http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClassicVideoGameScrewYous



That I've been through this place again and again

And in the same spot, every time, I repeatedly die.

I never will give up, as I attempt to cross the disappearing tiles on the wall

But again, I'm falling off of them." I Can't Defeat Air Man (unofficial English version) (unofficial English version) "It just occurred to meThat I've been through this place again and againAnd in the same spot, every time, I repeatedly die.I never will give up, as I attempt to cross the disappearing tiles on the wallBut again, I'm falling off of them."

When a developer wants to up the difficulty level of his game, he has quite a few options.

This is a list of a few classic methods of making a game Nintendo Hard. We'll call them Classic Video Game Screw Yous, or, to avoid unnecessary swearing, "Fun Units", hereafter FUs.

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Differs from Fake Difficulty in that these can be fair. By definition, Fake Difficulty is completely unfair in some way; it requires good luck, it expects you to know things it didn't tell you, etc. Screw Yous are designed to frustrate, but aren't always unreasonably out of the player's control.

Note that "Fun Units" is only partly sarcastic, by the way: a game that's too easy can sometimes be less fun to play than one that's Nintendo Hard. In a way, they apply the Rule of Drama to gameplay.

To keep this from degenerating into complaining about examples of Video Game Difficulty Tropes you don't like, examples should be phrased as generically as possible, or explain exactly why this game is a well known example of this particular FU, or this FU is particularly unusual.

See also: Scrappy Mechanic; Trial-and-Error Gameplay. If it belongs, there is no need to put it here too unless it's shared by many games. I Wanna Be the Guy and other examples of Platform Hell are loaded with FUs. The antithesis to Anti-Frustration Features. See Unwinnable by Design for when there's a way to make the game literally unbeatable.

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Classic Fun Units

Examples of unusual "Fun Units" (See also: Scrappy Mechanic)