History Main / UnwinnableByMistake

** Thanks to a super glitch in original copies of the game that allows you to skip to the opposite end of the next screen (press "Select" just as the screen begins to scroll), it is possible to royally screw with the game. However, you have to be extremely careful, since doing so can get you stuck in trees and other inescapable objects. And if you utilize it in caves...then you can end up in other caves or later dungeons where everything is going berserk; or, if you keep walking around, then you can end up IN the dungeon (with the tileset strangely shifted to a cave theme until you change floors). From the first cave that leads to the mushroom, you can end up in Eagle Tower and even end up fighting the boss. A battle that you can WIN, but once you exit...you're stuck on top of the tower, since there's no staircase to lead out.
*** There is also a stupid thing you can do from the same cave (isn't this glitch fun!?): you can land yourself in the room that houses the Magnifying lens that you get at the end of the trading side-quest...but it is an item that is REQUIRED to beat the game. Using the glitch, you find...THE YOSHI DOLL! If you pick it up, then a line said by a random character is said, and you can save and quit. However, once you finish the trading quest and go there to get the magnifying lens...it won't be there. Congratulations: you're at the end of the game, and you need to start over because you screwed up!

* During Lute's game on ''SagaFrontier'', it's possible to get to the last dungeon without training at all. But if you save there, then there's no turning back.
** The first ''SaGa'' game, AKA ''Final Fantasy Legend,'' had several such dungeons and only one save slot.
* ''FinalFantasyTactics'' had a battle with Wiegraf that was easy to make unwinnable if you saved the game before the battle and didn't have a backup save, since you couldn't leave Riovanes Castle to get equipment or gain experience. Many a player has ended up starting the game over because of this...
** Ironically, the main character had a [[GameBreaker game breaking]] combination of abilities that could win this battle single-handed -- one increases his speed, and the other is an attack-power booster. Neither cost any MP, and they stack high enough for one-hit kills and five times as many turns as any enemy in that area. As long as the main character has a larger movement range than the boss, he can stay out of attack range while constantly boosting his stats, eventually to OneManArmy levels. However, few people making their first run at the game realized this.
** Fortunately, the piece of equipment that could negate Wiegraf's most damaging attacks was hidden right next to where Ramza starts. Unfortunately, if you never got around to giving him Reequip and Treasure Hunter, then this knowledge is useless and the battle {{Unwinnable}}. Also unfortunately, the piece of equipment RandomlyDrops.
** FFT had a lot of battles that you could save before playing, and thus be potentially unwinnable, the Wiegraf one is just the most notorious. If you relied a lot on guests and saved at Goug, for instance, or had no ninjas and don't know about the going naked trick on the rooftop (battle right after the one on one in fact), and even the third to last battle all are quite easy to be ending points for a mismanaged team.

* ''EcoQuest,'' a game for children. Forget to grab the flask of oil-dissolving bacteria? Too bad. Guess you have to start again from the very first scene.

* ''[[LauraBow Laura Bow 2: The Dagger of Amon Ra]]'' is a murder mystery adventure game (and potential NightmareFuel) that loves nothing more than to let you progress to the next chapter without finding every clue you were supposed to find in the previous one. Congratulations, you found a body. Did you remember to look ''behind'' the casket, check all seven pockets on the body, ''and'' look at that one hair on the shirt ''with'' the magnifying glass, in that order? No? Aww....Technically, this sort of situation only locks you out of the [[MultipleEndings good ending]], in which [[spoiler:Laura isn't murdered in her sleep]].
** Other ways of making this game unwinnable:
### Forgetting or not bothering to pick up the cheese in the mouse trap in Wolf's office -- [[spoiler: you need it to lure the rats in the museum tunnels either into the furnace or out of Rex's mouth. Otherwise, they'll maul you and Steve.]]
### Failing to refill your snake oil if you used it more than three times on the [[BlatantLies ever-so-friendly cobra]] Barney. [[spoiler: There are hordes of other snakes in the path to the aforementioned rats (and to freedom), and they won't hesitate to plow and kill both you and Steve. This is especially bad because Laura only comments on what to do with Barney after you use up the entire bottle, not if you only use three-fourths of it on him. There is also hardly any indicator on just how much to use until Barney decides not to bite you for using the lasso on him other than said comment.]]
### Failing to pick up the wire cutters in the toolbox in Ernie's office. [[spoiler: You need to cut a piece of wire on the pterodactyl that impaled Ziggy's body to bar the door in the chase scene; otherwise, the killer will use his super teleporting powers to be on your heels instantly and smash your skull in right when you enter the armory room whereas with the wired door he would be delayed and give you time to do something]].
### Forgetting to pick up the boot in the armory [[spoiler: because Steve will step on something, cry out in pain, and thus can't do anything to help you get out. At that point the only thing you can do is wait for the killer to come and shoot you both.]].
### Not using the chair to climb up to a window above the door found in the hallway between the armory and the mummy exhibits before hiding [[spoiler: if you do forget and you hide in the casket, Laura will come out quickly after before the killer could come to inspect and walk off. Because of this, the killer won't suspect Laura climbed through the door by the window to break it down and let you in, and even if you went back and did the door trick correctly, the narrator will complain that Laura doesn't have time to use the casket again, making it impossible to go on.]]
### And God help you if you forget to examine the Rosetta stone in the mummy exhibit ''and'' Olympia's office [[spoiler: because the stone nearby where Pippin was killed only has ''half'' of the hieroglyphs for A through M listed while N through Z is in the other half beside Olympia's desk, both of which you need to answer the Ra Cultist's two riddles [[BilingualBonus in hieroglyphs]] or be turned into a mummy if you don't. Laura can't do it without the letters in her notebook to spell it out, so even if you know the answers, you still can't use them without those letters.]]
** You lose your chance to reclaim any these items (with the exception of the monster-sized boot in later versions of this game) after [[spoiler: you examine the Countess and take her smelling salts]]. Any clues you haven't collected up to that point will also be lost because if you take the smelling salts and leave the room [[spoiler: or [[GoodBadBug in some cases, try to examine the Countess]] again]], the next act will be triggered and lead to the chase scene. [[hottip:* : With one slight exception. Clues on Pippin's body can be lost much sooner because after the body has been examined in investigation mode, the body will be moved into a (then empty) suit of armor, eliminating the chance to thoroughly examine the corpse and take a vital clue on his breast pocket (a notebook detailing the meetings he was meant to have, the time to meet them and who). Granted it is a vital piece of evidence needed later for the Coroner Lemort's inquest, you can still look up on a guide elsewhere that will tell you what's ''in'' the book or stumble on the meetings by chance yourself, even though the chance to get the physical book on hand is lost.]] The boot is hardly any better as an exception because it is one of two items you ''can'' reclaim if you missed it before the chase [[hottip:* : The boot is easy to miss because it will only appear for the first time after Yvette dies and ''after'' you examined her body, not before (despite the fact other clues appear when the sculpture appears). Unless you take a stroll around the museum just for fun after examining Yvette, and you don't particularly care of The Countess, going elsewhere after examining Yvette will lead to an event elsewhere showing the Countess dying and Barney set on the loose, leading more players than not rushing elsewhere than to the boot (doesn't help that the boot is in a place where, up at that point, you really had no business dealing with until Laura gets chased there (good luck being calm enough to spot it with the killer on your heels, however).]] (the other being the wire on the pterodactyl) [[hottip:* : The wire is easily missed because there is hardly an indicator up until the chase scene that you'll need it, and it also has to be specifically the far left wire cut only in Investigation Mode, not out in regular view. This is made worst because if you inspect other corpses found (an easy example being Ernie's), the narrator shoos you off with a message implying ''all'' bodies are unexaminable at that point. Ziggy is the only exception to this rule, but only his body, the head gets the same result.]] but odds are still good you'll miss the last chance you can reclaim them while running for dear life.

* ''[[QuestForGlory Quest For Glory 4]]'' has few unwinnable moments that can't be averted by using common sense. It's possible, however (though not likely), to reach the end of the game without getting the weakness-exploiting attack necessary to defeat the final boss. If you didn't get it, then you might as well start over, since it's ''hours'' ago that you missed it.
** There's also the insidious bug which causes the game to crash on faster computers when the player enters the screen with the Chernovy. This makes it impossible to fight the Chernovy, which you must do to beat the game. (There are third-party solutions, like running the game under DOSBox or using a program to slow down your computer.)

*** There's a part in 7-5 that is impossible to pass with the Frog Suit, and you can't kill yourself if you get stuck there, forcing you to wait until time runs out.

* In the [[ShowWithinAShow Game Within A Show]] from ''ScoobyDoo And The Cyber Chase'', the gang is [[{{Tron}} trapped in a video game]], where they must find and pick up a hidden box of ScoobySnacks on each level to advance to the next. In the dinosaur-jungle level, Scooby is picked up by the trapped baby pterosaur he just rescued, and grabs up the box of Snacks an instant before it flies away with him, preventing the box from being destroyed by molten lava. As a player of the actual game might not spot the box in time, this looks like an UnwinnableByMistake that would need fixing. Justified, as it's evidently a Beta-test version that they're caught in.

However, games with poorly placed autosave points can often save the player's position in unwinnable situations, e.g. with too little health or ammo to survive a battle after the PointOfNoReturn. Even worse, they often don't allow you to keep multiple saves, so you are totally screwed over and have to restart the level/mission.

*** There is also an army-wide variant of this. Any wise opponent would bring at least some form of anti-armor against you, especially if they know you to use tanks. However, if you destroy all their heavy weapons, it's very possible to win by default (only in certain missions, however, like Annhilation). This is especially obvious with the new Imperial Guard Codex, where most of the MTBs have an armor rating of 11 on the back, meaning most people would be unable to even break those tanks in close combat, making the game very literally unwinnable.

** The rules have on occasion been changed (used as a tournament rule when a draw is not an option) so that an unbreakable loop counts as a lose for the player who created it.

** Another one from ''PhantomHourglass'': If you get the Hourglass, save right away, turn your game off, and start right again, then the hourglass is ''gone''. LostForever. As you can probably imagine, you cannot complete ''Phantom Hourglass'' without the Phantom Hourglass.

Moved to [[UnwinnableByMistake/OtherVideoGames it's own sub-page]] due to it being so large that it broke the page. That's a lot of errors.

* In a level of KirbySuperStar, there is a room you can enter only by breaking blocks on either side of the door with one of Kirby's [[MegaManning powers]]. Standard issue Kirby is completely unable to move or break these blocks, so if you enter the room, clear out the baddies, but lose whatever [[MegaManning powers]] you nom'd to get in (intentionally or otherwise), you won't be able to get back out. Entering and exiting the room causes the blocks to respawn (but not the enemies), and Kirby can't suck in enemies beyond physical boundaries like walls, so you're forced to hit reset. This is probably the highest level of difficulty you will see in the entire game.
* At the end of [[DotHackGUGames .hack//G.U. Vol. 3]], when you're inside Cubia before fighting the final boss, there is a save point. If you save there and aren't strong enough to beat the Anti-Existences and/or Cubia's Core, then you will of course die; when you die, you reload one of your save files. Thus, if your only save is at that point, you're screwed. The game does recommend that you save on a separate save file since you can't return to town, though.
* Near the end of ''[[{{BioShock}} [=BioShock=] 2]]'', [[spoiler:Eleanor saves you after the Little Sister sequence and]] holds out the [[spoiler:[[EleventhHourSuperpower Summon Eleanor]] Plasmid]] for you to pick up. However, if you have the Winter Blast 2 or Winter Blast 3 Plasmids, you can freeze [[spoiler:her]] in an ice block and attack with your weapons until [[spoiler:she]] shatters. However, while the body will respawn even though normal Splicers just leave Lockboxes, the body (and the [[spoiler:Plasmid she's]] holding) will fall partially through the floor, leaving you unable to take the [[spoiler:Plasmid]]. The door directly behind [[spoiler:her]] is the only way out of the room, and it's locked until you take the [[spoiler:Plasmid]], trapping you in the room permanently. While it takes an active effort (or at least the unintentional firing of the wrong Plasmid) to cause this, it is possible to mistakenly save your game while trying to reload a previous save, leaving your game {{Unwinnable}}.\\

Also in ''[[{{BioShock}} [=BioShock=] 2]]'': if you die during a particular boss fight, then you respawn at a different spot on the level. When you return to the site of the boss fight, the door is locked shut. With the boss on the other side.
* Unusually for an educational game, ''Where In Time is Carmen Sandiego?/Carmen's Great Chase through Time'' can be made unwinnable. Even though a template game (in which the player chooses which levels they want to play) is {{unwinnable by design}}, the game tries to make sure that the normal game is winnable. (The ship Yuri Gagarin is in conveniently [[TakeYourTime waits for you and Ivan]] to take the Chronoskimmer out of the food locker; Carmen never seems to come to pick up the thief the player has to capture....) But they overlooked a bug in the Aztec time period. When you finish assembling the Headdress for Montezuma, you have to put it in your inventory. But if you give it to Ann Tiquity to ask what she says about it, then she'll say, "We must get this headdress back to Montezuma, before he blows his top!" and the headdress will be placed back in the inventory... where it will accidentally spawn ''another'' headdress. Now, you can still complete the level (and therefore the game) by leaving the duplicate headdress there. But if you haven't yet gotten the Carmen note (required to beat each level), then you'll have to take the duplicate headdress and put it in your inventory so you can get the note. You then walk into the throne room and are forced to give the headdress to Montezuma (he does not allow you to leave the throne room with a headdress in your inventory). But, because you accidentally duplicated the headdress, you're still stuck in the room because Ann Tiquity won't let you leave either; each time, she'll say, "We must get this headdress back to Montezuma before he blows his top!" It's unknown if it's fixed in any later versions.
* The Access game ''Amazon: Guardians of Eden'' is so unbelievably sadistic about unwinnable puzzles that it's almost unplayable without a walkthrough. Almost every decision in every chapter would make the game unbeatable if you got it wrong (if you didn't die outright). It frequently would recall items back as far as three chapters for an obtuse, difficult puzzle -- and there's no backtracking to earlier chapters. Forgot to pick up the gasoline in the airport in Chapter Three? Too bad; now you can't make a molotov cocktail in Chapter Seven, and your save is worthless! Since each chapter was extremely difficult and somewhat luck-based, and since a lot of the puzzles are of the timed variety, and since the levels also contained random, difficult arcade sequences -- loading a game and going back through one or two frustrating chapters you had beaten just because you forgot a lighter is not nearly as easy as it is in other franchises. Have fun.
* The GameBoyAdvance remake of the original ''BrokenSword'' had a couple of these because of {{Game Breaking Bug}}s. If you go to Spain before going to Syria, then it often causes a glitch which prevents you from going to Syria at all. Also, there is a part early on where you have to make a plaster cast; a glitch lets you do that without having picked up the plaster, which you need to get a key later in the game.
* In ''[[ElviraGames Elvira II: Jaws of Cerberus]]'', the plot-important items aren't protected. Step on a fireball trap? Good-bye spell book!
* In ''HotelDusk: Room 215,'' it is possible to break the game early on, in chapter 2, [[spoiler:if you leave the front office with the Small Red Box you are tasked to find before you investigate ''everything'' within that room.]] It doesn't help that you can also get an easy Game Over in the same room.
* ''Wonderland'' epitomizes the trope very early on: [[spoiler:if you fail to properly take a set of breadcrumbs near the beginning, then [[LostForever they fall away and are lost]]]]; hours into your journey, you'll be completely trapped with no hope of success. And it gets worse from there.
* In the game ''Fenimore Fillmore: The Westerner,'' you regularly have to feed your horse carrots for it to take you anywhere. If you are at a location where you can't get carrots and your horse is hungry, then you are stuck there for all eternity.
* In ''[[LegendofLegaia Legend of Legaia]],'' there is the inescapable Rogue's Tower level. Once you enter the tower, you cannot leave it until you defeat the boss. Unfortunately, if you save down there but are ill-equipped to defeat Rogue, then you're stuck and will have to hope that you had a separate file for backup from outside the tower and before the shops in the town become closed.
** This is hardly unique to [[LegendofLegaia Legend of Legaia]]. This could be true for any game that locks you in a dungeon for the duration of your business there.
* In the N64 game ''SpaceStation: Silicon valley,'' one of the game's bonus trophies was uncollectable, which made it impossible to get the HundredPercentCompletion necessary to access the game's bonus level without cheating. The final level of the story was fully accessible, however.
* It is very possible to have the last mission of the ''[[TheElderScrolls Shivering Isles]]'' quest to be unwinnable. It involved a final battle outside, and if the player character happened to be a vampire that has gone without feeding for a few days, and if it was day outside, and if the player doesn't have enough healing items, the character can die shortly after [[spoiler:Jyggalag]] is defeated and makes a speech to the player. If you didn't save before you left Sheogorath's throne room, have fun and don't talk to real people for a few hours, as the autosave happens immediately once you're outside. Of course, this can apply to many areas in ''Oblivion'' and ''Shivering Isles'' when one as a vampire.
* ''[[TheElderScrolls The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall]]'' shipped with a number of [[GameBreakingBug bugs and glitches]] that made it impossible to complete the main quest. The plot-breaking bugs were eventually corrected with patches; but one potentially game-breaking bug, which could leave the character stuck in "the void" after falling through a flight of stairs, was never satisfactorily fixed and even pops up in certain parts of ''Morrowind''.
** The Void problems are due to faulty collision detection and are mostly encountered in ''Daggerfall''. The real problem with ''Daggerfall'' is that quests are timed with penalty of failure. This includes the main quests! The most obvious example: when Queen Mother Mynisera tells you to track down a courier who has a letter, you have to wait in a city and meet the courier on a certain date. But the date as stated is wrong! And if you miss the courier, then you cannot redo the quest.
* ''{{Battletoads}}'' (at least the US version on the NES) is just plain impossible when playing with two players simultaneously -- there's a bug in Level 11 in which Player 2's Clinger Winger ''never starts moving'', and so the Hypno Orb runs him over every time. Since either player dying causes the level to restart, this is repeated until you run out of lives.
* Many of the games in the old ''{{Action 52}}'' compilation (for the NES and Genesis/Mega Drive) are Unwinnable because of shoddy programming. Two of them, ''Alfredo'' and ''Jigsaw'', are also unplayable (except on a very few emulators).
** To give you an idea of just how bad the situation with ''Action 52'' is, the game's developers decided to include a small contest in the game. They put a secret, personalized code at the end of one of the games, ''Ooze'', which (along with taking a photo of the game screen to show that the player did beat the game) would have made players eligible for a grand prize of $104,000. Unfortunately, there were two versions of the Action 52 cartridge. In the better-known version, "Ooze" inevitably [[GameBreakingBug hangs two or three levels in]], making the game impossible to complete.
** Other games with gamestopping bugs:
*** In ''Star Evil'', the boss sometimes fails to show up; and if you beat the third boss if it happens to show up, then the last level is a Gray Screen of Death.
*** Some games, such as ''They Came,'' crash when you die or complete a level (again, in the better-known version of the cartridge).
** ''Fuzz Power'' has an insurmountable rock wall in Level 3.
** Active Enterprises was trying to make the Cheetahmen into a CashCowFranchise. They started on a sequel to the ''Action52'' ''Cheetahmen'' game, ''Cheetahmen II''. They folded before they could release it, but 1500 prototype copies were discovered in a warehouse and distributed as bootlegs. It's obvious that the game wasn't finished; in addition to the many annoying bugs and glitches and crippled controls, there is a [[GameBreakingBug game-stopping bug]] where the next level fails to load after you defeat the [=ApeMan=] in level 4. You can skip to levels 5 and 6 with a Game Genie, a hacked rom, or a certain [[GoodBadBugs good bad bug]]; but after you beat the final boss there, the game just stays on the boss screen, [[NoEnding no ending cinematic, no credits, nada]].
** ''Ninja Assault'' is another game with NoEnding. After you play through the glitched-up fourth stage and defeat the glitched-up boss, the game just stops. There's a cave entrance on the boss screen, signifying that there should be more levels, but they didn't bother to program them.
** In the 5th level of ''Atmos Quake'', your ship randomly explodes for no reason, probably due to the glitchy [[CollisionDamage collision detection]], making the level unbeatable.
* ''{{Pikmin}}'' has potential to become unwinnable. Libra is placed high atop a large cliff side in the Forest Naval. You can get it down without problems most of the time, but there is a small chance that your pikmin will misstep on their way back down, [[LostForever taking it and them to the abyss below]]. Libra won't respawn in its old spot, and you can't win the game if you save this: you need all the vital parts at least to win, let alone all the ship parts, and Libra happens to be vital.
* The NES game ''[[{{Dragonlance}} Heroes of the Lance]]'' was ''especially'' craptacular for one reason: If the [[StaffChick easy-to-die cleric Goldmoon]] ever dies and you don't retrieve her Blue Crystal Staff, then the game is unwinnable.
* In the original ''PhantasyStar'', the game can easily become unwinnable near the end; if the player has the bad idea to save in this particular situation, then they will eventually want to destroy the cartridge. Upon landing in the air castle, the player must fight a particularly tough boss after a long and confusing dungeon. Afterwards, there are three ways to leave the Air Castle: the heroine's teleportation spell, a teleportation item, or a magic nut to turn your cat ally into a flying creature. But it is likely that the heroine will have ran out of MP casting her strongest spells against the boss, that the cat will have bit the dust halfway through the dungeon (rendering him unable to use the magic nut), and that the player will have forgotten to bring a teleportation item. Ten bloody hours down the drain.
* In ''{{Phantasy Star Universe}}'', there was a glitch in the MAG event mission at the very end. Each player has to take the warp individually to the final block and then stand at a gate which will only open when everyone is accounted for, letting everyone in to spawn the monsters and smash things up until you kill the final one. The glitch? At times, the monsters would spawn before the gate was opened. It's mostly harmless if you ignore them and take their attacks while waiting for everyone to get to the gate; but if someone kills the monsters with ranged attacks, then the monsters will stop spawning around the third wave or so, making it impossible to finish the mission.
* In ''LittleBigAdventure,'' you must break into the museum. You are supposed to do this by using the Red Key Card on the back door to get to the sewers, evacuating the museum by turning on the alarm there, and ''then'' coming back and getting the treasure from the museum. ''Technically'', if you are skilled enough, you can skip all this and just go through the front door, avoid the guards, get the items, and escape before getting arrested. The problem is, if you do this before getting the Card, then you can no longer get the Card. Since the Card is needed to open a few more doors later on, you can't complete the game without it.
* ''{{Monty Python}}'s The Meaning of Life: The PC Game'' is a point-and-click adventure through the movie and television show as you search for the eponymous philosophical question. Unfortunately, the game has more than one occasion where you can wind up in an {{unwinnable}} situation by doing exactly what the game has had you doing the entire time -- exploring and clicking on interesting looking junk.
** It's nearly impossible to reach the last screen because of a fatal glitch that causes a disc swapping menu to fail to appear. As obnoxious as this is, it's almost fitting that something like this would show up in a MontyPython game. The disc swap bug CAN be worked around, but you have to know at what screen it appears to get around it, which you won't know if you aren't looking at a walkthrough.
* "Pharaoh", the first secret level of ''TNT: Evilution'' (one of the {{Expansion Pack}}s that came with ''Final {{Doom}}''), was rendered impossible to finish because a vital key was erroneously flagged to appear only in multiplayer. id Software did not fix this bug in their distribution, and never has, and never will; but the creators of the pack, [=TeamTNT=], quickly released a replacement [=PWAD=] allowing the key to appear in any mode, and also fixing a node-building error which prevented some enemies from appearing. Not that it's stopped people from discovering how to [[SequenceBreaking complete the level without it]].
* The original release of ''SonicAdventure'' had several glitches that allowed you to get stuck. You can glitch through the roof of the train station at the beginning of Tails's story, and play and finish Casinopolis before the casino area was unlocked... and find yourself unable to leave the area and stuck there by the game's auto-saving, permanently ruining the entire save file (which has stories for ''six'' characters).
** Another interesting example from ''SonicAdventure'': You can opt to obtain Sonic's optional upgrade in the Last Story and then save and quit. When you load the game, you'll get text indicating what has last happened in the game, just like in any other character's story. When you obtained the Crystal Ring determines what the text says. (For those who haven't played the game, that's not supposed to happen in the Last Story.) When the "previously" text is finished scrolling, the game will freeze. Interestingly, the background art is the CG of Perfect Chaos as he looked ''before'' his final in-game design.
* In ''[[SonicAdventure Sonic Adventure 2]]'' for the SegaDreamcast, some discs had an error which made you fall through the floor. On the last level.
* There is a glitch in ''Sonic3AndKnuckles'' that makes the game unwinnable if it happens; during either act of Marble Garden Zone, while playing Sonic with Tails following, it's possible to glitch Tails off the screen so you go through the rest of the Zone solo. Doing so prevents Tails from returning to aid you in fighting the Zone's main boss; you're stuck off the screen and out of reach until you reset the game.
** Also, you'd better not be Super Sonic when you reach that main boss, or Tails will not appear either. A similar thing happens if you replay that level, play as Super Tails, and hit Eggman more than 8 times before he takes the battle into the skies.
* In ''SonicTheHedgehog3'', most notoriously in Carnival Night Zone, Sonic can get stuck in a quarter pipe's wall if the player makes him go too fast, and it's impossible to get Sonic out. The devteam evidently knew about this but didn't have time to fix it: the manual {{Hand Wave}}s it by saying that they are traps that Robotnik lays to take advantage of Sonic's speed.
** Sonic Megamix, a hack of Sonic CD with enhanced graphics of Sonic 1 and new level design, has a glitch right at the end of Starry Night Zone Act 2 that can get you stuck in the wall. It's rather consistent if you're moving quickly, and it's a glaring problem in an otherwise wonderful hack.
* In ''HarvestMoon: A Wonderful Life'', ordering new machinery can render the game unplayable if the machinery arrives on the first day after a chapter change. The only way around this is to avoid ordering machinery in the last season of a chapter, since the exact date the machinery arrives is random.
** Similarly, in the North American ''HarvestMoon: DS,'' two glitches caused both the Witch Princess and the Harvest Goddess, and only them, to be ineligible for marriage. You couldn't get the Witch Princess because the game didn't keep track of dead animals; you couldn't get the Harvest Goddess because Buckwheat Flour was on her lists but not in the game itself. Fortunately, you could still finish the game by marrying another girl. The glitches were corrected in an updated version (DS 1.1) and ''Harvest Moon: DS Cute''. Not that you could marry them in the western translations of the latter..
** A similar glitch happens in "Another Wonderful Life." If you woo all three of the bachelors to full hearts and experience all their heart events, then there is a random chance that you will be instantly locked with Rock. Then Rock will be the only one who will propose to you or accept the Blue Feather; Gustafa and Marlin will reject your proposal as if you still lack something, even though your hearts are all accounted for and you witnessed all their heart events. It tends to happen more if you witness Rock's heart event last, but it is not a guarantee.
** And then, in ''[[OddlyNamedSequel Rune Factory]]'', saving in a cave while poisoned and sealed could render your game unwinnable if you had low enough HP and no cures for the StandardStatusEffects.
*** There's also the issue of entering a cave accessible only during the winter and being in it when the new year starts. At least in this one, the game [[SarcasmMode politely]] [[GameBreakingBugs locks up.]]
* ''IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream'' was [[NoSwastikas edited in Germany]] to remove Nimdok and his scenario because the scenario was set in a concentration camp. This made it impossible to complete the game -- all five characters' scenarios must be finished to reach the last segment.
* ''Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy'' had a save point in the Castle of Uruk during one of the Mummy's missions. Normally, you would approach the area and see a cut scene between the BigBad and TheDragon; and then a door would open. However, if you saved at the save point, quit, and reloaded the game, then the door would be closed when you re-started, leaving you trapped there forever. Nasty.
* Though there's no specific instance, because of the rarity of both ammunition and health restoring items in the early games in the ''ResidentEvil'' series, it was possible to save before a boss with very little of either, making the game unwinnable for most players. Later games give you enough ammunition to [[ResidentEvil4 invade]] [[strike:[[ResidentEvil4 Spain]]]] [[ResidentEvil4 NotSpain]], making this less of a problem.
** Most [[SurvivalHorror survival horror]] games are like this. The only ones that avert it (and only to a certain extent) are those in which enemies drop items or in which you have a half-decent melee weapon. Old-school survival horror games like classic ''ResidentEvil'' or ''SilentHill''? Good luck.
* The original ''{{Mechwarrior}}'' for the PC required you to head to a specific planet to begin the sequence to beat the game. But after a certain point in time, going to the planet results in an unceremonious 'Game Over' screen. Typically, by the time you're able to build up your forces to a respectable level, it's too late.
* [[http://lostlevel.wordpress.com/2006/10/ As told here,]] ''MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries'' originally shipped with a [[GameBreakingBug game-stopping bug]] where the dropship fails to land at the end of one of the missions, making the mission and thus the game unwinnable.
* ''X-COM: Terror From the Deep'' combines this with a long-term LuckBasedMission. It's possible to progress through the game without fighting any Deep Ones. You need to capture one alive to learn Alien Sub Construction, which you need to proceed to the endgame.
** More notorious for making ''Terror From the Deep'' unwinnable is the Tasoth Commander. Researching one of these makes researching the CoolStarship for the final assault impossible. Thankfully, patches keep Tasoth Commanders from showing up for research.
** The potential for Deep Ones to appear remains through the entire game; but, because of how alien missions work, it is easy to stop their appearance by accident.
* In ''Inindo'' for the SNES, you eventually reach a point where you must complete a FetchQuest to be rewarded with the key to unlock the door to the rest of the game. When you complete the quest and talk to the person with the key, you are asked if you have space in your inventory to accept it and given a yes/no option. If the first character in your party does not have any free spaces in their inventory when you say yes, then the key disappears. There is no way to get another one. If you save the game before realizing that -- say, you checked your inventory beforehand and saw that the ''second'' character had space in their inventory and assumed that was okay -- then the game is now stuck in an unwinnable state.
* ''BaldursGate'' had a nonstandard game over in which, if you leveled accusations at the BigBad without the evidence on your person or the person of one of your party members, then you would get called on it and hit with a ''flamestrike'' spell, against which there was no save and which instantly killed you. Since the invitation's icon looked like any of a dozen scrolls you might have been carrying around at the time, and since non-magical game items decay after a certain amount of time...
** The city of Baldur's Gate has an NPC who holds the final antidote to a scripted event where your entire party is given a game-ending poison that cannot be cured except by playing through a long scripted sequence with the antidote as a reward. If you have met this NPC before the sequence started, got into an argument with him, and ''killed'' him, then there will be no one there to give you the antidote. The seven-day deadline will roll by, and your entire party will explode into bloody PC kibble (that is some absurdly effective poison). Even Biff the Understudy seems to consider this role beneath his (severely limited) acting ability. If all your savegames take you back to ''after'' the moment you killed this specific NPC...
** If you start as a wizard in either ''BaldursGate'' or ''Shadows of Amn'' and have only 3 Constitution, then you can't win. You will die in the first in-game cutscenes because enough points of unavoidable damage are dealt to you that your pathetically low HitPoints will be gone. In game terms, this makes sense -- in the tabletop {{Dungeons and Dragons}}, if ''any'' character with a Constitution of 3 ventures out beyond a hermetically sealed clean room, then they're probably not gonna make it.
* In ''[[BaldursGate Baldurs Gate 2]]'', there is a point at which you have to fight Irenicus (and a bunch of minions) in Spellhold. Normally, you just have to get him down to a certain amount of hit points, triggering a dialogue in which he teleports away. You can then exit Spellhold and continue the game. However, if you somehow get extraordinarily (un)lucky and Irenicus fails his save against Disintegrate, then he does indeed Disintegrate - which renders the game Unwinnable, since he's no longer around to trigger the dialogue and you can't move on.
** Of course, by all in-universe logic, you'll have ''won'' right then because the rest of the game is about chasing and stopping him.
** One of the designers of the game, Dave Gaider, made a mod for the ''Throne of Bhaal'' expansion pack, making the last battle of the series far more difficult. One of the features is that one of your old enemies, the vampire Bodhi, is teleported in from the Abyss to fight on behalf of the [[BigBad Big Bad]]. The only problem is that, by then, any clerics you may have in your party are so hugely overpowered that, if you enter the last battle with 'turn undead' on, she explodes into chunky giblets before she even has a chance to say her menacing dialogue, stopping the game in its tracks.
* In the PC mystery game ''SherlockHolmesAndTheSecretOfTheSilverEarring'', the action takes place over the course of a few days. The game is rendered unwinnable on the first day if Holmes neglects to pick up a particular clue. This seems to be a glitch, rather than by design, since failure to pick up any other clues will cause the game to prevent him from moving forward. But the game will allow him to go ahead even if he doesn't pick up [[spoiler:the autographed picture in the young woman's dressing room]]. The player will be unaware that there's a problem until the fourth day in-game, when he is supposed to show that clue to someone; his inability to do so brings the game to a screeching halt.
* In the American release of ''TokyoXtremeRacer 3'', to face the last opponent and be able to finish the game, you must defeat the other 599 opponents. But one particular opponent, Whirlwind Fanfare, only appears when you have 100,000,000 CP; the maximum CP you can carry is 99,999,990. Due to this glitch, it is impossible to beat the game without using a cheat device. All CP needed[=/=]earned was divided by 100 for the US release (to reflect dollars rather than yen), but Whirlwind Fanfare wasn't adjusted.
* ''BatenKaitos'' pulls this one. Saving on a certain airship makes it so you can't level up until you clear the airship; naturally, that airship has ThatOneBoss at the end. Nice.
** ''Origins'' seems to do the same thing, only in a dungeon right after a disc change. You almost certainly saved over your file during the disc-switching prompt. This boss ''can'' be taken down in a single turn if you know what you're doing. The problem is that this strategy is a MASSIVE GuideDangIt, requiring you to (among other things) combine a [[YinYangBomb Fire and Ice finisher]] on the same character.
* ''TrueCrime: New York City'' had a laundry list of randomly occurring {{Game Breaking Bug}}s that could cause certain missions or the game to become unwinnable, making SaveScumming a necessity. Even worse, the XBox version had a big bug late in the game that rendered it completely unwinnable due to no fault of the player.
* The original ''TrueCrime'' had a particularly bad (though rare) bug that could make the game unwinnable. Given that the game is a GTA-type, driving cars is natural. So is blowing them up. Ramming a car enough times will [[EveryCarIsAPinto make it blow up]]. Simple enough? But certain in-game cutscenes did ''not'' make your car invincible, and the idiot drivers on the road did not stop when your car did. If your car had ''just'' enough damage and another car smashed into it during a cutscene, making it explode, then the game would continue after the cutscene on the assumption that you were dead. Add that the game saved after most cutscenes...
* Many [[{{RPG}} RPGs]] have dungeons you cannot exit until you finish them. Some, such as ''[=~Star Ocean: The Second Story~=],'' won't inform you of this before you enter them.
* In ''Heart of Winter'', the expansion pack for ''IcewindDale'', there is a scene in which a fight breaks out among members of the tribe the player has been assisting, with the expectation that the player will pile in on the side of the rebels. During this scene, if a friendly tribe member is inadvertently hit (which can easily happen with the mess of area effect spells available to the party by then), all other friendly tribe members will immediately turn hostile. The game will give no indication that this has happened. If this is not noticed and an earlier saved game isn't reloaded, then it is possible to slaughter the entire tribe without realising something is amiss until the NPC who is supposed to trigger the next sequence of events instead attacks and mercilessly butchers the party. If this situation occurs and an earlier savegame is not present, then the game is unwinnable.
* ''PrinceOfPersia: the Two Thrones'' has a glitch that makes a critical jump unfinishable. The only way to progress if you strike that bug is to download a savegame from someone who didn't.
* ''PrinceOfPersia: Warrior Within'' is riddled with {{Game Breaking Bug}}s that can land you in Unwinnable situations. For example, the "Sand Wraith bug," which occurs early in the game if you save in the wrong place, gets you turned into the sand wraith before you're supposed to. The subsequent Unwinnable situation happens near the end of the game, right before the final boss. You end up having to start the game over after coming all that way.
** A different glitch with the same ultimate result: You can glitch right before the final boss if you go back to the previous room to save before going through the portal. When you return, the portal will no longer react -- and you can't go further back than the save point.
** Other unwinnable situations arise from oversights rather than glitches. In some rooms, it is possible to move platforms to locations other than their intended ones and still exit the room if you do it all fast enough. When you return to those rooms as the Sand Wraith, the platforms will be too low or too far apart to make it across.
** Late in the game, it's possible to return to various sections to collect upgrades you missed earlier; but, due to a glitch, one of them is a dead end with not one, but two, save points in it, making it easy to save yourself into an unwinnable state.
* In ''PrinceOfPersia: Sands of Time,'' there's one room near the end where Farah waits by a switch. She will not pull it until you complete a set of puzzles. Once everything is ready, Farah ''should'' pull the lever automatically... But sometimes she doesn't. She will stand there silently while you jump around in anger and grope for the 'reset' button.
** There are two other oversights in ''Sands of Time''. There are two areas in the game where you can fall off beams, survive the fall, but fall too far to get back to where you were, making the game unwinnable.
** There's also a point in ''Sands of Time'' where you must swing from chandelier-like hangings to a ledge with a bit of a drop. This drop then takes a margin of health. Which is okay unless you have little health (which quite possibly could happen, as there is a fight directly before this) and have already saved. There's no way to heal and no other way to get to the ledge without dying. Back to the beginning of the game for you.
*** Unless you can reliably do the landing roll to negate the damage, but it's somewhat hard to pull off and a bit of a GuideDangIt (most players will go through the entire game without doing it because nowhere else is it remotely necessary).
* Although ''extremely'' difficult, it is technically possible to make ''MonsterRancher 2'' {{Unwinnable}}. You get a GameOver if, at the start of the month, you have less than 100 G and are unable to feed your monster. The only way to get this situation is if you saved after the last tournament of the month your monster could possibly enter, you have no items to sell, your monster is too young to sell, all of your monsters in storage are too young to sell, and your monster never brings you any item you could possibly sell for money out of the blue. ''Whew!''
* In ''MonsterRancher 3,'' a minor plot battle in the jungle region of Kalaragi turns into a story-stopper if you lose. Your rival, Gadamon, will (if you lose) demand that you bring her a Dodorin Fruit when next you go exploring. Fair enough, especially when another character tells you where to find them - except that when you search the spot, the game recycles the dialogue from the end of the conversation telling you how to get it, and you get nothing. Not only can you not progress in the subplot, but this brings the entire story to a halt - no other events are available. If you win, however, you progress as usual through the story. Your reward for the subplot's completion? A Dodorin Fruit.
* ''TheAddamsFamily'' for GameBoy. The only two levels you cannot leave by the same way you came in require items from other levels to reach their exits. When you enter The Toybox, you had better have completed the Boiler Room level to have the Hot Coal weapon; the boss in this level is immune to all other weapons from most directions. At The River, if you didn't bring the fish potion with you, your game is over even if you know the hidden route to walk from one end of the level to the other; the boss is unbeatable without that potion.
** Two optional levels require you to have completed The River. In The Swamp, you need the Icecube item to float across the swamp sections. In Ice box, you need the icecubes to float across the freezing pools of water or the fish potion to swim across.
* The first and second games in the ''ShadowOfTheBeast'' series. In addition to having exactly one life, a short (first game) or quick-draining (second game) life bar, and no way to save or continue, you can easily make the game unwinnable by screwing up puzzles and failing to collect necessary items before passing the PointOfNoReturn.
** The third game toned down the NintendoHard elements of the previous games, giving player three lives and making the action scenes much easier with emphasis on puzzles. While it was still easy to screw up the situation beyond repair, it was possible to return to the previous checkpoint by pressing the Help button on the keyboard of your {{Amiga}}.
* As with all over day-to-day games, ''Night of The Comet'' can be rendered unwinnable if you fail to meet a certain person on a certain hour of the day, or fail to get an item at the right time. There's little hint of this.
* The first run of ''Cardfighters DS'' was literally unwinnable thanks to a [[GameBreakingBug game-stopping bug]] that causes it to crash when a player fights a certain character. None of the NPC battlers can be skipped. Thankfully for those who want this game, they fixed this with a second print.
* In the "Operation Rapunzel" level of ''{{Medal of Honor}}: Frontline'', if you happen to backtrack for health items or ammo after rescuing the hostage, he will disappear, rendering the level unwinnable.
--> "So what do you do? Guess you just gotta commit suicide".(TheAngryVideoGameNerd, when he got stuck in an unwinnable situation in his ''[=McKids=]'' review)
* In one level of ''ReturnToCastleWolfenstein'', you have to avoid setting off any alarms and sneak into a truck at the end without being noticed. This level contains a major [[GameBreakingBug game-stopping bug]], at least in the XBox version: if you shoot out the last alarm with anything other than the silenced sniper rifle, then the truck driver will still be alerted to your presence, albeit unable to sound the alarm; you won't get a "Mission Failed", but the level will become unfinishable. They should have made alerting the truck driver itself a NonStandardGameOver. Better keep multiple saves; it's a pain to have to play through this level all over again.
* In ''SecretOfEvermore'' for the SNES, there is one part of the game where a scientist gives you an airplane to use for a fetch quest so he can build a rocket to send you to the end of the game. It is possible, through an obscure glitch, to land back in the scientist's lab ''without the plane''. If the player hasn't completed the fetch quest, then the game is now unwinnable (and it is possible to save, ruining the player's progress about 3/4 of the way through an SNES RPG).
** It's also possible to get stuck in the third part of the game, the medieval land, after defeating the Chess monster and going through a cavern and ending up in the desolate town. You climb a massive bunch of ramps, and at the top you are brought back to the populated town, where you are expected to fight a boss in the castle. Go through the cave again, and you're stuck in the desolate town because your airride won't come back.
** One dungeon is filled with collapsible bridges. This is standard fare for video games; but unlike the standard Magical Self-Repair Bridge, once these collapse, they're gone ''forever''. This leads to unwinnable situations--if you use an item or formula to escape ''before'' defeating the dungeon's mini-boss but ''after'' crossing the bridge to get to the dungeon, you'll be unable to return and thus unable to complete the dungeon. If you're unfortunate enough to save while you're outside, then your save file is rendered unwinnable.
** The area before the Verminator is inescapable and inhabited by nothing but fast-moving rats that are worth a piddly 4 EXP each. If you're underleveled and you saved, then the game is as good as unwinnable. Did we mention that the Verminator is {{That One Boss}} and that this area is 3/4 of the way through the game?
*** Ironically, this boss can be avoided altogether by utilizing a glitch in the previous area; but if you ever go into his room, then the game will lock the door and not open it until the code signifying you've beaten the boss goes through. Since the boss doesn't appear after you've used that glitch, it will be impossible to initiate this code, and the player will be forced to reset. Unwinnable revenge!
* Like the aforementioned 7800 port of ''ImpossibleMission'', the [[PortingDisaster disastrous DOS port]] of the original ''Game/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles'' is unwinnable due to no fault of the player, since there is a jump in the sewers of Area 3 that is impossible to negotiate due to a low ceiling. Unless, that is, you use a cheat code to walk through walls or skip levels.
** There is a very strange glitch that can be used to bypass this (perhaps it was used by the developers to speed testing). If you walk to a certain point on the overworld map, your Turtle will swing the rope and begin climbing on the map. If you then enter a certain building, you can fall through a level and end up in a later part of the game.
* In ''Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose'', the computer automatically controls Buster just before the front of the train and assumes that the R button is assigned to Dash. If you assigned the R button to anything else, Buster falls to his death instead.
* The original ''Alternate Reality'' game for the Atari 8-bit computers had single squares surrounded by walls, with secret doors in and no way out. And you could save in there, making the game unwinnable. This was originally described in the company's newsletter as if it were a desirable feature.
* The Turbografx-16 version of the NintendoHard ''Impossamole'' had shoddily placed [[PointOfNoReturn Points Of No Return]] in some levels in such a way that if you missed a PlotCoupon (scroll) beforehand, then it would be LostForever. Having Monty commit suicide didn't help if you crossed a reload point after the PointOfNoReturn; the mission would be Unwinnable unless you lost all your lives and started from the beginning. Talk about bad level design.
* The GameBoyAdvance version of ''TheLordOfTheRings: The Fellowship of the Ring'' has a bug that makes the game unwinnable if you do not save at a specific point '''during a transition between scenes'''. Compounding the problem, saving just an instant too early means you're stuck in a sequence of "Load game - automatically trigger scene transition - game freezes - turn off game".
* The C64 game ''Space Rogue'' was, for all intents and purposes, virtually Unwinnable because the required PlotCoupon item needed to rig your ship to go to the ant invader's home sector cannot be obtained. It is supposed to be a randomly drawn item from Robocrook's chance game (making it a pure luck scenario), but it never drops.
** In the PC version, this was fixed...but there's not much in the form of in-game help, and there was no GameFAQs to look this stuff up on back then. After the third or fourth random piece of junk, most people stopped checking with robocrook and didn't know they had to.
* In the GameBoy game ''The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 2'', the hammer at the beginning of stage 16 is not needed. But if you miss a key early in the level, you'll need the hammer to get back to it; otherwise, you'll have to find an enemy and kill yourself. But as it's also one of the few stages where you can kill every enemy, it's possible to wind up in an enemy-free stage, with no way to beat the level, and no way to kill yourself to try again.
* In ''{{Portal}}'' it is possible, if you try very hard, to accidentally lose a weighted storage cube to a portal glitch that makes it randomly disappear; this makes most levels unwinnable.
** There are many situations where you can trap yourself or make a puzzle unbeatable; the developers have figured out most of them and made Glados deliver another cube or open the door if you manage to do so. There are, however, several ways to trap yourself that they haven't thought of, such as piling cameras under the weighted companion cube to support it while it's partway on the button, going through the door where the button to open the incinerator is, and then shoot a portal to make the camera fall through and the cube come off the button, so the door closes and you're trapped.
** In the instances of making the levels unwinnable that the developers have figured out, GLaDOS (your instructor for the game) will practically call the player an idiot, stating that it is no fault of the Enrichment Center that you have managed to trap yourself.
** A much easier way to screw up your game completely is to fall into toxic waste and simulatenously hit one of the badly placed autosaves.
** It is much easier to make the game unwinnable when playing the bonus maps (the harder versions of Rooms 13-18) by, say, dropping a weighted cube in the goo where it cannot be recovered. This is also played with in one of the rooms: [[spoiler: you have to drop the Companion Ball into the incinerator before the timer goes off. This involves moving a lot while a timer is running. If you deliberately make the level unwinnable, [=GlaDOS=] will open an "emergency escape hatch"...which means that you have to move about a tenth as far to get the ball into the incinerator.]]
* ''[[GrandTheftAuto Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas]]'' had a ''huge'' GameBreakingBug affecting a certain non-optional mission: Mad Dogg jumps to his death too early, making it and the game unfinishable. If you encounter this bug, then Begin New Game and hope it doesn't happen again.
* The worst GameBreakingBug in all of ''GrandTheftAuto'' has to be the Purple Nines glitch in ''[=GTA 3=]''. If you complete the D-Ice mission Rumble, it clears the existence of an entire gang. The problem occurs that once you save, the bug affects ''all'' saves so the game will never load any more Purple Nines. That makes D-Ice's first mission impossible on any future game saves, as it entails gunning down a set amount of the now non-existent Nines.
* ''[[GrandTheftAuto Grand Theft Auto IV's]]'' last mission features a jump from a bike to a helicopter. You then hang on the chopper and have to press a certain button to climb into the cockpit. Some copys are affected of being unable to get into the chopper, regardless how often you press, making this an Anti-climax.\\
\\
PC-gamers have the option of changing the button in the options. Console users are still screwed; no one from Rockstar Games knows what the bug is or where it came from. They announced an update which will be probably never released.\\
\\
A semi-rare bug in ''The Lost and Damned'' can lead the game to not give you any more missions after the [[spoiler: museum mission]] is finished, meaning the game story can't progress and so the game can't be finished. Nothing appears on the radar, and no amount of calling or driving around will cause a radar blip for any sort of mission to appear - the only real fix is to reload from a save, although even that might not save you.
* ''[[{{Fallout}} Fallout 3]]'': like ''[[TheElderScrolls Oblivion]]'', some quest-critical [=NPCs=] are invincible, but some are not and can die when wandering the Wasteland. Especially once you start seeing Deathclaws and ''packs'' of Radscorpions as random encounters.
** The infamous Lamplight Vault Access Bug. As the main quest progresses, you discover that a critical Vault cannot be entered by its main door at all. (That door isn't even connected to the actual Vault). Instead, you have to get in ''via'' Little Lamplight. But THOSE accesses are blocked until you unlock the proper dialog with the proper [=NPCs,=] even if you find the [=NPCs=] independently. ''[[{{Fallout}} Fallout 3]]'' is so open-ended that it's possible to complete the quest which unlocks one of the dialog paths before you find Little Lamplight. Or you might find and talk your way into Little Lamplight before the main quest fires the need to go there. If you do either of these things, then BOTH dialog paths are pre-empted from the game as if they never existed, and you can't complete the main quest at all. You'll likely be hours of gameplay and dozens of saves down the road before this "bug" rears its ugly head. The only known solution is to fire up the console and use a clipping cheat to move past the barriers... It's called a bug, but it isn't. ''The Fallout 3 Game Guide]]'' shipped with a specific [[AllThereInTheManual note]] on avoiding these situations in order to complete the quest, and so it's clear that Bethesda knew about the problem prior to shipping. It hasn't been patched, and it may never be.
** At least one NPC in the city of Megaton will occasionally commit suicide while the player is out of town or asleep. He has a tendency to go for strolls on a difficult-to-reach roof area, and will sometimes fall and die, taking his quests and rewards with him.
** The recent additional episode to the game, ''The Pitt'', shipped with a bug that made the episode impossible to complete. The game freezes instantly when approaching the Downtown area.
** A more standard one - load up on Rad-X, Radaway and the best hazard suit you can get, then try to get within discovery distance of the vault itself (the place it will lead you does unlock a new place on your map). But unless you brought more than 300 Radaways (you'll need three a step even with the strongest hazard suit, Rad-X, and the radiation immunity perks, and it's 50 steps through the toxic area), you're dead. And if you set the game to quicksave when you find a new place......
*** If you happen to try to quicktravel to a less toxic area, then you'll be DOA.
* One area in the final level of ''{{Psychonauts}}'' features an AdvancingWallOfDoom that requires you do a lot of fancy jumping to avoid it, using all of your different jump techniques. However, a seemingly random bug can activate in this part of the level, where your [[JumpPhysics double jump]] refuses to work... dooming you to a [[SuperDrowningSkills watery grave.]]
* One area of ''BeyondGoodAndEvil'' has an enemy that drops a necessary key when defeated. However, a bug occasionally causes the key to spawn in the wrong place, making it unreachable. Worse is that the spot where this happens is right next to a save spot. A player unaware that they're supposed to be picking up a key might save after the fight and find themselves stuck.
** Also, if you don't take Pey'j's Boots from a Locker, then you can't go back and get them later when you need the randomly generated code to get the spaceship you need to finish the game with.
* In ''GraffitiKingdom'', the fight against [[ThatOneBoss Telepin]] can be literally impossible if you haven't caught on to some completely-unexplained-but-necessary-to-know game concepts [such as swiping monsters with Pixel's wand giving you access to their attacks]. Before then, it is difficult, but entirely possible, to get through the game with only the basics. Not truly unwinnable, as you can remedy this by going back into the level to grab some better moves, but it definitely seems that way when you're playing the game for the first time. Many players simply give up and never play again.
* ''BubbleBobble Revolution'' for the DS has a glitch that causes the boss to not load in Level 30, making the game Unwinnable. The bug was fixed in the v1.1 release.
* ''{{Halo}}'' series: Overzealous speedrunning or SequenceBreaking can cause critical enemies (for example, those who open {{Locked Door}}s) or vehicles to fail to spawn, or other {{scripted event}}s to fail to activate, resulting in a stage being unwinnable. If you saved after a check{{point of no return}}, then you're fucked. Restart.
** The series' autosaving also often lands players in unwinnable situations -- for example, without enough ammo or the proper weapons in a battle. A particularly infamous example is on "Truth And Reconciliation," where a checkpoint sometimes activates just as Keyes is being killed.
---> "We're screwed! We're screwed man!"
** In Halo 2 and onward, after being stuck in an unwinnable autosave situation for a few deaths, the game will punt you back to an earlier autosave. If you find yourself in a situation that is possibly winnable but incredibly difficult, then multiple suicides to trigger this might be a good idea.
*** Unfortunately, if you get yourself into an unwinnable situation that (if it was by Design) would be Cruel or worse, then you might live long enough for the system to autosave twice after you trigger it. The games' mercy has limits.
** In Halo 3, at the end of the game, you have to race to the ship on a warthog while the [[strike: planet]] ring is about to explode. There are a few different check points, most of them on the solid parts of the route. But there is one check point right before the final stretch where you can land at an odd angle, just as it is starting to collapse, and you then fall to death below. The result is that you get stuck respawning upside down over a pit.
* In ''[[{{Halo}} madda cheeb adventure]]'', a SoBadItsGood ''{{Halo}}'' game with the cheeb's poses [[CutAndPasteComic ripped off from other places]], it's impossible to beat stage one without losing a life if you have two slivers of health left; if you're lucky, one. That is, because the boss shoots whip after whip of bullets ([[AntiClimaxBoss before just going up and down, shooting two bullets in a row]]) and you can't escape. The second stage hints that ''you have to get so many mini-war hogs without getting hit '''once''' or else you will run out of time''.
* The ''[[ChipAndDaleRescueRangers Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers]]'' game on the NES had a [[GameShark Game Genie]] code that would make you invincible, but did not prevent you from being stunned by attacks. See, in the game, being stunned and being damaged were two completely different things, and the code caused you to always become stunned instead of taking damage. The result was that if you got caught in certain areas where you were rapidly attacked or if you touched a stationary enemy, you'd be stuck. Interestingly, the Game Genie manual specifically warns you about this in the code's description.
* Some side-scrolling shooters fall into a specific, less air-tight form of this if they have a lot of {{PowerUp}}s that transfer from level to level but are lost when the player loses a life. If you couldn't beat ThatOneBoss with an Armageddon's worth a weaponry, how are you going to beat it with a single gun that fires plain bullets in one direction?
** See ContinuingIsPainful for examples.
* In ''{{Crysis}}'', the player can attempt to fight the final boss without picking up the nuke gun required to kill the boss. Since the game blocks your escape, all you can do is sit there and listen to your friend yell "Use the tac gun to take out that cannon!" while you scream, "I don't have the tac gun, you were supposed to remind me to bring it!"
** Thankfully, the game creates automatic saves at every checkpoint and they do not overwrite one another. Great thinking Crytek!
* The original ''{{Diablo}}'' disables the "SAVE" option when you die. However, it does so a few frames late, and during these few frames it's difficult, but possible to save ''already dead'' and watch your character die instantly each time you reload. There's only one save slot. While you ''can'' start the game over with your character's current stats (much like a NewGamePlus, except accessible from the very beginning), you'll lose anything you had left lying around in town (which is likely to be a lot, due to GridInventory and [[EverythingFades Nothing Fades]]). But hey, it's your own damn fault for saving when you knew you were dead.
** This can screw up first-time ''Diablo'' players who come from ''Diablo II.'' In ''Diablo 2,'' you CAN save and exit when you die and get away with it. In that game, you will be brought back to town carrying whatever was in your inventory when you died. Anything on the ground or that you dropped(potions, usually), were gone... If you're used to that, the change in save-after-death in the original can burn.
** You can just plain save while surrounded by monsters and one hit from death. This is obviously user error.
** Multiplayer characters can screw up in a different way: there is no regular save function and dying in multiplayer mode causes your items to fall to the ground. If you die in a place where you can't get them back (there is one notable enemy type that ignores the safe radius around level entrances and is also invisible, so you can die very quickly after entering a level, only to see a mass of hidden ones manifest around the stairs) and have no choice but to leave the game, you lost all of your items permanently. Good luck completing the game after that.
** ''Diablo'' has strong {{roguelike}} influences and can screw you over in numerous other ways. Black Death in particular take away 1 hit point permanently on striking (with no indication that this is the case) and can render the game unwinnable if you are playing very badly and get hit hundreds of times, leaving you with a tiny amount of health. You have to try really hard to make this happen, though.
* In ''{{Diablo}} II,'' if you lose everything, then you can still go back to where you died and pick up your body. Since it's a pain without your best weapons, you may decide to just quit the game and reload it instead. Doing this too many times causes the game to say "Bad Dead Bodies". There is no indication anywhere that this will happen.
** Why people run into the "Bad Dead Bodies" problem: if you die multiple times, pick up your first corpse with all of your items on it, but don't have enough inventory space to equip them all, the remainder stays on your corpse. If you then die again, then your items are now split among two corpses. The game only saves the corpse with the most valuable items on it. Some useless items have a grossly inflated sales price. This may not literally make the game ''unwinnable'', but losing almost all of your items in Hell difficulty can end your quest right there. This is considered a ''feature'' and it is the reason why most people simply quit and reload when they die once, and pick up their corpse in town.
* ''{{The 7th Saga}}''. Don't fight Valsu over level 40, when he could know the [[GameBreaker game breaking]] Elixir spell. Also, it's possible, after fighting Gariso, to be stuck in an area with monsters too tough for you to handle, so don't fight him until you're at least level 35.
** These probably weren't so bad in the Japanese version which [[DifficultyByRegion gave better average stat gains per level for party members.]]
* In ''AtelierIris2'', the item "Flay Hammer" is required to proceed at a certain point in the story. If you do not have it already, you cannot learn how to make it at this point, so the game becomes unwinnable. To be fair, it's so difficult to miss that you'd have to go out of your way to avoid having it by this point.
* In ''TheDarkSpire'', it is possible to advance the OneWingedAngel's quest line before obtaining the key item Angel's Bracelet. This causes the player to be unable to obtain the key item Black Orb, rendering the game unwinnable.
* ''WorldOfWarcraft'', being an open ended {{MMORPG}}, is not subject to unwinnable situations in the general sense, but there have been numerous occasions throughout its history where specific quests and/or dungeons have been broken due to scripting failures or other issues. In most cases these have to be fixed by a game patch. Notorious ones include:
** Many quests involving scripted [=NPCs=] could break when the script failed to leave the NPC in an interactive state upon completion, preventing any other players from getting or completing its quest(s) until the server was restarted or a kind GM despawned the offending NPC.
** Nefarian, FinalBoss of the Blackwing Lair raid dungeon, despawns temporarily if the players fail to kill him. However, there was a bug where the door separating his room from the rest of the dungeon, which locks during the encounter, would fail to open again, shutting raiders out unless they had wipe prevention or left the dungeon entirely for 30 minutes to allow it to reset.
** Scourgelord Tyrannus, last boss of the Pit of Saron dungeon, is supposed to dismount from his undead dragon at the start of the battle and fight you on foot while the dragon bombards the group with ice blasts from above. Sometimes, though, he dismounts and then immediately remounts again, then spends the entire battle on the dragon, out of range and unattackable.
*** The workaround for this is to make sure no one attacks him until he begins attacking you. He should automatically aggro a few seconds after landing, at which point the party is safe to engage him. The problem is making sure none of your party members attack him before he's fully ready.
*** The first boss in Stonecore (no, ''not'' comic relief/running gag Millhouse Manastorm) bugs out a fair amount of the time as well. The boss will burrow underground and adds will spawn. Normally the boss would do an emerge-and-burrow-jump-attack a couple of times, then finally returning again so it can be killed. However, sometimes the boss bugs and the first adds will spawn, after which the boss disappears. Now this does not make the dungeon unwinnable, as you can just walk on through towards the next boss. However, if you had your heart set on any loot, forget about it!
* In the original version of the first ''{{Samurai Warriors}}'' game, there is a level where you must accompany Goemon to an escape point within a certain time limit. There is a nasty bug in two-player mode: if Player 2 reaches the endpoint before Player 1, then the ending will never trigger and you will be stuck standing at the escape point with Goemon until the time limit runs out, wondering what is going on.
* Anyone who doesn't know how to race swoops should never play ''KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' using autosaves alone. The game autosaves at loading screens at set intervals. It may autosave in a position where your swoop ''is just about to explode''.
** KnightsOfTheOldRepublic has an interesting glitch called the "galaxy droid" that gives you access to a debug menu that allows you to reach any area. If you go to areas that you should not be able to reach, then you may not be able to leave.
** Choosing Mission to rescue you on the Leviathan can cause what's known as the Carth Glitch. If Mission is stealthed when she sets everyone free, then the game will hang during a later cutscene while Carth is talking. Carth's mouth will continue to move, but the scene will never move on. This occurs because Mission is supposed to talk after Carth but, since she's stealthed, you can't detect her. If your Awareness is high enough, then you may eventually see her and the game will then continue; but few people choose to level Awareness on the PlayerCharacter.
* ''EvilDead: Hail to the King'' contained a particularly frustrating unwinnable glitch. At the start of the second disc, you're supposed to save the game at a save point immediately upon arriving in Damascus, then leave the area, fight some skeletons for the parts needed to open the town gate, and then proceed. If you do this, then reloading the game if you fail triggers the second disc's opening cut scene, and all's well. However, if you run to the area with the skeletons, then turn back around and ''then'' save the game and reload it, the enemies will vanish - along with the items you needed to collect from them. You're now stuck outside the city with no way to get through the locked gate, and with the game saved at that spot.
* The first ''{{Ty The Tasmanian Tiger}}'' game could be rendered {{Unwinnable}}, if you used a particular cheat to get all the 'rangs. Somehow, this made the game think that'd you'd beaten all the bosses prior to Cass, and so Juilius and his machine would stay in the ''exact same spot'', and would act as if you hadn't got enough Thunder Eggs (so, say you used it before beating Bull at Bli Bli Station, Juilius would stay there). This would make collecting all the Rainbow Scales impossible (seeing as one appeared every time Julius moved his machine), and would make getting 100%, impossible.
* The two most common ways to make a game of ''{{Glider}} PRO'' unwinnable are to accidentally miss a star (backtracking is sometimes impossible) or to run out of a necessary powerup, especially helium (powerups are in limited supply, ''never'' respawn, are sometimes [[MutuallyExclusivePowerups mutually exclusive]], and can be drained all at once by microwaves).
* In the console version of ''TheSims 2'', one of your objectives in the alien crash site is to "meet an alien". If you have previously met both of the aliens living here, it is impossible to complete the goal, which is required to progress in the game.
* ''TreasureOfTheRudra''. A certain sidequest can be done right after a [[BrokenBridge bridge gets broken]]. You're supposed to get on with the plot a bit first, and stumble upon the sidequest location in the process. Doing the sidequest as soon as it's available will land you on the other side of the broken bridge... with no way to get back.
* ''In {{Breath of Fire}} II'', there is a save point in High Fort. There is also a scenario there in which [[spoiler:you only have Sten in your party and have to fight a TIMED Boss Fight against another of his kind, with no means of leaving town to level him up if he isn't strong enough.]] Guess what you get to do if you use that save point before [[spoiler: the fight under these conditions? There ''is'' an area in-town with random encounters... but it's possible that he's not strong enough for ''those'', either, or so far behind that even they won't help him without impractical amounts of level-grinding.]]
* In ''Desperados 2: Cooper's Revenge,'' there's a level with a sheriff NPC which you are not supposed to be able to kill; due to a bug, [[LordBritishPostulate you can kill him.]] Speaking to this NPC triggers a mandatory scripted event. But if you kill him before talking to him, then the scripted event will never happen and the level (and thus the entire game) becomes unwinnable. The worst thing about this is that it doesn't become clear immediately; you may play for a long time wondering why nothing is happening and overwriting your save files. If you didn't have a save from before killing him, then you'll have to restart the enormously long level from the start. A published patch is supposed to fix the bug, but it doesn't.
* The golf minigame ''Spheda'' in ''DarkCloud 2'' can be made unwinnable via a bug in the RandomlyGeneratedDungeons design: after clearing the level of enemies, the game will spawn the sphere and the "distortion" (the hole) at random, then calculate the number of strokes you can make as a function of the distance and the number of walls between one and the other. Unfortunately, sometimes the two objects would spawn close to each other, with a single wall in between... but to get there, you'd have to traverse the entire floor. The game would then give you 1 stroke to sink the ball. It's even worse when Spheda spheres will change color whenever they hit the floor, the ceiling, or a wall, so even if you can make a miraculous U-turn shot, chances are the ball won't be the right color and will bounce off the distortion.
** Thankfully, ''any'' given level's Spheda can be replayed by beating the level again.
* One level of ''{{Marathon}} 2'' has a pattern buffer (save point) over a pit of acid which just so happens to be unescapable.
** One level of the first game had a pattern buffer in a secret room with a one-shot timed door. Don't save here.
** Some levels, such as "Colony Ship for Sale" and "Ingue Ferroque", require you to shoot switches with grenades or fusion overcharge shots. Don't have grenades or fusion batteries? You're stuck for good.
* ''{{Spore}}'' is one of the most merciful games out there, but in the Tribal and Civilization stages, your tribe's/civilization's fall takes you back to the last save point. If you saved at a moment where you didn't stand a chance, then you're caught in a GroundhogDayLoop of defeat. Your only recourse is to reload the creature on a new planet.
* ''HalfLife2'' can be rendered unwinnable. In the museum where you have to deactivate three dark matter generators, the way to one of them goes through a room full of laser beams. As soon as you cross one, the door closes and you get mowed down by turrets. If you throw a painting from the outside corridor through the laser beams, the door locks permanently.
* There is an unbelievably frustrating one in ''IWannaBeTheGuy''. The last room before the boss has an evil save point that once killed becomes a normal save point. Every time you die, it becomes evil again. Kill it, save while standing in it, then get killed by the boss. Restart, and explode immediately because you ''respawned in the middle of the evil savepoint''. Cue repeatedly killing The Kid about thirty times, giggling.
** The game makes no attempt to prevent you from saving in stupid places. You can do this anywhere, even the very first screen. Better hope you backed up your savefile.
** There was a program released called ''I Wanna Be The Fix'' that would allow you to fix any saves that would make the game unwinnable.
* The coin-op game ''Trog'' features four cute claymation dinosaurs ([[IncrediblyLamePun Rex]], Bloop, [[strike:[[TheSimpsons Lisa]]]] Spike, and Gwen) collecting eggs and trying to get home. It has a complex egg-laying pattern (presumably this means "sophisticated", not "driven by the square root of -1") that sometimes fails to spawn the last egg for a particular dino, making it impossible for that dino to win the round.
* The trading/combat game {{Elite}} has one star-system, Oresrati in Galaxy 8, which is over 7 light-years from any other; hence, it is only reachable by Galactic Hyperspace (or the "unlimited hyperspace range" hack). It's of insufficient tech level to sell you another Galactic Hyperspace. If you're not using the "unlimited hyperspace range" hack and don't have a recent saved position, then you're basically screwed.
* ''{{Overlord}}'' used to have a bug in the brewery level where, if you left the level by any means before repairing and turning a wheel that activates an elevator to the lower floor, the items needed for it would disappear. Since going down was required, this made it impossible to continue the game. The game autosaves at all level transitions; unless you had multiple saves, it would be impossible to reload. It was fixed in a patch that thankfully also restored already Unwinnable saves.
* In the LucasArts game ''[[ZakMcKrackenAndTheAlienMindbenders Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders]]'', you pick up a scrap of wallpaper near the beginning, which you eventually need in order to draw a map. Some time before this, you have to light a bonfire, and can, if you choose, use the wallpaper as kindling. The game doesn't try to dissuade you, and you can continue unhampered until you realise what you were supposed to hang on to the paper for...
** It's also possible to slide things you need into the slot at Annie's office before you have the item that motivates her to contact you; since the door doesn't open, you can't get them back, so you're screwed.
* ''{{Call Of Duty}} 4'' has no specifically unwinnable points, but given the way the game sometimes autosaves in the middle of fights you can come pretty close.
** And how, this Troper is stuck during the final stages of the Pripyat level (holding out at the ferris wheel). The evac chopper is there, unfortunately I have to drag the NPC to the helicopter, through an army of mooks all gunning for ''me'' (oh the realism!). The friendly soldiers which came with the chopper are not doing anything at all. They just... stand there... staring at the horizon. HELLO! LITTLE HELP OVER HERE! Even more frustrating as this is on Veteran level of play. This was a couple of months ago, and completely put me off completing MW on the highest difficulty setting.
* Some computer versions of the classic 14-15 puzzle have an inappropriate shuffle routine (one which lays down the tiles in just any old order, instead of taking the space on a random walk through the tiles or swapping an even number of pairs of tiles, either of which procedures guarantees a solvable position) and thus generate an unsolvable position in 50% of cases.
** Similarly, '''most''' implementations of {{Game/Shanghai}} just lay down the tiles any old how, usually resulting in an unsolvable position. Fortunately, some (most notably Kyodai) are far more considerate of the player.
* ''Champions of Norrath'' had this issue with a boss fight in the first chapter. To reach the Spider Queen boss, you have to [[EscortMission bring a NPC to the door of the boss chamber]]. The NPC opens the door in a cutscene, and once you enter, the door locks you in for the boss fight, also done in a cutscene. Nothing too bad so far. After beating the boss, a door to chapter 2 opens and, like most bosses in the game, she drops equipment, and since there's a good chance you can't wear some it, the logical thing to do is take it and use a Gate Scroll to teleport back to town and sell it. Still not a big deal, since you can Gate Scroll back to wear you used the first one. The problem comes when you either use another Gate Scroll out of town or use the teleport pedestal to do some more adventuring. The old Gate Scroll jumping point gets deleted, so you can't Gate back, and since the door to the room opened and closed by cutscene, the player can't open the door to the room, effectively locking you out of chapter 2 permanently.
* Some (but not all) Windows copies of ''Chip's Challenge'' have a bug in Level 88 that effectively renders it unwinnable, due to increased aggressiveness of the walker enemy. This would later become known as the "Spirals corruption". Fortunately, failing a single stage enough times gives you the option to skip it.
* ''{{Hexen}}'' version 1.0 had a bug (an error in one of the action scripts -- it checked that the number of Green Chaos Serpents left on the level had been reduced to exactly 3, instead of to the intended less than 4) that caused the Episode 4 end-of-episode boss to sometimes fail to appear, leaving the player stuck in a sealed room with no way forward or back. This was fixed in version 1.1.
* The second to last mission in ''StarTrek JudgmentRites'' requires you to persuade a delusional man who believes that he is a king to leave his "throne" for a while, so that you can obtain some electronics vital to complete the mission from above it. However, the only character who can persuade him to leave is Uhura, and if you choose the wrong dialogue choice then it becomes impossible to complete the mission (and thereby the game), as a design oversight meant that the intended next course of action, getting Spock to knock the king out with his nerve pinch, was never implemented properly.
** This also qualifies as UnwinnableByDesign as well, because while it was originally the result of a programming error, the game's producers decided it wasn't worth fixing. This therefore ended up as the only puzzle in either of Interplay's ''Trek'' adventure games where you could make the whole game unwinnable, and since you're given absolutely no warning of what will happen if you choose the wrong dialogue with Uhura, it's a pretty nasty incidence as well.
* If you choose to save in the middle of the timed final level in ''Donkey Kong 64'', you will return to find one of the Banana Medals can't be collected. You need all the Banana Medals to see the entire ending. Before YouTube, this was one nasty glitch.
** One of the Golden Bananas requires you to enter a mechanical fish and shoot out 3 lights surrounding its heart, which are blocked by a propeller that spins/stops on a set pattern, in a certain amount of time. This is normally a fairly easy one to get. But if you don't do it by a certain point it becomes nearly impossible to get due to a bug that makes the propeller spin longer than normal. The only way to get the banana is to exploit a glitch that allows you to hit lights that are being covered, but this is difficult to do and doesn't always work.
* In ''UFO: Aftershock'', it's very easy to render the game unwinnable by simply failing to complete the mission where the [[spoiler:Starghosts]] first appear (either by losing the tactical mission or letting the mission time out in the strategic mode). This mission gives you a research topic which is absolutely crucial for finishing the game and if you miss it, you won't get a second chance.
* The [[SegaGenesis Sega MegaDrive / Genesis]] game ''Chuck Rock'' had a pit in the last level. There's a rock in this pit which you can place next to the wall and climb out. If you manage to throw the rock out of the pit, then that's it. You have to restart the game from the beginning.
* ''[[FirstEncounterAssaultRecon FEAR: Project Origin]]'', unlike the earlier games in the series, doesn't allow for any manual game saving by the player. There's only an automatic checkpoint system which doesn't allow the player to revert to earlier checkpoints. If you find yourself up the creek without a paddle, then you have to restart from the beginning of the level... and some of those levels are long.
* In ''The Forgotten,'' due to a somewhat fussy mouse control over a secret drawer, the player could end up skipping over a key required to enter a room on another floor. So when they enter the elevator, and use another key they found to release the safety so it crashes into the basement. Well Congratulations, you're missing the key item to end the game and now the elevator's broken, so you can't get back up. (Yes, there is a reason why this planned 7-part series only got the first game out)
* One of the Dark Daxter levels in ''JakAndDaxter: The Lost Frontier'' can end up like this; no idea why, but going through an autosave point at a bad time can result in Daxter finding himself with no spiders to use to clog up holes in the ground, and not enough dark eco to smash through a wall.
* LucasArts' policy was to be far more merciful than [[{{Sierra}} its competitor]]. But in the first ''MonkeyIsland'' game, it was technically possible to spend all your money in the grog machine, one coin at the time. It was also possible to burn an item you'd need later, though later versions fixed this.
* The indie adventure game ''PleurghburgDarkAges'' attempted to avoid all unwinnable situations; the game is never supposed to be unwinnable under any circumstances. Still, one thing slipped; if you entered the park at night without the whistle and are about to be attacked by the panther, you're stuck.
* There is one sidequest in ''Dragon Age: Origins'' in which you escort a blind templar through a building and fight a couple of demons along the way. There is a cutscene that triggers after you kill the first one, but if you get impatient and talk to the templar before it happens, you end up stuck in that room - the only two doors out are both locked and impossible to pick. Luckily, the game autosaves at the start of the area, so you won't lose much game progress by resetting.
* ''Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project'' has an odd one relating to the autosave, where repeatedly dying in a certain location constantly resaves a fraction of a second later, leading eventually to you starting over a pit and dying every time you load.
* The AtariST version (and possibly other platforms) of ''{{Lemmings}} 2: The Tribes'' had a situation where it was possible to be too good at the game - I managed to save an extra lemming on one level by having a fencer hit a blocker just right so that the fencer was blocked, but the blocker was still undercut and stopped blocking. When I completed the rest of the game with the intended numbers of casualties, I was left facing a message informing me that, while I had managed to get gold on every level, I had to rescue at least half each tribe for victory to count. After consulting a guide, I managed to discover that I had too many lemmings in that tribe, in which level the error had occured, and how the official solution differed from my own. Not that the "you win" screen of text was particularly rewarding when I finally unlocked it after starting a new game. It's possible that the extra lemming was coincidental, and the unwinnability came from my having earlier got gold on every level with less than half the lemmings per tribe surviving.
* ''Lemmings Revolution'' features a glitch in one level which makes it impossible.
** At least one level in the SNES version of the original ''{{Lemmings}}'' was impossible to beat due to the timer being too short for the larger number of lemmings (100 as opposed to 80) than other versions. The only way past is to use a password.
* There are many, many versions of the original ''ColossalCaveAdventure'' out there. They form a convoluted family tree of ports to other platforms, ports to other programming languages, modifications to make the game more "interesting" (which may or may not work), and so on. One particular branch has a bug that makes the game unwinnable: instead of being able to "get spices," you get told "You can't be serious" if you try. Spices are one of the game's treasures. If you can't collect all the treasures, then you can't unlock the endgame. If you can't unlock the endgame, then you can't complete the endgame. If you can't complete the endgame, then you can't win the game.
* ''[[DragonQuestVII Dragon Warrior VII]]'' can be rendered unwinnable by an unfortunate consequence of [[spoiler:Maribel leaving your party late in the game. If you make her hold any important items, such as shards, then she will keep them when she leaves. SoLongAndThanksForAllTheGear, critical items and all.]] This game has relatively few examples of this despite [[TwainsObservationOnOriginality its unique and complicated story progression]]; the developers (and beta testers) were good at spotting most possible instances.
* In ''BlasterMaster'', you get a weapon upgrade for your tank which allows you to blow away certain walls, which will respawn after a couple of seconds. Should you get out of your tank and walk through a passage created when your tank blew away a wall, you will have no way to return to your tank after the wall respawns. In some places such as Stage 6, you can blast through the ceiling, but can't get out when the blocks respawn as [[DenialOfDiagonalAttack you can't shoot downwards]]. There are a number of places where you also can't kill yourself, forcing you to reset the game.
* ''{{Strife}}: Quest for the Sigil'' has a few [[UnwinnableByDesign intentional unwinnable]] situations, but there's one case of UnwinnableByMistake that only shows up if the player cheats: The Front base's location is dependent on how many Sigil pieces you have. If you have even ONE sigil piece, then the Front base is moved to the castle. Problem? If you cheat to get the Sigil early, then you won't have access to the castle and won't be able to get ANY ending without further cheating because Macil, who gives you all the key jobs (except the first one) until the Front base moves, won't be accessible anymore.
* In ''Lego Indiana Jones'', it's possible to make a level unwinnable during certain mounted segments. Riding an elephant into a insta-death pit, for example, causes the player character to die shortly thereafter, at which point he respawns at the last "safe" point - back on top of the elephant, still in the death pit.
* ''Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves'' for the NES had an item, The Druid Dagger, which was required to destroy an enemy late in the game. Midway through the game, Duncan The Blind leaves the party and [[SoLongAndThanksForAllTheGear takes all his inventory with him.]] If he has the Dagger then, you will probably be unable to get it again and will get stuck just before the final fight with The Sheriff Of Nottingham.... A bug in the character system does create a one-time-only instance of a character with a random name who carries Duncan's things; but once you pass by him, the character disappears, never to be seen again.
** The horrifically broken password system in the game (it was hidden for a reason) would put Robin in the proper place but with a different inventory which is often missing anything of value, including plot-critical items. The password that took you to the final sequence would not give you the Druid's Dagger; the game is unwinnable if you use it.
** A third instance: a 'hidden feature' allowed rapid fire in the sword duels simply by holding down Start. If a player jumped while holding Start, then Robin Hood would not come down from his jumps, allowing him to spring through the screen vertically and eventually wrap around. It was possible to get wedged into the floor and be unable to jump any more without an apparent reason. The player would now be too low to hit the other sword fighter and too low to be hit themselves, which makes the fight a complete draw. You can't back out of the duel, and so the game has to be reset and started over from the beginning. (We did mention that the password system is messed up.)
* The ''HarryPotter Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets'' game autosaves when you enter the Chamber of Secrets. Problem is, you ''really'' need lots of health potions in there, and you can only get health potions by making them in school ''before'' you enter. Oh, and there's no way out once you're in.
* One level in ''[[CommanderKeen Commander Keen IV]]'' featured monsters who didn't harm you, but appeared in puffs of smoke to steal items before you could collect them. This included a key necessary to get to the end of the level. In fairness, however, if you were unable to kill all of these monsters before they got to the key, then you ''deserve'' to lose.
* In the GameBoy Color pirate ''Thunder Blast Man'', [[PortingDisaster an even worse port]] of the Famicom ''Rocman X'', the "city stage" boss is unbeatable due to a GameBreakingBug.
* Unpatched versions of the original {{Descent}} have a GameBreakingBug that makes the last boss unkillable on any difficulty level except the two easiest ones (out of five).
* ''JakeHunter Unleashed'' has a particularly insidious one in the last chapter. At the beginning of the case, you get an option to pick your partner from three characters: Yulia, King and Sam. Choosing Yulia makes it so you cannot access the critical "deduce" option later, thereby preventing you from finishing the case.
* ''MassEffect'' is pretty solid... ''if'' you're playing on an X-Box or a decent PC. But if your PC is less-than-optimal, the game can become unwinnable at the end of the next-to-last level. Ouch. What happens is, you have to get from point A to point B before a timer ticks out. This was intended to be quite doable but a little nerve-wracking. If you just meet the minimum system requirements, though, the graphics will lag and the timer won't. Fortunately, there's a work around: point the camera straight down on the Mako and zoom in so that the computer doesn't have to render as much.
* in ''Digital - A Love Story'', there is a story-stopper that can be triggered after less than three total BBS connects. Curiously, [[MoonLogicPuzzle it is almost guaranteed that it will never happen on someone's first playthrough]]. The problem? Using a certain "fix" on your Amie causes * Emilio to stop sending messages to you. Not that big a problem, right? except that all BBS activity up until she disappears is triggered by her conversations with you, so you never get to do long distance calling.
* Many, many amateurly programmed adventure games, especially using the [=RAGs=] developer, can have this. One example that comes to mind, is one where the person accidentally coded the ending trigger wrong, so a filler conversation would always trigger, as opposed to the actual ending. (Checks for Variable: Leaf Fairy, followed by variable: Negotiator Fairy. He coded the variable to become Negotiator Leaf Fairy, so the first part is always triggered!)
** There is a similar example in My Bloody Fairy Tale, where you are required to gather a number of magical items and a magic code to activate a transformation spell, allowing you to get into the next area. But the magical items are used up in the spell,and the code is written on each of the items. You are not reminded of this second fact after you've found the items, and infact, you're only told by a ghost after you specifically ask about it. So if you start the ritual before reading the code, the game is unwinnable.
* In the version of [=FreeCell=] distributed with MicrosoftWindows, game 11982 out of 32000 is unwinnable.
* The first RatchetAndClank game: if [[RobotBuddy Clank]] [[LostForever doesn't pick up]] the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin magneboots]] on [[BubblegloopSwamp Orxon]] before [[KillerRabbit Ratchet]] gets the [[SuperNotDrowningSkills 02 mask]] on [[PalmtreePanic Pokitaru]], you won't be able to advance to [[SlippySlideyIceWorld Hoven]].
* ''PennyArcade'' made two otherwise nigh perfect games, but at one point it's possible to hit an unbeatable snag. After [[spoiler: being forced into the mental institution]], you have to shock your brain back to health. The second and third levels of this mini-game feature unrotatable blocks of damaged tissue; if one of those blocks is at the edge and can't be reached, you have no choice but to quit and reload.
* ''[[SoldierOfFortune SoldierOfFortune II]]'': In the Colombia mission, sometimes your team will get stuck on an obstacle, making it impossible for you to continue, since [[BorderPatrol if you go on ahead, they will execute you]].
* Just like its remake, the original version of ''Baroque'' has voice and item lists, which have to be filled by talking to [=NPCs=] and registering items, in order to obtain 100% completion (and some bonus art). The lists can't be completed in a single game, so you have the chance to restart while keeping your database intact, in order to eventually get everything with repeated playthroughs. However, in what was clearly a design oversight, one of the voices can be missed permanently if you don't get it before registering 20 items. And restarting won't do a thing, since your game data and system data are separate. Your only option is to delete the system data and restart filling the lists from scratch. Made worse from the fact that this mistake is especially easy to meet, because the method of obtaining the voice is rather obscure (you must die three times in a row before talking with the Collector), and because 20 items are usually registered pretty quickly into the game. Good thing you don't actually need 100% completion to see the ending, but still painful for completionists. The problem was fixed in the remake, thankfully.
* In the 1997 Blade Runner PC game, you encounter [[spoiler: Moraji]] handcuffed to a bomb in his workplace. Since you have a Police PKD .45 blaster, shooting off the 'cuffs is trivial. When [[spoiler: Moraji]] is free, he screams: Run, run! meh - you think - what a obvious and easy sequence. So you holster your weapon, turn around, fast walk to the street...but what, where is [[spoiler: Moraji]]? Then the bomb explodes, and you are thrown across the street. You're dead. Try again? Okay, this time you've managed to run out of the office. You're dead again. What tha f...? The pacing of this game is based on the speed of your CPU. Oops - the default speed was set on the 90's PC's. That's why [[spoiler: Moraji]] runs so fast you don't even get to see him, and the bomb's fuse is so short. This sequence is Unwinnable until you slow down your computer somehow(by running some memory-eating programs). It hasn't been fixed by any patch.
* The {{Shadowrun}} game on the [[{{OtherSegaSystems}} Sega CD]] can end up being unwinnable as a combination of three factors: the game has only scripted battles, set points where the player characters gain experience and a highly customizable character building system. The end result of this is that it is entirely possible to build up your characters in such a way that they cannot win a mandatory battle, and the game offers no possibility of straying from the main storyline to grind.
* Similar to the ''MegaManStarforce'' example, you can get stuck between an NPC and a wall in Chapter 5 of ''{{Mother 3}}.'' Unfortunately, this game doesn't have the walk through [=NPCs=] workaround to get you out of there, so the only thing you can do is revert to an old save if this happens. The killer? The NPC you managed to get stuck behind is a Save Frog, meaning the last time you probably saved was ''right after getting stuck behind it,'' and due to a programming oversight, it will never move out of your way, effectively ending the game and forcing you to start over. The fan made strategy guide for the game advises that you avoid that save point completely and tough it out until you get to the next one.
* [=MDickie's=] now-legendary biblical-era [[WideOpenSandbox sandbox game]] ''TheYouTestament'' is very easy to make unwinnable, as discovered during a [=~Let's Play~=] by SomethingAwful regulars Chip Cheezum and General Ironicus: If you create a very, very short character and step into a pool, you can not climb out, and have to start all over again. [[http://chipandironicus.com/video/testament/5.html You can see the effect in action in this video, towards the end.]]
* The specifics of the ''[[RockBand Rock Band 2]]'' star cutoffs mean that the score required to get a 5-star do ''not'' go up in direct proportion to how many notes are added - instead, the cutoffs take what is called a "base score" (every note taken at 1x, all sustains held to full) across all of the parts and multiply them by a number that increases depending on how many players (and which parts) there are. There are also two different challenges that strip overdrive from all songs in the setlist, one of which tasks you with getting five stars on every song in the setlist. Ace of Spades cannot be 5-starred with a full band unless overdrive is used. Biggest Show Ever adds Ace of Spades as an encore, strips away all overdrive phrases from the songs in the setlist, and penalizes you severely if you get a 4 star on any song in the setlist.
* In the Japanese ''[[{{Pokemon}} Pokemon Red and Green]]'', if you evolve your starting pokemon before you get the pokedex (raising it from level 5 to 16 against pokemon about levels 2 through 4 before you get to the second town and back) then you can never get the pokedex, which means you can't get pokeballs, which means that old man won't let you past the second town, Viridian City.
** Note that if you try to trade your starter to another game to give it Cut to get around that man, the badge necessary is farther up in your adventure.
** This was corrected in Pokémon Blue, as well as all international releases, but it's still possible to be in an Unwinnable situation in English versions of Red/Blue.
*** Thanks to a glitch involving the Safari zone, saving, ledges, and poison, one can reach the Seafoam Islands without any Pokémon that know Surf or Fly. However, the glitch is so elaborate that one would need instructions to pull it off.
*** Similarly, it's possible to make Gen I unwinnable if you release all your Pokémon in Cinnabar (Except for one, who probably can't use surf) and then get rid of all your money and pokéballs so that you can't catch any pokémon. You have to pretty much be ''trying'' to do this, though. But back when you could actually rent GameBoy games, it wasn't uncommon to find the pre-saved file trapped in some place like Cinnabar with no way to catch pokémon.
*** In addition, Gen I has the famous Glitch City, which - if the player follows a particular sequence of actions involving the Safari Zone - will put you in a "town" made of a random jumble of tiles pulled from the town you last visited. Walk too far North, South, or East and the game crashes. Walk too far West and...you loose the ability to go back and ''then'' the game crashes. The only way out is to Fly to another city or Teleport/Dig yourself back to the last Pokemon Center you visited. So if you save in Glitch City without a Pokemon who knows one of those moves, you're f'd.
*** Also qualifying in Gen I are the glitch Pokemon such as Missingno. and 'M. Granted, you usually have to go out of your way to encounter them, especially in Yellow, but it seems the harder you have to look the more damage they do. While Missingno. rarely does anything worse than mess with your Hall of Fame, other glitched Pokemon and trainers can screw up your party, destroy your savegame, and in some case ''render the entire cartridge unusable''. [[http://lparchive.org/Pokemon-Blue/Update%2001/ Demons in all their glitchy glory here.]]
%% The Finneon example (according to the archived discussion) belongs in By Design, not here (it's a Mythology Gag). It has already been removed from this page at least three times; do not re-insert it.
* In VampireTheMasquerade:Bloodlines it is possible through a bug that the slowing down effect of the fat Tzimisce things in the sewers of Hollywood will last for the rest of the game. That is not so much of a problem until you have to get out of a cave with a timed explosion, where it will be impossible to even get near your boat.
** Also another bug caused the game to crash at the point where the video for said explosion is loading.
* In the Atlantis level of ''Timelapse'', you need to use a crystal to power an elevator. For most of the (preferable) game endings, you'll need to use the elevator again later ... but if you left the crystal in there, [[LostForever it won't be there]] when you come back (because its previous owner came by and found it). There is no indication when this happens.
* In the PAL version of the first ''Digimon World'' on the PSX, almost all copies of the game (a tiny part work perfectly) have a glitch prevents you to access to a dungeon (the NPC guarding the entrance is supposed to run away when you talk to him ; with the bug, you can't talk to him) than contains two Digimon. The problem is, every Digimon you get give points to your city and, after reaching a certain number of points, the final dungeon is unlocked. The two you can't get due to the bug have sidequests that allow you to get ''near two thirds'' of the Digimon, making the game near unwinnable without GuideDangIt.
** In addition, you can get ambushed at the home world and cornered into fighting a [[ThatOneBoss quite powerful boss]]with a digimon that is FAR from ready to fight it.
* ''[[http://jayisgames.com/archives/2008/02/vision.php Vision]]'' is a great escape-the-room game, but some players have found themselves in an unwinnable situation after failing to pick up the desert marble (the one marble that's the easiest to overlook and the least required for puzzle-solving) before [[PointOfNoReturn going down the elevator]] and finding themselves without all the marbles required to complete the final puzzle.
* ''Alone In The Dark 4'' had a frustrating glitch where a plot-critical item simply didn't appear. This happened way too often for the developers not to know about it. The only option was to grit your teeth and reset.
* ''MedalOfHonor 2010'' has [[ObviousBeta many bugs]], some of which can induce unwinnable situations. For example, in Defend The Crash Site, you are defending a crashed helicopter from the Taliban with a minigun turret, and at a certain point, an enemy is supposed to destroy the turret with an RPG. Unfortunately, particularly in the PS3 version, this ScriptedEvent sometimes fails to activate, resulting in the mission continuing indefinitely. Another one happens in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n39Y_8mJ7_8 Belly of the Beast]], where you're supposed to cover fire for your team mates as they advance, but again, the event flag for their advance often fails to activate. The only way around these is to restart the mission from the beginning and hope you don't get screwed again, and if that (god forbid) fails, restart the whole game.
* In {{Lagoon}}, it's possible to save virtually anywhere as long as you're not in the middle of a boss fight. Even if you're about to fall down a BottomlessPit.
* The Mac version of ''{{Doom}} II'' had a bug in one of its MIDI files that [[GameBreakingBug caused the game to crash]] on Level 29. Fortunately, this was quickly patched.

[[folder: Board Games]]
* In some board games, it is possible for a player to be in a situation where there are no legal moves to be made, such as stalemate in {{chess}}. In contemporary chess, a stalemated game is a draw; historically there was no standard rule, and stalemate was sometimes considered a loss for the stalemated player -- or sometimes a ''win''. Chess also has a rule that the game is drawn if no possible sequence of moves from the current position can lead to a win. The most obvious example is when both players have only their king left, but there are other possibilities, such as the 16 pawns forming a complete blockade, that [[TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything are covered by the rule]] even though they will never arise in realistic play.
** The 50-move rule (the game is a draw if no pawns have been moved and no captures have been made after each player has taken 50 moves) was added because it was thought that the game was Unwinnable when it had devolved into such a state. Then someone found a way to mate a player this way...
* ''Dragon Realms'' has the potential to create this for one or more players and make things very annoying for the others. If a player is very low on cash, a natural disaster like a flood can destroy enough of their railroad that they can't afford to repair it and are cutoff from any city where they could make more money. As a last resort they discard their contract cards and draw a new set of contract cards hoping to get one that will get them the money to proceed. However, this increases the chance that another disaster card will be drawn which only makes things worse. They have legal actions in the game but those actions get them nowhere. The other players now have to deal with the possibility of a natural disaster card every other round instead of every five to six rounds. Also having one player sit around for another hour or two locked in an unwinnable situation is not a pleasant experience for everyone. Since lending other players money is not allowed, the others players will find a way to pay the stuck player rent money for using their railroad just to get them back into the game.
* In the board game ''Hero Quest'', it is entirely possible to lock the game into an unwinnable state by making either the Elf or the Wizard use the spell "Pass Through Rock" then passing through one of the many boulders that are used specifically to stop you from going to rooms to have no way in and nothing of interest thus trapping you on one side of the board with no way out.
* ''BetrayalAtHouseOnTheHill'' boasts fifty Haunt scenarios that are randomly chosen each time you play. However, due to the [[LuckBasedMission random nature]] of the game, it's sometimes possible to end up in a situation where one side literally has no chance of winning. For instance, the Traitor becomes a near-invincible monster with one weakness... only by sheer chance, they happened to ''find'' that item and were carrying it when the Haunt started. Leaving the heroes with no way to retrieve it. To make matters worse, some of the scenarios as originally published had conflicting or unclear rules, which could also render a scenario Unwinnable. However, since the nature of this game is not very competitive, in most such situations reasonable players will elect to veto the haunt in favor of something more [[RuleOfFun fun]].
** It says something this game ended up getting a ''20-page'' errata book to correct all the errors, and some are still there.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Game Books]]
* Some Gamebooks may require you to document usages of items, and if you accidentally forget you had an item...oops! Unwinnable!
* The second ''LoneWolf'' book has an inexplicable section where a forked path in a cave is really no choice at all: both paths force you to confront an enemy which is undefeatable without a special item from earlier in the story which is quite easy to miss.
** Even if you do have it, you will be offered the choice to [[TooDumbToLive give it away]] to your traveling companion who stays behind to fend off your pursuers. If you do so, you are literally throwing your own life away.
* Generically; if you got one from the library, you might have had a page ripped out so that you couldn't complete it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Card Games]]
* There's an old strategy in the ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}!'' TCG known as the Lockdown, a deck that forces a continuous loop that -- once in place -- makes it impossible for the opponent to counter.
** There still are forms of this strategy. Combining any Tuner on the field, Imperial Iron Wall, Cannon Soldier, and Quillbolt Hedgehog makes an infinite burn loop that ends in an OTK. Considering how the game goes a player can easily leave a destruction card in their hand for later, only to be met with this happening as soon as the second turn.
*** This can be pulled off more easily if you have Dark Verger, which eliminates the need for Imperial Iron Wall but requires a Plant-type Tuner.
*** There are many other [=OTKs=] involving Cannon Soldier or Mass Driver. More are discovered all the time. A current popular OTK or FTK is the Frog FTK revolving around Substitoad, Ronintoadin, Swap Frog, and Mass Driver.
** The first popular lockdown combo was the Yata-Lock combination. The player needed to have a Sangan or Witch of the Black Forest on their side of the field, and have one LIGHT and DARK monster in their Graveyard. They remove the two cards to Special Summon Chaos Emperor Dragon and then pay 1000 Life Points to nuke the field and players' hands. The effect of Sangan or Witch would be activated; they would be sent to the player's Graveyard, and the player could search their deck for Yata-Garasu and add it to their hand. Then they could play it and attack their opponent with it. It only did a tiny bit of damage, but its effect prevented your opponent from drawing a card on their next turn, which left them defenceless. When the Ban List was first released, these cards were quickly placed on it.
** There are also combos which force your opponent into an unwinnable position. If you played Last Turn and chose a monster that forbids the opponent from special summoning, you instantly win because the opponent would have no other monster on their side of the field. This was likely never intended in the card's design.
** There are also loops in which they never resolve. The biggest offender is Pole Position. If two monsters on the field had similar (but not the same) ATK, and the weaker one became the stronger through a spell card, then Pole Position would continually activate. It makes the strongest monster immune to spell cards and takes away the ATK boost -- but now the monster is only the second strongest. So Pole Position would shift to the other monster -- and then back to the first one when the spell card kicks in again... ''ad infinitum.'' They had to make a new rule: in such a situation, you are not allowed to activate the offending card, even if you normally could.
*** Most loops which can never willingly be stopped are not allowed to be activated intentionally at tournaments.
** Lockdown is every bit as much a valid strategy as brute force, milling, burn or satisfying an InstantWinCondition. Those cards were banned due to their nature as [[GameBreaker game breakers]], not because you shouldn't be allowed to employ a lockdown strategy. To illustrate, they never banned any aspect of the blood lock combo: Toll+ Dark Door+ Chain Energy, which requires both players to pay lifepoints to do anything. Render your opponent under 500 lifepoints, and you can finish your opponent with a burner, or just be GenreSavvy enough to keep a few extra cards in your deck and wait for your opponent to deck out before you do (most players keep to the 40 card minimum for speed purposes, but there is no limit to the number of cards you are allowed to have in your deck).
*** There are a few lockdowns intentionally made for the game, such as the earlier Tornado Wall card. However most intentional lockdowns only affected one aspect of the game and/or had an upkeep that would eventually kill the player for using it too long. Almost all of the other lockdowns were created when players used the cards out of their intended purpose (for example, the aforementioned Last Turn card was meant to be a duel between two Monsters. The Special Summoning part was just to simplify the rules so that they didnt create a whole new mechanic just for this one card. However a literal interpretation of the rules made it unwinnable for whoever isn't in control of Jowgan the Spiritualist, the monster who forbids special summoning after he is summoned).
** Amusingly, Yugi uses a loop to win in the anime, so it indeed seems a legal strategy. Naturally, YuGiOhAbridged has fun with this.
-->'''Kaiba:''' Yugi, you took advantage of a glaring flaw in the duelmonsters-rulebook. Truely, you are an honorable duelist.
* You can do this with quite a few card combinations in ''[[MagicTheGathering Magic: The Gathering]]'' as well. The rule is that if the game ends up in an unstoppable loop, it ends in a draw; the most common of these involves [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=159249 Animate Dead]] and [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=35056 Worldgorger Dragon]]. If it ''is'' stoppable, the players simply decide how many times the loop occurs.
** Actually, the usual trick with Animate Dead and Worldgorger Dragon is to combine it with another effect which can take place while one of the infinite looping abilities is on the stack, usually [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=984 Bazaar of Baghdad]] to fill up the graveyard so Animate Dead can get a 20/20 with haste and flying or something similar.
** The rules have on occasion been changed (used as a tournament rule when a draw is not an option) so that an unbreakable loop counts as a lose for the player who created it.
** This is not to be confused with actual Lock strategies - decks that make it impossible (or almost impossible) for the ''opponent'' to win, often long before the Lock deck itself wins. There have been many decks in {{Magic The Gathering}} that do this, such as [[http://forum.tcgplayer.com/showthread.php?t=409 Scepter-Chant]]. Very few if any of those are
** Magic also has a bunch of cards with the Nightmare creature type. The most (in)famous of these is called [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=108840 Faceless Butcher]]. What this does is that when it comes into play, it removes a creature from the game other than itself. When it leaves play, the removed creature comes back. So, to hopelessly draw the game, make sure there are no creatures in play. You need three Butchers (let's call them A, B and C.) Play Butcher A. Nothing happens since there are no legal targets for his first ability. Play Butcher B. B has a legal target: A. Remove A from the game. Play Butcher C. Butcher C has a legal target: Butcher B. Now B has left play, so the second ability triggers and resolves: Return the removed creature to play. The removed creature was Butcher A. A comes into play and has a legal target for its ability: C. Remove C from the game, which bring back B, which removes A... unless someone can either counter one of the abilities (only two or so cards in the entirety of the card pool targets triggered abilities) or can kill one of the butchers before the abilities happen, you've created an infinite loop and the game is a draw.
*** The Lorwyn/Shadowmoor blocks had several creatures with the Champion ability, which removes a creature you control from the game, often with restrictions on the sort of creature it can target. This can be used to create similar loops.
*** Also note that such loops can lead to a game-ending condition if combined with other cards like [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=108862 Pandemonium]].
*** These days in Magic, the O-Ring Lock is better known than Faceless Butcher, with three of [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=220586 Oblivion Ring]]. Works exactly the same way, though, so if there are no other non-land permanents, you've just locked the game.
* A particularly famous - albeit rare - example in the Pokemon TCG involves two primary cards to establish a perfect stalemate: Mewtwo LV.X (Legends Awakened), a Pokemon protected entirely from non-evolved Pokemon; and Uxie (Legends Awakened), a card able to return itself - and all cards attached - back to the deck via its Psychic Restore attack. So, when both players are using decks with both cards, as well as no evolved Pokemon, the game often ends perfectly tied, with no remedy per the rules in site.
** To make matters worse, this stalemate has no practical remedy in tournament play at all: if it happens, you're in for a long, drawn-out 40 minute round. When it's all over, the judges will either A) make you go to sudden death all over again, where this could repeat indefinitely, or B) simply give you and your opponent double game losses for delaying the event (ties are not allowed).
** In the early game, before all of the fancy stuff a simple locked game could be formed with both players having only a Mr. Mime on the field and nothing to cancel abilities.
*** The problem arose with Mr. Mimes Pokepower: ''Whenever an attack (including your own) does 30 or more damage to Mr. Mime (after applying Weakness and Resistance), prevent that damage. (Any other effects of attacks still happen.)'' They had only one attack: ''Does 10 damage plus 10 more damage for each damage counter on the Defending Pokémon.'' And a weakness to psychic which at that time would mean damage was doubled. Each player could attack once doing 20 damage, then all subsequent attacks would deal 60 damage, more then double what the wall says it will resist. The only hope is that someone can deck the other player.


[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV]]
* Though not always consistent, the children's game show ''LegendsOfTheHiddenTemple'' had an end game that can become unwinnable depending on certain situations. First, there were the Pendants of Life, needed to get past three Temple Guards that will yank a contestant out of the temple during the end game if they don't have a full one, and which are rewarded in a GoldenSnitch-type 1-1-2 three game system; one half pendant for the first two games, a full one for the last. Because of this, it's possible to make it to the end game with only 1 and a half or even a singular Pendant (though in the case of the former, the show gives the contestants the chance to find the other half-Pendant inside the temple), and depending on where the Temple Guards are hiding and which doors in the temple are locked, it's very possible (and has happened several times in the show's run) to be forced to encounter all three Temple Guards with only one pendant, a definite no-win situation.
** If the team is doing well enough it can also be a no-lose situation. If the team is doing well enough and gets BOTH pendants, then they cannot lose unless they were to run out of time.
* In the first season of ''TheAmazingRace'', three teams were essentially eliminated on leg nine, as poor course design made it impossible for the two teams who technically did survive to ever catch up to the lead pack. Over the next four legs, the 3rd and 4th place teams were arriving at the Pit Stops over twelve hours behind the top two teams, meaning they were actually arriving ''after'' the leading teams had already started the next leg. This meant that by the last episode of the season, they were doing tasks that the other teams had completed in the previous episode, making their continuing to race merely a formality. Subsequent seasons added deliberate equalizers, points at which teams are forced to be evened up with each other, to go along with the looser "bunching points" that caused many of the problems near the end of Season 1.
** At the time, a CrowningMomentOfAwesome for some fans, [[NonGameplayElimination as it led to the season's "villain" team being informed that the race was over in the snows of Alaska]] while every other team welcomed the first- and second-place finishers in Central Park then posed for a season-ending group shot. However, Bill & Joe are far more well remembered now than the teams who beat them, and were even invited back for All-Stars (as were the 4th place finishers, Kevin & Drew).
** Similarly; accidents have caused the game to become unwinnable for individual players. Such as players accidentally losing their passports or money.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Sports]]
* A good half of College Football programs are de facto ineligible for the BCS Championship game before a single down is played. "Mid-Major" teams (those not in the oldest and largest conferences) cannot ascend high enough in the computer poll rankings because the teams they play are not good enough to satisfy the strength of schedule requirement. They cannot play elite teams because they must schedule the games years in advance, before the Mid-Major knows if their team will be any good that season. And then when they ''do'' play those elite teams ''and win'', it almost always occurs at the beginning of the season, which poll voters have forgotten by the time they are ready to pick the Championship pairing. Utah, Hawaii, and Boise State have all gone undefeated in recent years without a realistic chance of playing for a National Title. The disparity has gotten so bad that it has spawned congressional hearings to investigate it. Whether this is UnwinnableByMistake or UnwinnableByDesign (keeping the big $ in the BCS) is a matter of intense debate.
** The "By Design" theory got stronger in 2010: The first official BCS poll (the top two in the poll at the end of the season played for the championship) came out in late October. The top team was... Oklahoma, who was #3 in both human-voted polls. Oregon was #2 (1 in the human polls), Boise St. was #3 (#2). When Oklahoma lost the following week, that week's new BCS #1 was... Auburn - again, ranked #3 in the human polls.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Tabletop Games]]
* It is possible to win a game of Warhammer 40,000 by killing all of the enemy units that can claim objectives, making the game unwinnable for that side.
** Other units can still contest objectives, so while the player can no longer win, he can still make the game a Draw.
** This is actually built into one of the armies, the Necrons, who literally just disappear if more than 75% of their army is utterly destroyed. Note that "army" in this case means the total number of units with the "necron" rule (there is a considerable amount of units without this rule). This will supercede all other official mission rules.
** Close Combat with certain units. Due to the "you cannot wound creatures with a toughness that's 4 higher than your strength" rule and the "roll a D6 and add the result to your strength for Armour penetration" rule, it is very possible for you to run into combat with a dreadnought or a Wraithlord, only to realise there's absolutely nothing you can do other than wait till every single one of your models in that unit is curbstomped to hell. 5th edition got a little better where even the most basic units carry Krak grenades, which are strong enough to hurt Dreadnoughts (but still not Wraithlords). The Soul Grinder is even more dangerous, as it has an Armour rating of 13, meaning that unless you brought dedicated anti-armor close combat weapons against it, not even your grenades will help you (and in some cases, the weapon wont even help).
*** There is also an army-wide variant of this. Any wise opponent would bring at least some form of anti-armor against you, especially if they know you to use tanks. However, if you destroy all their heavy weapons, it's very possible to win by default (only in certain missions, however, like Annhilation). This is especially obvious with the new Imperial Guard Codex, where most of the MTBs have an armor rating of 11 on the back, meaning most people would be unable to even break those tanks in close combat, making the game very literally unwinnable.
** Deepstriking units are not placed on the table and randomly come in during the game. However, if all your available troops are killed before the Deepstriking ones arrive, you automatically lose since you have no more units. This can be caused by a considerably bad roll, but is much more pronounced for Daemon Armies, where the entire army must deepstrike, which stands a very good chance that either all of them would get shot to hell in the first turn before the rest of your army comes (you can only shoot or run on the turn you deepstrike and only one type of unit in the army can actually shoot, meaning the entire army is slowed by at least a turn), or you scatter into other units and/or off the table, destroying what little troops you start with and fork over an automatic victory to your opponent.
* ''DungeonsAndDragons'' adventure I5 ''Lost Tomb of Martek''. The three Star Gems must be placed in the altar in the Garden of the Cursed so the {{PC}}s can continue. However, the Star Gems are also needed much later in the adventure to revive Martek, but there's no way for the {{PC}}s to know this. If they assume the Star Gems have fulfilled their purpose and forget to remove them from the altar, they're in trouble. The Crystal Prism area effect that teleports the {{PC}}s to the Citadel of Martek only works once. Once they reach the Citadel, even if they use the Teleport wall in the Citadel to return to the Garden of the Cursed to get the Star Gems they can't get to the Citadel of Martek again.
** If you're supposed to be raiding a tomb and leave gems behind, you deserve what's coming to you.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Other]]
* This can result from a HolodeckMalfunction (although generally not if the characters need to win the game to escape). For example, in one episode of ''StarTrekTheNextGeneration,'' Data is playing a ''SherlockHolmes'' game and has determined that TheKillerWasLeftHanded. However, foreshadowing a more serious glitch, the handedness of every NPC is wrong, so the right-handed killer laughs in Data's face.
** This example in particular is also one hell of a ''Wallbanger'' - seriously, the robot with the positronic brain doesn't notice that the guy's got his pipe in his right hand. Really? ''Really?''
*** Data proved in an earlier episode that he can [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard figure who did it before the game even starts]], so he may have been deliberately overlooking the clues as he assumed he already knew how it ends.
* While playing with [[{{Emulation}} Emulators]] in general, nearly if not all games can be rendered Unwinnable by saving a game state in a situation that will always cause definitive Game Over (Example:Surrounded by enemies, with one Hitpoint, no Lives and no Continues) with no saved battery files or backup states.
* This is what happens in the BadFuture of ''{{Homestuck}}''. [[spoiler: John gets himself killed by fighting his [[ThreshholdGuardian Denizen]] [[SequenceBreaking far earlier than he's supposed to.]] Without him, Jade (presumably) dies since she is unable to enter the Medium and escape from the meteor that later strikes her house. Dave and Rose can't progress past a certain point without their help, and Dave is forced to travel back in time to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong.]]\\
\\
The whole [[spoiler: kids' session of Sburb]] could be considered this too, at least as far as winning it normally is concerned, because [[spoiler: they accidentally [[OneWingedAngel prototyped]] [[DimensionLord Becquerel]] [[ItGotWorse and gave all of the enemies in their game]] [[RealityWarper ridiculous game breaking godlike powers]] that broke the game so badly that one of their bosses [[BeyondTheImpossible escaped their universe and messed the trolls' session up]] - sort've like [[EpicFail failing on your video game so hard that someone else in a different city's game disk scratches]].]] This is compounded by the fact that [[spoiler: [[BigBad Jack]] [[TimedMission started the Reckoning way, way early]] and the kids game basically started just as they ran out of time for some reason]]. The characters involved realise something went wrong and are trying to figure out how to salvage the situation.
* In the [[ShowWithinAShow Game Within A Show]] from ''ScoobyDoo And The Cyber Chase'', the gang is [[{{Tron}} trapped in a video game]], where they must find and pick up a hidden box of ScoobySnacks on each level to advance to the next. In the dinosaur-jungle level, Scooby is picked up by the trapped baby pterosaur he just rescued, and grabs up the box of Snacks an instant before it flies away with him, preventing the box from being destroyed by molten lava. As a player of the actual game might not spot the box in time, this looks like an UnwinnableByMistake that would need fixing. Justified, as it's evidently a Beta-test version that they're caught in.
[[/folder]]

** And how, this Troper is stuck during the final stages of the Pripyat level (holding out at the ferris wheel). The evac chopper is there, unfortunately I have to drag the NPC to the helicopter, throw row upon row of mooks all gunning for ''me'' (oh the realism!). The friendly soldiers which came with the chopper are not doing anything at all. They just... stand there... staring at the horizon. HELLO! LITTLE HELP OVER HERE! Even more frustrating as this is on Veteran level of play. This was a couple of months ago, and completely put me off completing MW on the highest difficulty setting.

* ''FinalFantasyIV'' has a sequence where you regain the healer character, Rosa, and then almost immediately descend into the underworld to the Kingdom of the Dwarves, where you fight Calbrena (the [[ThatOneBoss combining dolls]]) and Golbez in quick succession. When Rosa reappears in your party, she has the bare minimum of equipment. Once you've descended to the underworld, you can't return to the surface without completing the entire sequence, nor will the dwarven vendors talk to you. If you forget to equip Rosa before going to the underworld, then the fights against Calbrena and Golbez will be practically unwinnable -- she is easily killed without gear.

* Many of the physics-based puzzles in ''{{Zack and Wiki}}'' can be rendered unwinnable by performing steps incorrectly or in the wrong order -- for example, dropping the platform part of a seesaw into place before the base is ready. Since the game is made up of short levels that can be retried as many times as you want, this isn't as evil as many of the other cases.

* ''{{Monty Python}}'s The Meaning of Life: The PC Game'' is a point-and-click adventure through the movie and television show as you search for the eponymous philosophical question. Unfortunately, the game not only has more than one occasion where you can wind up in an {{unwinnable}} situation by doing exactly what the game has had you doing the entire time (exploring and clicking on interesting looking junk), but it's also impossible (without a patch) to reach the last screen because of a fatal glitch that causes a disc swapping menu to fail to appear. As obnoxious as this is, it's almost fitting that something like this would show up in a MontyPython game.
** Curiously, the disc swap bug CAN be worked around without patching. However, you have to know at what screen it appears to get around it, which you won't know if you aren't looking at a walkthrough.
*** Which is good because there is no patch to be had.

*** You can just plain save while surrounded by monsters and one hit from death. This is obviously user error.
*** Multiplayer characters can screw up in a different way: there is no regular save function and dying in multiplayer mode causes your items to fall to the ground. If you die in a place where you can't get them back (there is one notable enemy type that ignores the safe radius around level entrances and is also invisible, so you can die very quickly after entering a level, only to see a mass of hidden ones manifest around the stairs) and have no choice but to leave the game, you lost all of your items permanently. Good luck completing the game after that.
*** Diablo 1 has strong roguelike influences and can screw you over in numerous other ways. Black Death in particular take away 1 hit point permanently on striking (with no indication that this is the case) and can render the game unwinnable if you are playing very badly and get hit hundreds of times, leaving you with a tiny amount of health. You have to try really hard to make this happen, though.
** Also, in Diablo II, if you lose everything you can still go back to where you died and pick up your body. Of course, since it's a pain without your best weapons, you may decide to just quit the game and reload it instead. Doing this too many times causes the game to say "Bad Dead Bodies". There is no indication anywhere that this will happen.
*** You mean your game crashed or your hard drive has a glitch. This error means your save file is corrupted and is not a normal (or even common) issue.
*** More to the point, if you die multiple times and then pick up your first corpse with all of your items on it but don't have enough inventory space to actually equip them all, the remainder stays on your corpse. If you then die again, your items are now split among two corpses. The game only saves the corpse with the most valuable items on it. Some useless items have a grossly inflated sales price. This may not literally make the game ''unwinnable'', but losing almost all of your items in Hell difficulty can end your quest right there. This is considered a ''feature'' and it is the reason why most people simply quit and reload when they die once, and pick up their corpse in town.

* This is what happens in the BadFuture of ''{{Homestuck}}''. [[spoiler: John gets himself killed by fighting his [[ThreshholdGuardian Denizen]] [[SequenceBreaking far earlier than he's supposed to.]] Without him, Jade (presumably) dies since she is unable to enter the Medium and escape from the meteor that later strikes her house. Dave and Rose can't to progress past a certain point without their help, and Dave is forced to travel back in time to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong.]]\\

* In the original game, if you pick up a Clock in a room with Wallmasters, they will get stuck in the wall. If it happens to be a room where the doors are locked until all enemies are defeated...

* In the PC mystery game ''SherlockHolmes and the Secret of the Silver Earring'', the action takes place over the course of a few days. The game is rendered unwinnable on the first day if Holmes neglects to pick up a particular clue. This seems to be a glitch, rather than by design, since failure to pick up any other clues will cause the game to prevent him from moving forward. But the game will allow him to go ahead even if he doesn't pick up [[spoiler:the autographed picture in the young woman's dressing room]]. The player will be unaware that there's a problem until the fourth day in-game, when he is supposed to show that clue to someone; his inability to do so brings the game to a screeching halt.

** Magic also has a bunch of cards with the Nightmare creature type. The most (in)famous of these is called Faceless Butcher. What this does is that when it comes into play, it removes a creature from the game other than itself. When it leaves play, the removed creature comes back. So, to hopelessly draw the game, make sure there are no creatures in play. You need three Butchers (let's call them A, B and C.) Play Butcher A. Nothing happens since there are no legal targets for his first ability. Play Butcher B. B has a legal target: A. Remove A from the game. Play Butcher C. Butcher C has a legal target: Butcher B. Now B has left play, so the second ability triggers and resolves: Return the removed creature to play. The removed creature was Butcher A. A comes into play and has a legal target for its ability: C. Remove C from the game, which bring back B, which removes A... unless someone can either counter one of the abilities (only two or so cards in the entirety of the card pool targets triggered abilities) or can kill one of the butchers before the abilities happen, you've created an infinite loop and the game is a draw.

*** Also note that such loops can lead to a game-ending condition if combined with other cards like [[http://www.wizards.com/magic/autocard.asp?name=pandemonium Pandemonium]].