Discussion Main / UnwinnableByMistake

Unwinnable by Insanity and Unwinnable by Mistake were merged to Unintentionally Unwinnable per TRS.

Previous discussions:

• Unintentionally Unwinnable
• Unwinnable by Mistake
• Unwinnable by Insanity

Unwinnable By Mistake has been merged into Unintentionally Unwinnable per this TRS discussion

Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Minor cleanup needed, started by Yamikuronue on Jan 15th 2011 at 9:25:15 PM

I faced an unwinnable by mistake (I hope) error in Loom. I don't know about the version with the VO, though, I mean the ancient DOS game.

In the glass makers town, when you walk past the huge skythe, you can click it and you get the four notes for sharpening things. If you don't look at it, you can walk past just fine, whereas normally you cannot proceed to a point of no return unless you have all your spells.

When you stand in the smithy, later in the game, watching the smith finishing the last sword for the clerics, you have to unsharpen it. If you forgot to get the spell from the scythe you can stand there and wait for all eternity, the cleric and the smith will keep chatting, but you won't get caught and cannot win the game.

No mention of the first battle against Ramsus in Xenogears? The game gives you NO warning that you're about to fight a very hard boss, and puts a save point after the Point of No Return (I would have tried leveling up, but I couldn't do that since my access to enemies was cut off). And it stacks many factors against you - one of the weakest characters in the game, Bart, is paired up with a healer who has very weak spells and misses half the time (thanks for nothing, Margie!), while Ramsus is paired with Miang, who CANNOT be killed (neither can Margie, but she sucks and isn't much help in this fight), and heals Ramsus fully each turn, which means that you have to defeat him in one blow. It's an almost impossible battle if Bart is underleveled or poorly equipped. It wasn't quite "unwinnable" since I managed to beat him, but I lost count of many times I lost the battle.

"At one point in Area 6, you can shoot up through a ceiling and enter a door, but can't go back because you can't shoot down. The only way out is suicide, if that is possible."

OBJECTION! That is a one-way door to before, there so you don't have to trek through same-old same-old on your way to the next level. Most were designed to be passable once that level's powerup has been aquired. In this case one can climb the wall, turn around and shoot down.

Removed the following examples

• There is a infamous situation in Ocarina Of Time that can occur in the Water Temple. Due to the design of the level, it's possible to use up all currently-available keys while failing to unlock a particular door. You can't get to any more keys, since all the rest are behind a door that requires a key to unlock. Since finding your way around the place is basically trial-and-error, this particular Unwinnable situation is annoyingly easy to stumble into
• Also, if you fail to get the key on the bottom floor of the main room that requires the Megaton Hammer, before raising the water level, the level will become unwinnable. This is also true for several other keys.

It is impossible for the Water Temple to become unwinnable. I don't know where this idea comes from, but there are always enough keys. This is without including sequence breaks, of course. The second example is rather odd, as there are no places to use the Megaton Hammer in the Water Temple.

Come to think of it, I should probably cut the Gerudo Training Ground example, too. The entry itself admits that it can't become unwinnable.

Just removed this (again):

• Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum has one, albeit very convoluted. There is a trade on a remote island that players can make to get a German Magikarp - if done while the traded Pokemon is the one in the team that knows Surf while nothing in the party knows Teleport or Fly, this can cause the player to become stuck. Even then, though, this is only if they are totally lacking in Rare Candies (since given the timing of the trade just one level-up could potentially evolve Magikarp into Gyarados, which can learn Surf) as well as all three of the fishing rods while with a team with nothing that can learn the needed move or Fly.
  • And given that the Pokemon that needs to be traded can only be caught by fishing (or hatching an egg, but its evolved form can also only be found in the wild by fishing) and depositing Key Items in the PC is a thing of the distant past, this would also mean that the player would have had to trade with another player at some point prior to making this in-game trade.
  • In Ruby and Sapphire, you'll get stuck if you fly to the end of Victory Road, go backwards through the cave without knowing Surf, and jump off one of the ledges. This was fixed in Emerald.
    • Could you potentially simply fight wild Pokémon until your own Pokémon use up all their PP and "struggle" themselves into fainting, thus forcing you to wake up at the nearest Pokémon Center, albeit with half your money gone?

According to the archived discussion, this is actually By Design.

An example was added recently for Diablo II, stating that restarting too many times results in "bad dead bodies", which I was unfamiliar with. I tried looking for information on it and as far as I can gather this only comes up with hacked items and edited saves. Can you get this error when you're not hacking?

Cause if it only comes up with hacking, then it's not an example.

The Metroid Prime "Artifact of Warrior" example may be By Design. Otherwise, why would the port keep it?

Cut the Broken Sword 2 example after some thought. This isn't a conventional sequential Lost Forever: One should have to go to some trouble to turn an critical item that can be picked up into an item that can't be picked up. Since it always happens at the same time, and since the refusal is so blunt — "your character sees no need to carry that"? — it seems comparable to the classic By Design example of the door that turns into graffiti after you cross its threshold.

It seems the Sega Genesis version of Bubble and Squeak is Unwinnable by Mistake due to the springs being less "springy" than their Amiga counterparts. One of the early desert levels is thus impossible to complete as a result, rendering it impossible to finish the game.

Please correct me if I’m mistaken.

Removed Rune Factory example:

• Staying overnight at the end of winter in a cave that's on an island... crashes the game.

because that's not Unwinnable, that's just a bug. Had it worked as intended, there would always be a way out— at worst, you could camp on the island until next winter.

Removed the following examples

100% Completion and Unwinnable are different things entirely. I left the examples where 100% Completion altered something (giving a different ending or a bonus level) as these are closer to the true spirit of the trope.

Are we sure the Metal Gear example isn't by Design? It's a Stealth Game, so shooting anyone is dubious. Shooting hostages (who are presumably innocent or on your side) would be a double fault. So it is entirely possible that the game blocking the win for people who shoot too many hostages is on purpose. It's a Videogame Cruelty Punishment with a severe unintended consequence.

Cut this and put it here for now. Not sure that this is a genuine example.

• According to part 3 of AVGN's Castlevania review, the Nintendo 64 version of the game does not let you continue if you pick up one certain item before another. Specifically, if you pick up a bottle of Mandragora before the first time you pick up a bottle of Magical Nitro, the game becomes unwinnable, because you can't hold both items at the same time, and you can't put down either item. To continue with the game, you must use Nitro at a specific place. Good luck throwing it away, because unlike most other items, you can't. You simply must use it. But you can never pick it up if you already picked up Mandragora, because you can't throw that away either.
  • To be fair you have to go out of your way to do this. You receive the key to the room where the Mandragora is stored RIGHT BEFORE you first pick up the Magical Nitro. Essentially, this means taking the key, turning around and back tracking through the entire level instead of entering the next room and playing as normal. Although this doesn't make this example any less true, whoever figured this out was looking for unwinnable situations...oh. And this trouper haven't played this game in years but doesn't see why if you were to pick up the Mandragora you couldn't just drop it off at either wall that can be blown up.

Why does the Serria folder keep being changed?

Okay. a new Bioshock 2 example was added. I suspect it's really by Design, since it seems to be cleaning the gene pool (so to speak — it takes stupid behavior to trigger it) and since it seems to include programming that isn't normal.

Anyone else have an opinion?

How about IRL examples? I'm asking 'cause I was in a situation that could fall under this trope: I went through a not-so-standard (composite) bureaucratic procedure, that, when "finished", due to the flawed process of the procedure, in addition to not making me achieve the goal which this procedure is meant for, it rendered the goal impossible to achieve. So, would this qualify for this trope? personally, I think it really does fit the concept of the trope, but your mileage may vary and I am asking to tell how much and to which end it varies, so i would be able to decide if I should put it in the example list, or not. (TL;DR - ...fit for the trope, or not?). Could provide the exact details, if needed.

About Sonic 3 and the quarter-pipe:

It's Unwinnable in a minor sense when it happens because, if you get stuck in there and can't get out, then you can't finish the level and are definitely going to lose a life when the timer runs out.

It becomes truly unwinnable if you take the instructions in the game's manual at face value. The manual tells you to reset the game if you get in that situation — and if you reset, then you automatically lose the game you were playing before you reset. (Bonus points in that the zone where this glitch happens is some distance from the start of the game.)

So, this example is kind of meta.

About the Link to the Past example that got cut: even if you can always get back to the Dark World via the Hyrule Temple, the cut example appears to involve a place in the Light World that requires a certain flute to go anywhere from there. If you get there by Sequence Breaking with the mirror and some displaced Dark scenery before you get that flute, you can't even get to the Temple, or anywhere else, if I understood correctly — in which case it really is Unwinnable.

This is why ending entries with So Yeah is discouraged.

Okay, so...why don't any of the folders work? It's been bugging me for a while.