Basic Trope: A Video-Game Lives system that is most-irrelevant/entirely-superfluous, one way or the other.
- Straight: Tales of Troperia is generally liberal with its extra lives, and even if you lose them all, you return with three of them at the last check point you've reached.
- Exaggerated: The game allows 999 lives, and it gives them out every few seconds. And since you can save progress almost anywhere, and respawn with 10 lives each time you run out of them...
- Downplayed:
- There's a relatively easy trick to get a lot of lives, but it still requires some work.
- Lives are always in short supply, and you have limited continues... but it's continues that are meaningless, because the game constantly hands them out left and right.
- Justified: The lives are your clones, which have been mass produced. Still, these clones have no meaning other than to carry your life on.
- Inverted: Extra lives are extremely rare, and are only given as rewards for completing difficult puzzles.
- Subverted: Sure, the game gives you 999 lives, but you'll need every one of them.
- Double Subverted: But outside of some hard levels, the lives are pretty much meaningless.
- Parodied:
- The game features an infinite 1-up trick or nod, but then either starts penalizing you for abusing it (A-La Super Paper Mario's infinite 1-up nod) or gives some contrived reason as to why you can't keep them.
- If you die on your last life, the life counter goes into the negatives. You can keep dying over and over and racking up negative lives without ever getting a Game Over.
- Lives are literally meaningless: no matter how many lives you have, you get a Game Over on your first death.
- Zig Zagged: Early on, you'll stockpile lives and generally think they're meaningless, then come the brutal last levels, where there are no extra lives to be found and you'll be losing them left and right.
- Averted:
- There are no extra lives, or there are a reasonable number of extra lives.
- The game doesn't use a "lives" system.
- Enforced: The developers really like Video-Game Lives as a concept, but couldn't bring themselves to actually make the game punishing and thus turned lives into a superfluous feature.
- Lampshaded: "I'm not worried - look at how many extra lives I have!"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: The game designers take advantage of the players' comfortableness with their extra lives, so they program in a massive, unforgiving Difficulty Spike halfway through.
- Defied: The level design and object placement is done in a way that explicitly tries to avoid giving out too many bonuses to keep things fair.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
Back to Meaningless Lives and — oh, look. I got another 50 lives just for clicking the "back" button.
