History Main / TimeKeepsOnTicking

** Similar happens during the end of ''MetalGearSolid''. Liquid sets up a bomb that goes off in three minutes, then talks about what Snake could sp0end that time doing, wasting thirty seconds of the time, and giving you just 2:30 to beat him. If you fail and die, then continue, or skip the cutscene, you get the full three minutes.

* ''{{Persona}} 2: Innocent Sin'' has a bit where you have to defeat a boss, find a certain item and then escape a building before it explodes. This whole thing is on a timer which runs even while the menu's open, and you can't save during it.

* In ''HalfMinuteHero'', Normal difficulty stops the clock inside towns. Hard mode does not, forcing the player to manage his time even more strictly. The Time Goddess also does this as [[VideoGameCrueltyPunishment punishment]] if you try to short-change her on the money she requests for a prayer.

** There is another unrelated, but very annoying example in the level {{Area 51}}: Infiltration. Immediately skipping the cutscene leads you to discover that the guards were walking in a real time game during the cutscene; you were just invisible. Just so happens skipping the opener right away has a guard already staring at you (At least in the 360 version, I'm not sure if this happens in the N64 version) with a sentry gun and two more guards just slightly to your right. So, to be safe, you get to watch the minute and a half or so cutscene all the way through every time you fail!

-->''And there's one more important piece of advice for you. So listen up! [[TropeNamer Time keeps on ticking]] [[OhCrap even as you are reading this message!]]''
-->- ''[[VideoGame/YoshisIsland Yoshi's Island]] DS'' Time Trial mode message box

* ''VideoGame/WarioLand 1'' had the timer continue during the cut scene before the final boss, and ''Wario Land The Shake Dimension'' had it continue in the rather long cut scene between the two phases of the final boss battle.

* ''ResidentEvil 4'', at least in the part with a timer.

* Live action TV example: In ''[[DinnerImpossible Dinner: Impossible]]'', the timer starts ticking almost as soon as the head chef meets the people for whom he's supposed to cook.

* In the first ''BaldursGate'', the game would un-pause whenever you went into a character's inventory. The intent was to keep you from being able to do things like change armor during combat, but it was pretty frustrating when you forgot to, say, pre-equip a potion or arrows. This was fixed in the sequel; you were simply prohibited from changing armor during battle.
** Fortunately, you could start it as a multiplayer game even without other players joining to keep it from doing that.

* During the big cutscene before the Volgin fight in ''MetalGearSolid 3'', Snake has just set the building up to explode. Volgin goes on a classic Metal Gear villain Motive Rant, but The Sorrow spends much of the cutscene holding up a timer to remind you of how long you have left. If you skip the cutscene, you'll have time from then to defeat Volgin with. In harder difficulty modes, there's a danger of the bomb actually going off during the cutscene and killing you unless you skip it early on.

* ''StarWars: Rogue Leader'' had this. Its sequel didn't.
* Another live TV example is ''[[TwentyFour 24]]''. This is quite telling when it's recut for non-American television and the commercials are missing (meaning 24 becomes about 18...)
* In ''DeadRising'', you have to talk to survivors before they join your party. There are a few painfully long conversations through which you have to mash the A button while the clock ticks down on other survivors in the mall.

* An unusual form appeared in ''[[TwistedMetal Twisted Metal]] 2''. Pausing the game did not suspend projectiles in the air (notable exception: rolling ricochet bombs), so you could get hit by a missile and die on the pause screen! This worked both ways: if an enemy was about to dodge your shot, press pause and it freezes your target so you get an easy hit.

<<|AcceptableBreaksFromReality|>>

** Same for the {{self destruct mechanism}}s in previous games.

* Before the banquet in ''FinalFantasyVI'', you are given four minutes to talk to as many soldiers as possible. If you come across Kefka, he gets an extended conversation that uses up 20 seconds minimum.

* Probably unintentional in ''WorldOfGoo'' where you have to watch an intro screen showing the name of each level, which cuts into the level play time; although this can be avoided by simply pressing retry immediately after starting which doesn't show the intro screen. (especially useful when you are on a level that needs to be done within a certain time limit to get full completion)

-->''And there's one more important piece of advice for you. So listen up! [[OhCrap Time keeps on ticking even as you are reading this message!]]''

* In Chapter 2 of ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'', after Lord Crump activates the self-destruct sequence in the Great Tree, the timer keeps ticking even while you're fighting the Mooks that get in your way. Heck, it even keeps going while the Puni elder is shouting at him. I haven't tested whether it pauses on the menu screens.
** Fortunately, it does pause. Not sure why you'd need the pause menu at this point, except maybe to heal yourself before the boss battle. [[spoiler:Hold on to your items; there's a Refresh Block next to the Save Block right before the battle.]]

* In the first ''BaldursGate'', the game would un-pause whenever you went into a character's inventory,, this was fixed in the sequel. Fortunately, you could start it as a multiplayer game even without other players joining to keep it from doing that.

* ''WarioLand 1'' had the timer continue during the cut scene before the final boss, and ''Wario Land The Shake Dimension'' had it continue in the rather long cut scene between the two phases of the final boss battle.

-->- ''Yoshi's Island DS'' Time Trial mode message box

* During timed comet challenges in ''SuperMarioGalaxy'', the timer doesn't stop until you touch the star at the end of the level (not, say, when you've collected the 100th purple coin), which leads to many a KaizoTrap for those who aren't paying attention. Thankfully this was removed in ''SuperMarioGalaxy2''... [[NintendoHard with the timer now stricter than ever.]]

* Probably unintentional in "WorldOfGoo" where you have to watch an intro screen showing the name of each level, which cuts into the level play time; although this can be avoided by simply pressing retry immediately after starting which doesn't show the intro screen. (especially useful when you are on a level that needs to be done within a certain time limit to get full completion)

* In ''HalfMinuteHero'', Normal difficulty stops the clock inside towns. Hard mode does not, forcing the player to manage his time even more strictly.

* In Chapter 2 of ''PaperMario: The Thousand-Year Door'', after Lord Crump activates the self-destruct sequence in the Great Tree, the timer keeps ticking even while you're fighting the Mooks that get in your way. Heck, it even keeps going while the Puni elder is shouting at him. I haven't tested whether it pauses on the menu screens.

-->''And there's one more important piece of advice for you. So listen up! Time keeps on ticking even as you are reading this message!''

** When escaping Dollet in ''FinalFantasyVIII'', the timer also ticks down while in the menu. You have 30 minutes to escape, though, so it's not a big deal... unless you're trying to get a SeeD ranking of 10.