Sometimes they appear out of nowhere.
- Also the ghillie snipers as they always know your position and will hit with every shot.
In Gears of War, this can work in your favor as your squad members can reload ad infinitum without touching the ammo boxes intended for you, as well as survive a massive amount of damage that would otherwise leave you into a pile of bloody kiddle, even a direct torque bow hit that can one-shot a boomer on insane difficulty.
- This can also come back to bite you in the ass if Dom is standing up right besides you while taking a rocket hit he was too dumb to dodge, exploding you in the process.
- And speaking of insane setting... don't touch the Troika machine guns. Seriously. Avoid them like ebola-flavored plague dipped in swine flu. The locust are so deadly and freakishly accurate with ANY weapon (even their default hammerbursts) that you WILL die in less than three seconds. [[ EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.]] On a related note, whenever Lieutenant Kim screams at you "Flank them Marcus!" he's basically sending you out of cover to face two or three locusts who can gun you down faster than Homer Simpson can eat a donut. Stay behind cover and you'll have a decent chance.
In Resistance Fallof Man you can pick up an anything-piercing weapon called the Auger. It's best used when firing against enemies behind cover, though you can't really use anything else to help you see through walls (i.e. the Far Sight in Perfect Dark was an anything piercing gun with an X-Ray scope, there is no such thing in Resistance). However, the Elite Mooks who have this gun know exactly where you are to take advantage of the anything piercing shots. The Auger also supposedly picks up strength if you use the said piercing ability. So staying behind cover is a very bad idea, and moving around won't even help you because they somehow know where you are.
- That's not fair... the aiming reticle turns red if there's an enemy on the other side of a wall... a fun way to snipe off enemies that haven't been triggered yet, as they won't move no matter how many times you shoot them.
In Time Splitters 2 (possibly all Time Splitters games), the enemy AI (even as human-replacements in Arcade mode) is able to roll around to dodge your line of fire, something human players have no ability to do.
- This is probably because AI characters flinch when shot, and human players do not. It's to make up for their disadvantage with an advantage
In Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena and Escape From Butcher Bay, you can't melee-counter boss enemies, but they can melee-counter you. In addition, the first boss of Assault on Dark Athena, Ironlord takes no damage from blocking weapons when bare-handed, can damage you through blocks with any weapon except the club, and automatically blocks and counters any attack except in a very small window while he's attacking or after he's attacked. By way of apology, the next melee boss, Jaylor, lets you cheat, instead — after switching to your fists to lure him out, you can switch back over to a gun and kill him that way.
In Rainbow Six Rogue Spear the enemies knew of your position the moment you shot something that wasn't suppressed (eg metal) or they saw you for a split second. Also the enemy seems to have the ability to shot a Bottomless Magazine pump-action shotgun or sniper rifle at inhumane speeds very accurately.
- Ditto for the first game, particularly on Elite difficulty. They can sense your position, have Jedi reflexes, can snipe from long distances with almost any weapon, have near 100% accuracy, don't have to directly aim to hit you, and usually score One Hit Kill headshots.
- Your teammates keep full weapon accuracy even as they run or turn towards a hostile; you do not. It was a problem even in Raven Shield, which was patched only by having the terrorists waiting 1-2 seconds before attacking. Also, if you used software rendering in Eagle Watch, only A Is could see through windows.
- On the second game's Elite difficulty, it's even worse, enemies can get One Hit Kill shots from even longer distances, where you can hardly see them, eg the beginning of Arctic Flare. And they nerfed the sniper view on the MP 5.
- Redline (the driving/FPS hybrid released in 1999, not the more recent racing game) has a multiplayer-only weapon with which you can eject enemy pilots out of their cars, and use them yourself. You don't get this game in single-player... unless you use a cheat. Subsequently, ejecting AI-controlled enemies out of their cars and hopping in, you find out that while you're limited to, say, a thousand rounds of machine-gun ammo, they have 9999....

Anyone who has played an EA Sports football game knows all about cheating Rubber Band AI. ESPN columnist Bill Simmons has named it the "No F***ing Way Game", when the AI decides that you are losing this game, no matter what.
- In the Madden games, this always occurs in the last 2 minutes of each half.
  - On an individual level, computer-controlled characters are aware of everything around them (even if looking the other way), and are much, much less affected by momentum that human controlled players. Anyone who's thrown a perfectly good pass only to have an AI linebacker reverse direction at full speed, jump to their full height despite sprinting, and intercept it one-handed despite looking the opposite direction knows what I mean. This reaches controller-snapping levels of frustration when the ball actually flies through your player in order for the AI to do so. Also, AI players with high awareness ratings can predict your route with perfect accuracy, sometimes even turning their back to the receiver and making the cuts before they do.
- In NHL games, this always occurs in the third period, or if your ahead by a large amount in any other period. The computer starts passing at incredible speeds, is uncheckable, and your 90 rated goalie suddenly becomes a 60 rated goalie.
Going back a bit further, way back to Play Action Football on the Game Boy, if the AI ballcarrier got past your secondary, it was a touchdown every time, because AI players were always faster than your own. This would also work against you if you were on offense—you could, if very lucky, break a play as long as 50 yards, but you could never outrun AI defenders for very long. Oddly enough, this is the computer's only real hope of ever defeating you if you know what you're doing, because the AI in this game, even on the hardest modes, is remarkably stupid.
NBA Jam. Here's an example: You're playing well, you're up by ten. Suddenly, the AI turns into ass-kicking mode and drains every shot, block all your attempts, and makes HALF COURT SHOTS EVERY SINGLE TIME. Midway said they did this purposely to "add more challenge". More like piss the hell off whoever is paying to play.
- Of course you could also be a cheating bastard by forcing a three point shot and blocking it perfectly every single time.
- The designer for NBA Jam now flat-out admits that they designed the game to make Chicago brick critical jumpshots against Detroit, because they were angered Pistons fans.
In the '80s arcade version of Super Dodge Ball, the first match is perfectly fair: each side has one big jock and three little jocks (with small guys on the sidelines). Then as you progress, you have face a four-on-five (with the player outnumbered), then a four-on-six, and the computer has all the big, mean guys on its side. With more big guys on the sidelines ready to hammer you. Throw in (no pun intended) a bunch of uncatchable shots and power shots that only the computer can throw, and you're in for a hard game. Oh, and there's a time limit. If time runs out, you lose the match.
The original Snowboard Kids game for the N64 had no end to this. Unless you wanted to use an Alpine Board and lose all your turning ability, every single race was incredibly difficult due to the AI. The computer-controlled characters perform every turn perfectly and consistently get the item boxes before you (and get better items than you to boot). Tommy and Slash dominated everything, and Shinobin was a complete Game Breaker. Then again, it is an ATLUS game...
- The sequel toned things down somewhat, but the bosses were still as ridiculously difficult as ever. It wasn't enough to simply beat them to the finish line. You also had to manage to collect enough shots, and aim well enough when shooting, to take their HP down.
The billards-like game Lunar Ball gives you limited lives, and you lose one each time you scratch or shoot three times without sinking a ball. In the versus computer mode, the computer has unlimited lives.
In at least one of the WWE Smackdown vs. Raw games, during tag matches the opponent's partner will come in to break up pin attempts every single time they're attempted, unless the player-controlled character goes outside and knocks them off the apron beforehand.
- Oh, that's nothing. In one of the WWE Smackdown games before they came up with the Face/Heel alignment bonuses (you know, the one that lets you either have invulnerability or a really powerful move depending on which you've chosen), the AI would occasionally wig out and enter a sort of impossible mode where *EVERYTHING* you did would be reversed, and they would proceed to whoop your ass all over the place. The only way to break it out would be to stay the hell away until whatever demon possessed it decided to leave.
In Mario Strikers Charged Football the AI doesnt cheat until you hit the final Tournament of the game. It can then attack every single one of your players at once (Using the "Hit" tackle), can use Powerups whilst charging for a megastrike (Including being invulnerable using a Star whilst doing this, something that wears off as soon as you enter the charge meter as a player) and also can score from ridiculous distances.
- Not until the end tournament? The difficulty setting may as well be a "how much will the AI cheat" setting. 3 balls gone in under a second in a Megastrike, pulling powerups out of their ass and using the same powerup twice in a row without getting a second one to name a few. Not to mention karate kicking your players while they aren't even on the screen (which, despite it being technically legal, is hardly fair.) Especially since you always seem to get the bloody banana skins as a powerup.
In Tecmo Bowl if you got Los Angeles as one of your final two opponents, 99% of all players would simply reset. Bo Jackson's legendary unstoppable nature DOUBLED when controlled by the CPU. If the CPU decided it was time to score, even if you called the correct play Jackson would break every tackle and zoom down the field at speeds downright impossible for human controlled players. Tecmo Super Bowl didn't have any Bo level players, but was just as bad about simply running through you whenever it felt like it.
The Pro Evolution Soccer / Winning Eleven series, particularly the 2009 version, is a notable offender for its "scripted" matches. Sometimes, at random, the player's team would get noticeably weaker, passes are not sticking, dribbles will not work, and, most infamously, the opponent's goalie turns into a superhuman. A number of dedicated players have demonstrated that the opponents' cheating speed boost (the easiest to prove) is real by keeping track of the players' statistics: in a scripted match, a quick player of 90s speed stats will lose a running contest by another player whose stats are blatantly lower, thus violating the game's inner physics.

Empire Total War has a very complex economy system. Long story short, the human player is lucky to control 3-4 armies without owning the entire continent of Europe to finance them. Comparatively, the AI will often have 4 armies just for city defense! The most ludicrous example has to be late-game England. They have no trading routes not being raided, they've lost their new-world holdings in America, and all of their ports are being blockaded. Does that stop the AI from having, and I am not making this up, 6 full army stacks defending Edinburgh?
In StarCraft: Brood War, computer opponents in skirmish mode were apparently able to utilize buildings even while they were under construction. The easiest way to test this is to attempt a Dark Templar rush against a Terran opponent; the Terran will be able to use a half-built Comsat Station to detect your invisible units.
- The AI will also always know exactly where your base is. Even on the largest maps with eight randomly chosen starting positions, the AI opponent has no need to scout and will go right for your base as soon as they have an army ready.
- A look at the Triggers in single-player missions will show the AI is literally cheating - most of the time the AI has been given a Trigger set up that always keeps their resources above a certain amount. So the AI can basically build whatever it wants, whenever it wants, and as much of it as it wants without ever running out of minerals and gas, while the player has to mine for them or go broke.
  - The trigger goes (usually) 'If computer player falls under 500 of either resource, add 1000 more of each resource; Reset trigger'.
The Command And Conquer series:
- The first game had AI that could build anywhere it likes, despite the fact that the player can only build next to his own structures. However, in the campaign, the AI only builds structures in the exact same place. This can be exploited by placing your own unit or structure where the original destroyed structure of the enemy stood, preventing them from rebuilding the structure.
  - Try that in Dune 2. The AI will build the structure on top of your blocking units, destroying them.
- As far as Tiberian Dawn goes, the AI in the campaigns wasn't independent, but entirely scripted; bases were pre-built, unit movements were set by time-based triggers, and units/structures were only built to replace what had been lost - it didn't actually think for itself. This explains the lack of a 'Skirmish' mode.
- In Tiberian Sun, GDI has the Firestorm Generator which produces a vertical force field through which nothing can pass, with the limitation that the field can only be turned on for a limited time before running out of energy. Not so for the AI in the campaign—it can keep it on forever.
- The AI in C&C, at least in Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge, also gets a build rate bonus and can built structures much faster than the player.
  - This is probably to compensate for the not-all-that-great AI featured in that game though.
- In the final mission of the Allied campaign in Red Alert 3, the Soviets have a Vacuum Imploder. As with all superweapons, the game allows you to see its countdown so that you know how much time is left before it can be used. However, the enemy blatantly fires the weapon when there are still 30 seconds left on the countdown.
  - That's not cheating. That's the Russians having read the Evil Overlord List.
  - Red Alert 3 takes this to unprecedented levels though. The level of multi-management is impossible to even begin to try to pull off with every unit having special abilities which either toggle weapons or activates an ability. Of course these can not be activated in planning or way point mode and must be activated manually as well. The Defender VX for example, an automated base defense that must be manually switched between anti infantry and anti air, the change takes a few seconds and unless it's already in AA mode that means the damage is already done usually. Unless you have the AI's insight to start the change before the incoming jets even exit the fog of war.
  - To add to that there is the 'focus firing' of special abilities like the Weapon Jammer. Having 20 Hydrofoils turning making 1 unit unable to fire x20 does nothing and usually results in the other couple units near by tearing that fleet apart if you aren't babysitting them. The AI of course would use the same 20 Hydrofoils to jam 20 of your units though of course.
- AI enemies in skirmishes can build superweapons without a pre-existing battle lab built. Regular players lose the ability to build superweapons, even if the construction is in progress, if their battle lab is destroyed. No such restriction for the AI.
- This works against the player when you lay mines with the mine-laying vehicle. A mine laid by the player will barely damage the computer's tanks (maybe 10 percent damage). The same mine deployed by the computer, however, nearly destroys the player's tanks.
- C&C3 - Tiberium Wars is full of this trope, especially in the single-player campaign. The computer almost always has infinite resources, allowing it to pretty much continuously spam waves of units and throw them at your base (of course, it still can't mount a proper attack, but sometimes you get worn down by the sheer numbers). This also means that destroying its economy will have absolutely no effect on its fighting ability, whereas it would cripple a human player. As if this wasn't enough, in some missions the computer will magically pull units out of thin air - you can actually see them appearing at the edge of the map at regular time intervals. And of course there's no such thing as fog of war for the AI - the second you build an expansion somewhere its entire army will change direction and make a beeline for it...
In Stronghold: Crusader, you're not allowed to build ANYTHING when ANY of the enemy's units are near (not just military units). However, when you're sieging the enemy's castle with 15 trebuchets and have 400 swordsmen lined up at his walls, it's very annoying to see the wall instantly rebuild in front of your army.
- The computer also gets free resources and gold in all Stronghold games, meaning you can never starve them out by killing their peasants (you can slow them down, though).
In Railroad Tycoon (the first one), the player can only build stations with two entrances, and they must be opposite of each other. The computer gets an eight-way station, with entrances at right angles and diagonals. Combined with the fact that the computer doesn't actually build any trains (or much of anything else), it's very obvious the computer is playing a different game than you.
In Empire Earth, the computer is basically just cheating constantly.
- You can watch this happen by gathering the resources to level up an age, instructing your main city to upgrade and then hovering over the AI's city. The moment your civilisation goes up an age so does all of the AI - At The Same Time. Very obvious cheating. On the other hand, the AI is known to specifically not level up through the ages when it very obviously can.
- The AI doesn't actually collect resources at all. The villagers mining? Just there for show. It does this on every single difficulty level, too: the only difference is just how many resources they get.
- Also the AI gets a major boost to build speed (at least at higher difficulty levels). It is not uncommon to demolish some part of the enemy city, move on to finish off the rest only to discover the first part was rebuilt in seconds after your troops have left that area.
- The fog of war doesn't have any effect on it, either. Which doesn't sound so bad in and of itself, until you realize that the AI knows exactly what your army's composition is, meaning that if you try to mass a specific type of unit, the AI will respond by massing the exact unit that counters it. Not only that, but the AI can tell where your defenses are; wherever you have an outpost that's underdefended, the AI's army will go. If you lose a base, reload, and then send the bulk of your troops to that base, the AI will just change targets to whatever place you've just left underdefended.
Warhammer 40000: Dawn Of War: Soulstorm continues this fine tradition of Cheating AI Bastardhood, being able to freely and instantly replace its commander's Honour Guard units, and being more than happy to throw those at you at the start of a map; and when controlling the Dark Eldar race, it is able to use offensive Soul Powers on your units no matter where they are on the map, despite the fact that, as Dark Eldar, you can only cast Soul Powers in visible areas outside the fog of war.
- DoW had a third expansion? I didn't know that...
- And let's not forget Dark Crusade, where, as the game goes on, enemies will build more bases in their territories. And they don't just have more bases for you to wipe out, they actually get another unit cap, meaning they can have twice as many units as they normally do.
- The Dark Crusade campaign didn't even try to pretend it was playing by the rules most of the time. Two Necron bases controlling 3 Necron Lords...which are limit 1 per player. Tau bases where they'd been explicitly ignoring the game's basic mechanics and building listening posts with guns on top where there are no strategic points to put them on, as a substitute for turrets.
  - Was it so surprising that Warhammer 40k took a trope Up To Eleven?
In Master of Orion II, the AI is able to spend money to "buy" research instantly. The human player can't.
Leveling terrain in Transport Tycoon is extremely useful, but also extremely expensive. Of course, the AI players don't pay for it. This was not fixed in the Deluxe edition of the game. Other omission: they build roads and railroad much faster than the mouse interface would allow, often denying the player subsidies, awards for being the first company to perform some transportation.
- Then again, that isn't really much of a help to the AI, as the build stupid routes, mismanage routes, and often in the late game, if a new AI company starts, they run out cash before their first vehicle is built.
  - That's actually not the AI's fault. As time goes by, new vehicles are always more expensive and old vehicles become unavailable, but the maximum loan allowed does not increase. Depending on difficulty settings, at some point all available vehicles will cost more to buy than a newly-started company can afford.
- At least you can have AIs that play more or less on human terms by using OpenTTD's NoAI variant. There has even been tournament among AIs made by different programmers. Granted, the AI interface still has commands like "put road at coordinate x,y" which permits the construction of functions that build roads near-instantaneously. And then there's Rondje, which is a truly insidious AI that leeches off the routes of others and sells trucks at one end to buy them at the other because it's cheaper than having them go back and forth.
One of the oldest and most blatant uses of this is in the old NES game Conflict. The difference in difficulty levels was in how many resource points you and the computer received at the start of the scenario. In EVERY SINGLE DIFFICULTY, the computer started with significantly more points than you, allowing them to build better units much more quickly. Slightly offset by the player being allowed to go first and occupy cities a turn early, which could help a little, but generally not enough. Still a very fun game to play against human opponents, though. The sequel wasn't nearly as good.
- An oddity of the difficulty levels was that on a few maps, level 2 was actually easier than level 1. Map #5 had the AI start with 20000 on level 1 but only 10000 on level 2 (and you started with 5000 on either level).
A lesser known game Romance of the Three Kingdoms, particularly VIII, had a system for which tactics of officers had a percent chance of not only hitting but adding status effects based on the experience the officer had in the tactic as well as the surrounding terrain. The computer, on the other hand, seemed to completely ignore these rules and simply chose for itself whether or not the tactic would hit, and the player would be utterly screwed. Arrowstorm is a prime example of this. A bow tactic that the computer can use effectively eliminating a nice chunk of soldiers under your command and throw them into confusion at the tender level of 1 in the worst possible terrain; where as you'd be lucky to deal any damage to them much less confuse them when the terrain favors you and you've maxed the skill out.
In Advance Wars 1 and 2, the computer can always see where you are in Fog Of War even if you're out of their vision range. (You can still hide from them by hiding in a forest or reef). This was fixed in later titles.
In one particular mission of Field Commander (which is the PSP version of Advance Wars), when your units get too close to the enemy HQ, they randomly spawn 3 tanks out of nowhere, and even taunt you about it!
Galactic Civilizations II: In a rare subversion, the AI actually does not cheat until above normal difficulty; people have examined the program files to prove this. The problem is, Gal Civ 2 has an AI that is something like Deep Blue's worst nightmare. It doesn't NEED to cheat to be extremely difficult. =[Gal Civ's AI]= is a Magnificent Bastard - it doesn't cheat, but it still kicks your ass repeatedly. It even rubs the fact in your face!
- There is a limited application of this trope in the random events. Some, though not most, of the random events work to "balance" the game, where a race that's behind will get the bonuses if there's a race that's dominating the game. The thing is, this situation is just as likely to help the player as it is to hurt the player.
'Swashbucklers: Blue vs Grey' has two examples of computer cheating: in naval battles, it has unlimited ammo for special weapons. You don't. In sword-fighting mini-game both you and computer has access to powerful two-hit combo. If you get hit once, you won't be able to block the second hit. Computer, however, can block it.
A particularly obvious example is the (otherwise quite playable) flash game Warfare 1917. While the variety of units with their differing build times camouflage the build rate skulduggery, it becomes painfully obvious that the Computer is a Cheating Bastard when your restrict buildable units to tanks only. Right about the time your and the computer's behemoths meet in the middle (and you're halfway through building your next one), out pops a second tank on the computer's side.
In Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, during campaign scenarios, the computer will give TONS of resources to computer sides to keep them going by paying tribute from nowhere. This is, shall we say, rather frustrating if you're trying to siege someone.
- The AI can have Simon the Killer Ewok, a unit obtainable only by using a cheat code. The AI using cheat codes seems to be the logical extreme of this trope.
In the World War II grand strategy game Hearts of Iron 2 and its expansions, the AI's ships have unlimited range (leading, for instance, to Brazilian amphibious assaults on Cyprus). Moreover, the AI can see everything, and its forces gain organisation during movement, while the player's forces lose organisation. This to an extent compensates for the AI's ridiculous incompetence otherwise, but is still annoying.
The final boss of MechCommander 2 breaks not only the rules of its own game, but the rules of its entire well-established setting. The joker has a hundred-ton Atlas equipped with jump jets. Granted, there is a canon 100 tonner with jump jets... but it isn't the Atlas.
In one of many examples from Star Trek: Birth of the Federation, the computer doesn't actually need Food to make its population grow - it's possible to capture one of the computer's planets only to discover that it has no way of producing Food and therefore should have no way to support the population it somehow acheived under computer control.
Warcraft 2 also did this, and both are likely caused by the fact that the AI is not affected by things that affect how something is displayed on screen, as they resolve the data directly.
- Playing the game at the LOWEST SPEED greatly reduces the computer's ability to think. Most people automatically boost the speed up to max because they think this will help them. It won't. It is probably the biggest factor in the difficulty of Warcraft 2. It may be painful for a twitch player, but it's a lot less painful then dealing with an enemy force that can instantly focus targets to kill all of your guys easily before you can even think, or spam heal themselves to full in seconds.
- A particularly painful memory is of the Human vs Human mission. Even with a whole group of Paladins, you're stuck healing one unit at a time, a click for every cast. Meanwhile the computer pairs its wounded Paladins off so that they're simultaneously healing each other.
- Warcraft 2's skirmish mode also had the annoying tendency for all the AI players to gang up on you and only very occasionally attack each other, in contrast to its contemporary Command And Conquer counterparts.
- Last but not least, when the Player Is A Cheating Bastard, The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard. That is to say, all cheat codes used by the player also affect the AI (excepting the god-mode cheat for your units).
- The AI in the original Warcraft cheats as well. It can see the whole map, as well as your invisible units, has infinite gold and wood, and can build more units than their farms can support. It's possible that it cheats in other ways as well.
Pure subverts this. The AI does not need to cheat since the AI is not actually playing the game with the intent of beating the player. Instead, the AI is designed to stay with a certain range of the player, assuming ideal conditions (ie they don't crash or get interfered with). These ranges vary over the course of the race. On the other hand, theoretically given enough time, the player may seem to be cheating.
I once played Halo Wars unwittingly on Normal difficulty against only A Is. Before I even had enough resources to get to the third Covenant age, one of my enemies (playing the Brutes) had not only a crapload of attacking units, but a shielded main base, and a FREAKING SCARAB! Suffice to say, when I saw that happen, I simply quit the match.
- This means he had to have ammassed at least 5000 resources for the Scarab alone. And I had at least five upgraded Warehouses (could have something to do with the fact that he was using the 125 resource Brutes only while I was using a wide variety of units. Either way, I have no clue how he ammassed so many resources so quickly, or how he trained that many units so fast.)
- I was given the warning that he was creating a Scarab. I naturally charged his base to stop him. However, by the time I arrived, he already had a massive attack planned out with at least twenty Brutes and the aforementioned Scarab. He must've followed how he auto-magically pulls units outta his ass for no real reason.
Z (Zed) cheats openly; in the later levels, factories under enemy control can produce units at a much faster rate that yours can. The countdown clock at the front of each factory (visible to the player) gives this little chestnut away. Also, the enemy base at the beginning of each level is defended by far more potent weaponry than your own.
In Sins Of A Solar Empire, you can "anonymously place bounties on anyone that's not your allies" to entice the pirates (if enabled) to go after them. However, if you dare place a bounty on an AI's head, they know immediately who it was and will echo a threat. They will also, with their unlimited credits, place a smidge higher bounty on your head. So you're basically auctioning off to the pirates who gets to be attacked. And you don't want the pirates attacking you.
- I'm not sure the AI actually does know. Even if they did, I wouldn't be scared of a counterattack; the AI in Sins is So Bad Its Horrible. If pirates do come, just get your fleet into position and gobble up the EXP. Finally, to avoid the whole mess, don't place any bounty at all: most of the time, the AI will just squabble amongst themselves and leave you alone. (I'm not saying the computer doesn't cheat; I'm just saying the game's too easy for that to matter.)
- Or just put 500 bounty on 2 AI factions that are not allies, and watch them keep upping one another until bounty time is over.
  - That works. the AI doesnt know who bountied it, it increases the bounty on whoever has the highest bounty (other than itself) which will probably be you unless you put bounty one two people.
- The pirates have an actual base, and if you get strong enough, you can attack them. While you're in the process of attacking all their forces, if a bounty is placed on your head at the right time, an entire fleet just appears out of nowhere, a good distance AWAY from the pirate's base, and attacks yours.
The Atari 2600 version of Backgammon had a setup mode where you could customize a board layout and play from there. If you put all the computer's pieces on the bar and blocked all six points it could normally move to, it would roll double nines.
- That's another trope entirely.
Abused in Blood Bowl. Which is incredibly annoying, as pretty much every action in the game involves rolling a dice. Don't expect your chaos to fight as well as human (when the choas specilise in it and humans are just The Mario).. And good luck trying to injure them the amount of times they do
- It gets completely hilarious when you play in real time mode, where a single lucky roll on their part won't make you miss a turn, and you easily win the game 10 - 0.
Dark Legions featured a unit called phantoms which were completely invisible on the battle map unless an enemy seer was in range. On the real time tactical map they are only visible if they are fighting a seer or when they attack. While this might be true against a human opponent, the computer knows exactly where a phantom is and goes straight after it.
The whole dang point in AI War: Fleet Command. It's explicitly stated that AI played by different rules than humans. Want example? You can't construct level 5 ships, ever. And for level 4 ships, you have to capture advanced factory from enemies, which if you accidentally destroy all of them, then too bad. Another: you need to build ships, AI don't. They can just teleport it through warp gate.
Lost Magic. The Computer can fire spells off across the entire map, recharges instantly, and gets spawn circles with infinitely respawning enemies. You, however, have pitiful mana recharge, get maybe nine monsters top, and all these shiny spells have pitiful range and cost a lot of mana once you get them. Considering you're also Stalked By The Bell, prepare for some Nintendo Hard.
In the final mission ot the first Act of Age Of Empires 3, the enemy's harbor generates one caravel every few minutes...even if you destroy the dock...even if there isn't a single other enemy unit or building on the map.
Black and White 2: The enemy gets armies from nowhere. Best observable on the last island: If you destroy his city with the use of wonders or your creature to eradicate every army and all the military buildings and then send an army yourself to conquer it, the enemy gets various new armies which appear in a place where no buildings are left.
Supreme Commander had a selling point out of the fact the AI didn't cheat in skirmish mode, using all the same rules as the players. People complained about the easy AI and in the Expansion they vastly improved the original AI (GPG reported that the new AI against the old won matches in 10 minutes in the same difficulty) AND gave the player the option to let the AI cheat, if he's good enough to still think it was easy.
- Also, Sup Com is one of the few games where the player can be a cheating bastard... in the Campaign Mode. Since the maps are divided in sections and grew at each Objective completed, but the AI of the larger unaccessible area will not attack you unless you "enlarge" the map, you can make the objective linger and build an enormous force while teching up your base and economy, to make the next Objective easier. Of course, some hardcore players consider this cheating and think you should complete objectives as soon as possible... but some maps seem to have been built expecting the player to take advantage of this.
In Demigod the computer is not just a cheating bastard, he's a blatant one. And you can see this right away. In the higher difficult settings, any ENEMY AI will start the game with more than double your own HP and several times your health regeneration, and can buy Artifacts the moment they capture the Artifact Shop, where the cheapest ones goes for 8K gold (you start with 1K, and only killing another Demigod will net you a comparable amount... the enemy will buy artifacts even without killing a single Demigod). That is so noticeable that one of the main strategies against the harder A Is is to get the Artifact Shop flag and NEVER let go, forfeiting all others (even the much needed XP bonus flag, that puts you in close league with the XP the AI gets, and with it the AI gets nearly 50% more XP than you). This is because the Artifacts are so powerful that a Demigod fully geared on them can stand against you and all your allies at the same time, while surrounded by your armies and between two Arrow Towers (the most powerful against the Demigods) and just his health regeneration would brush off everything you're throwing at him... And if it is Sedna, you can forfeit any hope of killing her once she gets her first artifact, because she just WON'T die.

This is Older Than The NES. The famous "hacker epic", ''The Story of Mel'', involves an extremely primitive, early computer game being coded to cheat. There is no reason to believe this story is fiction.
- Beyond just that. The titular individual has been identified as one Mel Kaye, who's signature is on several pieces of paperwork for the company in question at that time.
The 1982 John Carpenter movie The Thing introduces the main character by showing him playing chess against a computer. He makes some snarky comment about how cabin fever is getting to the computer, whose next move results in checkmate. In frustration, he pours his drink into the computer (causing a small sparky explosion) and declares it a "cheating bitch."
The Kobayashi Maru test from Star Trek pulls this if the cadet attempts to save the ship, spawning multiple enemies who are a lot stronger than they would be in the real world. According to one novel, once Scotty found a way to beat the ships (by exploiting this break between the computer and reality) the test kept spawning ships until Scotty's own finally blew up. Several games allow you to take the test yourself and of course, the computer cheats thoroughly there too unless you use a code to turn your character into the one man who actually beat the test.
Mr. The Hedgehog seems to have some trouble with this. In Sonic Shuffle, you can steal cards from opponents' hands, though you can't see what cards they are until you take them. Evidently, the computer players can see them, as they always take the exact card they need. (Though they apparently can't tell when you've gotten the penalty that turns all your cards into Eggman cards.)
- Not to mention when the AI enters a card battle, not only will it choose exactly the card it needs, but it has the frame-perfect timing to beat the monsters with an exact number, winning not only a Precioustone, but also a Force Jewel. EVERY! SINGLE! TIME! Not to mention the AI players button-tap icredibly fast, and are able to easily escape the crocodiles in the nigh-impossible Croc-Attack minigame.
- In Sonic Rivals, the computer-controlled rival will TELEPORT when it can't be bothered to do a certain part of a level, or if it wants a cheap lead. Also, regardless of who they are, the AI rivals will always be faster than you.
  - Luckily, Sonic Rivals 2 does not suffer from this trope.
- In Sonic Adventure, Tails's levels require you to race someone (usually Sonic) to the goal. Because you can fly over almost everything, it is easy to see your opponents' Rubber Band AI. It is most evident in Windy Valley, where you can jump down from the start at the top then fly to the finish at the bottom and Sonic will zoom through the stage to keep up with you.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City suffers from Divine Driving Skills in the Malibu Bank Robbery mission "The Driver," where, barring crashes with police cars, your opponent is an infallible driver, and those crashes have to be engineered by you or unexpectedly from the side. He will always dodge head-on collisions. He also recovers abnormally fast from said crashes too, sometimes being able to turn back onto the road without even coming to a stop.
- That mission also suffers from the 'Race Ringer' in that you are driving a generic family sedan while your opponent is driving a badass souped-up muscle car.
  - The icing on the cake is, however, that you do this mission to recruit this guy to be your getaway driver, since he's allegedly the best (already a lapse in logic, since if you could beat him in a race you've proven that you're a better driver than him anyway), and, five seconds before he would have become necessary, he gets shot. Making the entire mission a complete waste
  - AND this mission suffered from a glitch where occasionally you would fall through a bridge as you were just about to win. On the other hand, this glitch can affect the AI opponent as well, causing him to fall through the bridge and make the mission laughably easy.
- Racing missions in all the Grand Theft Auto games also suffer from the fact that traffic exists only around the player character. If you let the opponents out of your sight you'll never catch them again because they won't have to avoid traffic anymore. Inversely, if you manage to get far enough ahead of your opponents, they'll suddenly move a lot faster, because they no longer have to worry about traffic. You better damn well not spin out, because they'll be on your ass in no time if you do.
Guitar Hero III has become very well known for this trope. This editor has experienced it himself when battling Tom Morello on Medium mode. Slash and Lou are very easy because they have more than enough notes to screw up on if you hit them with a power-up. Tom Morello, however, has just enough notes that, no matter how much he screws up, he will never lose.
- If you don't use a power-up, they will NEVER miss a single note.
Flash Game Example, but slightly explainable: In Thing Thing 3 and onward, the enemies can shoot through walls and platforms if the gun is long enough. But shooting through the platforms could be passed off as the shooter peeking the gun over the edge.
- But it's played straight when the enemies never seem to miss much at all.
Etherlords II is more-or-less a knockoff of Magic: The Gathering. This means that the player has a "deck" of spells to play; you'd think the computer functions the same way, but, no. Every computer player has a preset response to the possible threats you throw at them. If you don't, they simply spam an attack combo over and over and over, regardless of resources and never running out of cards. Take one fight: On Turn one, each player has one resource. On it's first turn, the computer summons a creature costing two. It then casts a spell that costs another two, and a third for another two. So the computer has spent six in one turn, roughly 8 turns before you will be able to do the same. The computer will proceed to do this every round, for the rest of the fight.
In Feeding Frenzy 2, there are poisonous millows that will reverse your controls when eaten, and a meter will have to fill up before you can spit it out and go back to normal. The other fish? They just spit out the poisoned millows as soon as they eat them.
The Wii game Family Party: 30 Great Games has this in extremely high amounts early on, where the computers are occaisionally (and purely by chance)able to do events such as The 15-Tier Jump (which has the most vague instructions) and The Cushion (a balancing act - yes, the computer gets THIS one easy as well) with no issues at all. combine this with the fact that if there's a tie for first place at the end of a set of games, you lose automatically, and you've got an irritated Wii owner wanting to chuck his wiimote at the TV. Thankfully, this is much less prevailant in the Shooting and Variety Areas, which have to be unlocked by WINNING ONCE IN ALL OF THE AREAS BEFORE THEM.
Referenced in Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Droids, when explaining the dealer droid. These are programmed to deal for sabacc, and are occasionally told to ensure a house victory by, you guessed it, cheating like a bastard. This is usually reserved to gambling establishments that routinely frisk their guests, because droids are expensive and cheated customers are prone to using their weapons, which are designed to inflict damage.
- Similarly, cut content in Knights of the Old Republic II has Atton accuse T3-M4 of counting cards and forcing him to go first in pazaak (meaning he's more likely to bust early and the NPC knows where he will have to stand). The latter was done away with in the sequel, but the former is universally true. There's also a guy in the first game who actually does cheat... more than the computer usually cheats, that is. Fortunately the player can cheat by saving before each game!
In a season 3 episode of Lost, Mikhail says that the computer cheats at chess.
- That doesn't stop Locke from beating it anyway (and if you notice◊, he didn't actually have a checkmate, it could have been blocked with two pieces, but if you follow White's best-case scenario, he'd have lost in two of Black's moves, anyway)
  - Maybe the computer resigned, though this would be unusual for a computer. A checkmate would have been notated as Re1# (or maybe Re1++) instead of Re1+.
This is part of the premise of Extra Mode in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, the 9th game in the Touhou series. In Extra Mode, the AI opponent is invulnerable at the start of each stage, until a timer runs down to zero, with the timer getting longer in each successive stage. To compensate, it is also on an AI Roulette and extremely weak, so it will usually die within seconds of the timer running out.
- A common flaw in the Phantasmagoria installments is that the AI can literally dodge like the machine it is, meaning that barring the use of an AI Breaker, a computer opponent can choose when to eat a bullet.
In Spyro 3, you have to race a gang of rhynocs to get a dragon egg. The good news is that you get a special skateboard that can do turbo boosts. The bad news is that they have this too. It's even more frusterating when you find out at the start of the race that they can automatically use the boosts whenever they want while you need to use tricks in order to fill up the turbo meter at the start and whenever it gets empty.
In every Splinter Cell game, enemies alerted to your presence will never miss when firing at you with a pistol, even if the enemy in question is outside the range of the player's scoped rifle... Even if the enemy is far outside the range of the game's draw distance. Oddly, they will occasionally miss if shooting with a rifle.
The flight sim IL-2 Sturmovik cheats a lot (even discounting nasty surprises from the random mission generator, like being strafed on the airfield, before you can even get off the ground). CPU planes ignore much of the hardcore similationist aspects of flight, no matter what settings you use: they never fall into spin (which allows CPU to pull fairly ridiculous aerobatics even on planes unsuited for that); their pilots do not suffer from blackout/redout and have 360-degree field of vision, allowing them to unerringly foil surprise attacks and notice you even in heavy clouds; they pretty much ignore the severe winds and other adverse effects of the weather; they also can fly at maximum engine power as much as they want, while human-controlled planes, on the other hand, risk overheating and damaging your engine on realistic settings.
ReBoot is a show about the inhabitants of a computer, where a lost game results in damage to the system and (what is effectively) death of the participants. As you can imagine, they will pull every trick possible to keep the user from winning games. This includes things that are so unfair that it's surprising the User even keeps on playing on that computer, like moving ammo and extra lives from where they're normally situated.
- ... leading to Bob encouraging Matrix to break the game rules when caught in a game parody of Pokemon/Dragonballs and the user is clearly going to win. "You're a renegade! CHEAT!!!"
The "enhancements" to the Sentinel remake Zenith include fog, which can be so thick as to make it difficult or impossible for the player to see what's happening; the game can be totally unplayable because of this. Of course, the Sentinel and any Sentries are totally unaffected by even the densest fog...
Hearts (the card game) for Windows is an excessive cheater. Realistically, in a Hearts game you can expect to end up with the Queen of Spades 25% of the time, whether initially or by having it passed to you. When playing against three computer-controlled opponents, you will receive the Queen 75% of the time, generally when she is passed to you. The only times when you do not see her in your hand are when you will also have the King and Ace of Spades. The Jack, Queen, king and Ace of Hearts also seem locked to the player's position.
- Are you talking about an earlier version of Hearts? The Windows Vista version doesn't seem that unfair.
- Holding the Queen of Spades isn't a disadvantage, if she's properly guarded; just the opposite, in fact, to an experienced card player. More disturbing with MS Hearts is how the computer always seems to know the right moment to drop Her Majesty on the player's unguarded Ace, knows what other suit to play so that a different player can drop the Queen on your winning card, and knows when it should take the Queen (or a heart) before it's time because there's a chance that the player might shoot the moon. Yes, I've seen the computer randomly and unneccessarily take the Queen of Spades when I had a dominant hand that it shouldn't have been able to see.
Cartoons often have games cheating to exaggerate how hard they are. Especially if they're coin-guzzling arcade machines.
- One example is in The Simpsons, when Milhouse is playing a Waterworld arcade game. He gets a game over after just taking one step, cries "What a gyp!" and just puts more quarters in the machine.
  - That wasn't a joke about video games, it was a Take That against Water World: the game costs a ludicrous amount of money in return for a pitiful amount of action.
Teal'c encounters this trope in a season 8 episode of Stargate SG 1. He says a computer simulation is too easy and the computer takes him at his word. Hijinks ensue.
The Doujin game Mikuman which is a parody of Megaman. Rin faces against the boss of the second stage, Mario, who literally cheats, by using SAVE STATES each times you hit him. In truth, you are suppose to lose, until Miku saves you.
And of course, there would be the time when the computer is on the recieving end of a Curbstomp Battle and decide to just blatently cheat by freezing, glitching and crashing the game. Not even Michael Jordan is that sore a loser.
A Nightmare On Elm Street: Dream Warriors for the PC and the Commodore 64 bluntly advertised it's cheating as a feature listed on the back of the game box, warning potential players "Freddy cheats!"

On British pub fruit machines, when a player spins a winning combination he is given the option to go higher/lower for the chance to win the next biggest payout. The machine decides in advance how far the player will be allowed to go, and there will come a point where a player who chooses to go higher/lower is guaranteed to lose regardless of the option taken. This has been proven by the Fairplay campaign, who ran the fruit machine software on a PC emulator, saving the game state before the choice is made. The machine cabinets are now required to display the message "This machine may occasionally offer a choice where the player has no chance of success".
Similarly, with many games on pub quiz machines, when a player gets to the prize board the game ostensibly requires manual dexterity - for example, on Bullseye a player must hit a prize segment with a dart, and Battleships involves hitting it with a revolving turret. However, even when aimed perfectly, the game decides whether or not the shot will hit.
Stacker machines actually decide—before the game has even been played—whether the player is allowed to win a major prize or not; this means it's possible to "waste" winning games, as well as make your way to the end but never have a chance of winning. Though this is understandable, as the major prizes tend to be expensive things like game consoles or MP 3 players, it is cheating nonetheless. The machine doesn't cheat for the minor prizes, but that's because nobody cares about winning hair scrunchies.
- In case you had any doubt, there's no warning of this (at least in Canada).
  - Or in the USA. I'm also sure pretty much any "stop the light" game jumps if they decide you aren't gonna hit the jackpot. But I can't prove it.
  - The ones with the spinning light and the 4 stations at each machine and the light between 2 rings you gotta hit for the jackpot have been legit for me, I remember when I was kid going though like 25 tokens and hitting every machines jackpot, on all 4 sides on mulitple machines, and walking out with thousands in tickets. But the payout for these games isn't nearly as high which would explain the lack of rigging.
Claw Machines. Good lord. It's amazing how many people don't know this, but almost all claw machines are rigged in various ways. For instance, many machines lower the claw slowly and then pull it up quickly, tending to drop the prize with this sudden motion. The most common method of rigging a machine is to rig the claw so that it only actually closes tight enough to grip a prize every so often. If the machine is set to grip a prize, an experienced player will almost always win...but these instances are rare. On some machines, you get a chance to win every X amount of plays. Someone in-the-know could let other people play until the machine is ready to spit out a prize, then swoop in and take it. However, most modern machines use a Random Number Generator.
- Compulsive gamblers often believe that slot machines will eventually get "hot" and start dispensing wins. Needless to say this isn't true, but Claw Machines are prone to malfunction. I know from experience that if you hang around watching other people play long enough, you will eventually spot one that consistently grips harder, or jerks up slower than it should. Then you can win with regularity.
  - Some claw machine setups cheat more than others. I saw one where the prises were sunglasses. BARE SUNGLASSES. Even if you did pick one up, it was guaranteed to fall back down during the motion of the claw, which would first move to the wall, THEN to the drop of point, always dropping the sunglasses when it hit the wall, bouncing it off said wall an back far away.
  - In fact the rigged claw bit is so prevalent lately that many games have a notice saying that "the strength of the claw is set at the factory and not adjustable." This of course means that it's barely strong enough to win, in theory.
  - Subverted by some machines, though rare, that will allow you to play until you win. Granted, the prizes aren't always that great and you might be there a while, but at least you get something for your perseverance.
  - Usually the schtick is to drop too far and or close while rising up, thus ensuring it can never get a good grip. certain very early claw games would let you stop the descent when you want, then close before lifting.
  - Then this troper must be very lucky as in one oversize claw machine with oversized stuffed toys, one of the three claw ends snagged at the clothing of this large yellow bear. It went into the chute, and now my PHP 25 has given me a PHP 2000 worth of stuffed toy.
  - Machines in Japan are even worse. There are two additional types of "claw games". One has just a hook that slowly rotates constantly and barely curves upward enough to hold onto the prize you grab, and another is a rod that has minuscule, flexible prongs poking out the end that you need to naviage into a small hole on the prize and delicately hold onto it until it reaches the prize slot. Needless to say, most of these prizes end up falling down almost immediately after you manage to snag them.
Many arcade games are programmed to only make the jackpot or grand prize possible to hit once out of so many games. This is usually set via some kind of mechanism inside the machine, behind the coin box, or in the operator menu activated by a button behind the coin box for games with a monitor. One common implementation is to have a setting can go from 1 (or some other small number) to some maximum value X, or alternatively a "difficulty level" with each level mapping to a numerical setting in that range. Every game, the machine rolls a random number from 0 to X-1. If the roll is less than the setting, the jackpot can be won on that game; otherwise, the machine rigs the game to be Unwinnable. The other common implementation is to allow setting a minimum number of games that must pass since the last time the jackpot was won before it becomes winnable again. This is why some arcades will have one of those "stop the light" games with a four-digit progressive jackpot that hasn't been hit in over 1,000 games in spite of skilled players who can hit the jackpot at least once every 10 attempts on the same game at other arcades.
Many video slot machines are programmed with weighted reels, so that some stops are more common than others. This is virtually always used to make "near misses" happen many, MANY times more often than an actual win, in order to make the player think he's close to winning and continue playing. For example, the "Red White & Blue" slot machine pays out the jackpot for hitting a red 7, a white 7, and a blue 7, from left to right. But for one configuration, each reel only has a 1/64 chance of hitting the properly-colored 7, a 3/64 chance of hitting the blank right above it, and a 3/64 chance of hitting the blank right below it - which means the proper combination is 27 times more likely to line up just above the pay line than it is to be actually hit, as well as 27 times more likely to line up just below the pay line. (And this is a milder case; it's not uncommon to make the adjacent blanks each 6 times more likely than the jackpot space.) In addition, the white and blue 7's are 6-7 times more likely to show up in each of the other reels - red-blue-white is 49 times more likely to be hit than red-white-blue, and blue-red-white is 126 times more likely.

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