History Main / Instant180DegreeTurn

*** To be fair, he wasn't complaining about having to turn, he was complaining about how the game forces you to manually face the opponent, and the above quote was about Spike saying 'you don't automatically face the enemy in a real fight'...

* ''[[CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight Symphony of the Night]]'' is one of several ''{{Castlevania}}'' games to avert this. Alucard takes a few frames to turn around.
** Soma, Julius, Yoko, and Alucard do take a few frames to turn around in ''[[CastlevaniaSorrow Dawn of Sorrow]]'', as well.
** Albus, from ''[[CastlevaniaOrderOfEcclesia Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia]]'' also has a turn around animation. Turning back and forth rapidly results in a wonderful moonwalking impression. Shanoa also has one.
** Charlotte and Jonathan in ''[[CastlevaniaPortraitOfRuin Portrait of Ruin]]'' too.
* Partially in play in ''TheLegendOfZeldaSpiritTracks''. Whenever you board your train from a town, you have to select a destination, which determines the direction your train is facing, even if there's no possible way your train could have turned around at most of the stations. An AcceptableBreakFromReality, because without it you might have to take a detour or travel backwards (which is much slower) to the nearest intersection just to turn around, making the train trips very annoying.

* ''DragonQuestIX'' uses a touch screen to control the [[GlobalAirship Celestial Express]], so the train will gradually turn to follow the stylus. Even with a directional pad it will gradually turn to face the direction of the pad.

** In ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess Twilight Princess]]'', Epona will flip around instantly if you hold back on the control stick while riding her.

* Epically subverted with Battlefield3. The Frostbite 2 engine allows for some pretty damn good animations...

* Averted in the ''PrinceOfPersia'' games after ''The Sands of Time'': walking in one direction and then attempting to walk in the opposite direction without stopping would result in the character skidding to a halt before turning around.

* ''Left4Dead'' and its sequel include a controller binding for a 180 degree turn, a rarity on console games of this generation.

** In ''TwilightPrincess'', Epona will flip around instantly if you hold back on the control stick while riding her.

* [[TombRaider Lara Croft]] uses an UnnecessaryCombatRoll to turn 180 degrees; without it, turning around would require about a full second (too long for an action/adventure game).

* In the original ''VideoGame/UnrealTournament'', increasing the difficulty level makes the bots capable of, among other things, turning around faster. On a moderately high level, they can do a full spin in less than a second; on the highest level, ambushing them becomes impossible as they gain [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard instant turning and a 360° field of view that goes through walls]].

* ''TheElderScrolls II: [[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIDaggerfall Daggerfall]]'' mobile [=NPCs=] and monsters displayed their sprites from various angles. As programmed, this allowed them to turn around and turn corners. In practice, they always ran right at the PC against corners and walls and, depending on the speed of the computer, appeared to turn around instantaneously when approached from behind.
** They do instant turns in Morrowind and Oblivion, too. Since everything is 3D, they should be able to at least rotate gradually, but often they don't.

* The main character of ''ResidentEvil4'' walks slow, but can turn around quickly. Thank goodness for this feature, it is easy enough to get stuck in the middle of group of enemies.

** The above also applies to all {{Sonic the Hedgehog}} games to date. Although, in the [=2D=] games at least, it's played straight if you're standing still or moving very slowly.

* In ''{{Glider}} PRO'', the glider goes through a few frames of spinning animation when reversing orientation. However, orientation has no mechanical importance except when shooting rubber bands.

When this trope is present in a multiplayer game, it is a good way to identify novices. If a player uses only keyboard controls they will turn at a slow fixed rate. Besides causing a severe maneuverability disadvantage, this is also obvious to other players and marks them as easy targets.

** Same goes for ''AssassinsCreed'', but only if you're running or sprinting.

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* [[EccoTheDolphin Ecco]] would always turn towards the camera as he switched between going left and going right.

** Same goes for ''[=~Assassin's Creed~=]'', but only if you're running or sprinting.

* ''MoonCrystal'' on the NES had a smoothly animated sprite which actually turned slowly. However, controls suffered a bit due to that.

* Averted in the ''DeadliestWarrior'' videogame, to [[TheSpoonyExperiment Spoony's]] chagrin. The game developers actually sent him a message about his complaints, saying that you don't make instant 180 degree turns in real life, and his response was "Yes you do! If someone is stabbing you in the back, I think you turn around pretty much instantaneously!"

* ''TheElderScrolls II: [[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsTwoDaggerfall Daggerfall]]'' mobile [=NPCs=] and monsters displayed their sprites from various angles. As programmed, this allowed them to turn around and turn corners. In practice, they always ran right at the PC against corners and walls and, depending on the speed of the computer, appeared to turn around instantaneously when approached from behind.

* Unfortunately averted in ''HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix'' (video game), Harry takes a good 1.5 seconds to turn. This is a video game; one second is long.

* ''TheElderScrolls II: [[TheElderScrollsTwoDaggerfall Daggerfall]]'' mobile [=NPCs=] and monsters displayed their sprites from various angles. As programmed, this allowed them to turn around and turn corners. In practice, they always ran right at the PC against corners and walls and, depending on the speed of the computer, appeared to turn around instantaneously when approached from behind.

In 2D games, it very often goes hand in hand with AmbidextrousSprite. Even in several {{First Person Shooter}}s (particularly on consoles), there may be a button which instantly turns the player by 180 degrees. It is also usually possible in 3D PC games to make a character spin dozens of revolutions per second with high mouse sensitivity, yet the character doesn't feel the effects of that. This trope dates to the first generation of video games, making it OlderThanTheNES.