One-Hit-Point Wonder



""It's like you touch the top of the building, you die, you touch the ceiling, you die, you touch the floor, you die, too far to the right, you die, too far to the left, you die, you die, you die, you die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die!!""

- The Angry Video Game Nerd on Silver Surfer for the NES

A character who dies from a single hit or other incident of damage. Needless to say, this rarely applies to bosses, unless they are of the Zero-Effort variety. In older video games, this was frequently true of the protagonist; nowadays, the Player Character is usually only a One Hit Point Wonder if the programmers/developers want the game to be Nintendo Hard.

As mentioned above, this is more common in older games (especially the Golden Age of Arcade Games), and part of what makes a game Nintendo Hard. Modern tactical shooters also use this feature as well, even if Instant Death Bullet itself also grates on the "realism" bit.

Some games will give the One Hit Point Wonder access to shields or other powerups that allow them to take extra hits, but they still count as examples of this trope, provided that the character does not start off with said method of taking an extra hit.

In some cases, this creates the bizarre effect of giving the Goddamned Bats more health than the player.

Rocket Tag Gameplay have everyone in this situation, so that whoever manages to hit first will win.

Has nothing to do with a One Hit Wonder, although it is sometimes referred to as such.


 * Most sidescrolling Super Mario Bros games did this. Unless Mario gained a powerup, he died with one hit. Super Mario Bros 2 is an exception, with a life meter, but it's a Dolled Up Installment. The 3D games added a true life meter.
 * Super Mario Galaxy does this in its daredevil runs, where Mario's Life Meter has only one hit point. This is usually reserved for a repeat of a completed boss battle.
 * The final star in Super Mario Galaxy 2 takes a level that was already Nintendo Hard with three hitpoints and three check-points, and throws in a Daredevil Comet and removes the checkpoints. It borders on being Platform Hell.
 * While not a Mario offshoot, Commander Keen was designed with Mario in mind, and the title character is just as vulnerable. One hit and the Defender of Earth is dead. Ditto Dangerous Dave, another early John Romero game.
 * Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, while not showing one health, does this when the Glass Cannon type Daredevil Boots are equipped as an item. You have doubled attack, but one hit kills you outright. This is essentially a downgrade of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga's "Great Force" item, which doubled your attack power but halved your defense. (A One Hit Point Wonder is automatically more fragile than a Glass Cannon, no matter how frail the Glass Cannon is.)
 * Hexers can become this in Etrian Odyssey, if you try to maximize the damage for their Revenge skill--255% of the damage they've taken will be dealt to the enemy, but the Hexer will not survive a single blow.
 * In Ultima Underworld II, Krilner the Coward is a character who only has 1 hit point. You can confirm this by casting a certain spell on him to read his statistics.
 * As quoted above, Silver Surfer, exacerbated by the fact that touching walls will kill you. Made even more annoying by the fact that one of the Silver Surfer's superpowers is being Nigh Invulnerable!
 * The rubber ducky will kill you.
 * The Pokémon Shedinja is a unique example of this in a game that doesn't usually use it. While lifebars do exist in-game, Shedinja only ever has a single hit point, making its own life bar rather pointless. It's kept from being a novelty Pokémon by its ability, "Wonder Guard", which protects it from all damage that isn't super effective. Nonetheless, the first attack that damages it defeats it outright (see The Law of Diminishing Defensive Effort). It's also completely vulnerable to indirect damage (including damage from things like Standard Status Effects, recoil, weather, Spikes)... really anything but regular damage. Still, it gives Shedinja the odd honor of being not so useful in the standard metagame (due to the popularity of entry hazard Stealth Rock), yet fairly useful in the Ubers metagame, where few Pokémon even carry anything to KO it.
 * Plus, any powerful Pokémon with a Focus Sash or Focus Band can survive a would-be fatal hit with exactly 1 HP. With enough luck, a powerful enough Pokémon can sweep through an entire opponent's team with just 1 HP. Blaziken and Heracross are the most known for this, gaining a bonus on an attack called Reversal that hits harder the lower your life is.
 * Some tactics turn a 1 HP Pokémon into KO-ing machines. Like Magikarp, or a Level 1 Rattata. No opponent worth his salt will fall for it, but it's still funny to see Level 1 Rattata banned from tournaments. Now that Sturdy acts as a Focus Sash, people now run a level 1 Aron with Sturdy, Endeavor, and a Shell Bell in a sandstorm. Sturdy prevents Aron from going down in one hit. Endeavor takes the foe's HP to equal the user's. Shell Bell restores 1/8th of the damage dealt by the holder's attack, so when Aron uses Endeavor it will heal up to full health so Sturdy will work again. Shown in this video.
 * Older Than the NES: Every single classic 1980's arcade game, from Space Invaders (released in 1978) to Space Harrier, was like this. Back then, the whole idea of gradually taking damage didn't even exist in video games. It's probably easier to list the exceptions:
 * 1943: The Battle of Midway (and in the 90's, the sequels 1941: Counter Attack and 1944: The Loop Master.) gives you a life meter, but do note that these games give you just one life - lose it and it's game over.
 * 1942 Joint Strike gives you a life meter and multiple lives, but no continues.
 * Gauntlet (Atari Games) and Dragon Buster (Namco) were among the first arcade games to have a Life Meter system (though in the former, your health was displayed numerically, rather than as a bar, although the latter had both). Later, Rampage had a Life Meter as well.
 * In Crazy Climber, a falling object doesn't kill you if both hands have a secure grip. (It dislodges one hand.)
 * Some games allowed you to take two (or more) hits before dying. Usually, the first hit destroys your shields/armor/whatever, and the second kills you. Arcade games of this type include Toy Pop, Ghosts N Goblins, Blaster, the Star Wars and Star Trek arcade games, and Black Tiger.
 * Some classic arcade games let you command multiple ships at once, or join ships into a more powerful ship. Each ship was a One Hit Point Wonder, but losing one ship didn't end your turn if you had another. The most famous is Galaga, but Space Duel, Moon Cresta, Eagle, Tac Scan, and several Galaga sequels also worked this way.
 * The arcade version of Rolling Thunder has a life gauge with eight hit points, but it's nothing more than a cruel joke. A single touch by an enemy will reduce the player's life gauge by four points, while enemy bullets and laser traps will kill him instantly. So in reality, the player only has two hit points. The NES port and the sequel had a more honest representation of the player's health, while in the Genesis-exclusive Rolling Thunder 3, the player actually has three hit points on the Normal difficulty (allowing him to survive at least one enemy bullet per life).
 * Bushido Blade is that rare Fighting Game where both you and your opponent are a One Hit Point Wonder... at least in theory. In practice, only a couple of moves had this quality, and it usually took a few hits before the lethal blow.
 * Talking about fighting game examples... SvC Match of the Millenium had this as a minigame.
 * Karate Champ on the Nintendo Entertainment System also has this, in order to keep things more realistic... except it's the match or round that is over when you hit or get hit by the opponent... but not the opponent himself.
 * The original Way of the Exploding Fist had this too, but it was emulating traditional martial arts tournament style, where any telling blow ended the round with a point for the striking opponent.
 * Most games in the Rainbow Six series use a variation. It only takes one solid hit to incapacitate a character -- and, in the single-player campaigns for your team, possibly kill them, permanently removing them from the game. Less solid shots, such as to extremities, take two hits instead, and hamper the target on the first hit. Ghost Recon works much the same way.
 * Operation Flashpoint also plays this one in a similar way; as a result, there's not even a health bar.
 * However, not every hit is always fatal: depending on where the player is hit, it may make him unable to stand up and run normally (if hit on the legs) or render the aimpoint extremely wobbly (if the arms are no longer healthy).
 * The game handled this in an interesting way. A hit on a certain part of the body would have a percentage chance to kill and a percentage chance to injure. For example, a headshot had 99% chance to both kill and injure, whereas limbs had 30% chance to kill and 85% chance to injure. This means that while any shot can kill, and most shots will injure, it is theoretically possible to survive a huge amount of gunfire (although highly unlikely). Large explosive weapons, like tank shells, which hit every body part with splash, would almost certainly kill.
 * The "Heaven or Hell" difficulty in Devil May Cry 3 grants this quality to every single character - Dante and all of his enemies. Yes, even the bosses. What makes it tricky is that Dante can die from taking damage off environmental obstacles, which of course do nothing to enemies. And then there are some enemies which need to be struck at a weak point, whereas Dante has no such advantage.
 * "Hell or Hell" mode in the fourth game plays this the traditional way, although to compensate for it, you get a stock of 3 Auto Revive items to help you that are replenished whenever you reach a checkpoint.
 * Most early Bomberman games made the titular hero a One Hit Point Wonder. He can survive one hit if he has the "Heart" power-up, which acts as a shield. Starting with the Nintendo 64 era, Bomberman got a lifebar.
 * What makes this funny is that he could be one-shotted by bumping into balloons, of all things (Granted they are cute monster balloons, but still...), making his case very obscure.
 * "Standard" mode in Act Zero plays like this, with the added condition of only giving the player one life to go with it. Should you get hit by any bomb blast (including your own) without a shield, your game is over (made extra-frustrating because the single-player mode is very long, and the player is not provided with any continues or save points of any sort -- got killed on level 98? Back to level one for you!).
 * A late mission in Zone of the Enders sees Jehuty's AI Ada infected with a virus. While in this condition, any kind of damage will instantly destroy Jehuty, forcing the player to resort to sniping enemies from afar or risk a game over.
 * The Eric Chahi game Another World (known as Out Of This World in US) worked this way. Some combat elements, such as the blaster pistol capable of creating blaster shields, made it rather complicated to get through certain firefights, almost qualifying it as a Puzzle Game. The unsuspecting player is in for a surprise if he tries to run past the worms crawling on the ground in the first area.
 * I Wanna Be the Guy, a freeware game made from various NES and SNES sprites, takes this as far as possible. Almost everything that touches the player character will cause him to explode in a shower of red pixels, except the Medusa heads and Cheep Cheeps which knock him around (usually into something dangerous). Being hit by a flying apple giant cherry Delicious Fruit or A Glass of Chianti is just as deadly as crashing into one of the innumerable Spikes of Doom.
 * Lampshaded in the Fan Sequel I Wanna Be The Fangame, where the Kid is brought into a Pokémon battle screen, and his Life Meter starts at 1/1.
 * Speaking of Castlevania, Haunted Castle version M on default settings comes close; two hits from a skeleton's bone throwing attack will kill you.
 * There is also a way of becoming a One Hit Point Wonder in Castlevania Circle of the Moon - use the Black Dog and Pluto DSS cards together and you turn into a skeleton. However, while in this mode, one attack will kill you.
 * The advantage of this mode is that while Up + B will usually throw a skeleton bone, randomly it will throw a big skeleton bone. Anything it comes into contact with - mook, boss, whatever - gets a guaranteed 9999 damage, thus turning them into One Hitpoint Wonders.
 * Castlevania Order of Ecclesia has the death ring, an accessory which grants a massive attack boost, but turns Shanoa into a One Hit Point Wonder. Very useful in a game that gives Bragging Rights Rewards for defeating bosses without getting hit once
 * Final Fantasy VI actually plays this trope the other way around at one point. About halfway through the game, you will be controlling one character on a small island. The random battles consist of two monster types that have a single hit point each. On top of that, they start the battle with a HP Sap effect, meaning they often die before anyone gets a turn. They're almost completely useless for anything but decursing an item that requires you fight 255 battles with it equipped, but you can steal Elixirs or Megalixirs from them if you're fast enough.
 * They do have one extremely useful benefit; if Gau ever ran into them in the Veldt (where almost every enemy in the game would reappear), he could imitate them. If Strago was in the party when Gau did so, he could learn a couple Game Breaker spells (like Mighty Guard, which made boss battles a complete joke).
 * However, it's also possible to be afflicted with Zombie status on that same island (there's a formation of monsters in the desert that doesn't belong to this trope). Since Zombie makes your character uncontrollable, and you'll only have that one character at the time, you're potentially a One Hit Point Wonder until you get off the island. Or until you equip a Ribbon.
 * The monsters, should they get a chance to hit you, do about average damage for this point in the game. So despite the lameness of their HP stat and their Seizure status, they can pose a challenge for a Level 1 character.
 * In the NES version of Dragon's Lair, the player actually has a life bar, but most hazards in the game kill him instantly, such as touching a stationary, ordinary door. In fact, the ONLY two enemies in the game that do not spell instant death are the bats and the skulls. Why did they bother?
 * The actual Dragons Lair as well as Space Ace, on the contrary to the above example, give that wonder in its' solid look.
 * In Megaman Battle Network 5, Megaman can keep corrupting himself with Dark Chips (Each use of them subtracts 1 of his max Hit Points) until he becomes a literal One Hit Point Wonder. Though the enormous firepower of Dark Chips is enough to say the same about most enemies, if not bosses.
 * In the Delta Force games, you can only take one, maybe two shots if you have armor. However, the enemies also can't take more than 1 high-powered shot, even to limbs (which is more realistic than other games, if you think about it), and they tend to be uninteligent, relatively stationary, and terrible shots.
 * The shmup/RPG hybrid Sigma Star Saga is an odd example. Your character has a lifemeter, but the animation for getting hit shows his ship exploding and a new one flying in from offscreen, like in most shmups.
 * Averted with the onset of a two hit wonder: a boxy-carrier. One hit causes it to crack open and fall apart, revealing a small and nimble warship.
 * It is justified/handwaved by the plot: The Alien Empire for which the hero works has enough resources to build countless living ships but is lacking decent pilots, so the pilots are teleported from ship to ship and can sustain the teleportations.
 * The old Sega Genesis/Megadrive game Ristar featured this. The highest (secret) difficulty level not only turned the titular character into a 1HP Wonder, but also a One-Life Wonder; one touch is literal instant death, and all health and 1ups are converted to gems. However, as compensation, the game gives unlimited continues in this mode, meaning death only sends one back to the start of the level.
 * In La-Mulana, if you equip the F1 Spirit 3D and Contra ROMs (in that specific order), you will die after taking one hit. This is in stark contrast to the latter half of the game, where you will probably have so much health that dying becomes completely irrelevant, except against a boss. (Ironically, the Contra ROM is for the MSX2 version, which averted this.)
 * Ice Climber had many strange creatures and things kill you in one hit, such as the Topis, falling icicles, and a polar bear with pink shorts and sunglasses! No, really!
 * The very first Grand Theft Auto game had anything that was harmful kill you in one hit. Body Armor let you survive up to 3 bullets though.
 * Similar to the Devil May Cry example above, Winback featured an unlockable "Sudden Death Mode" wherein a single bullet was all it took to send you or any enemy to an early grave. Amusingly, this led to encounters with simple guards becoming white-knuckle standoffs, while most boss characters wound up on the floor before they even finished taunting you.
 * On the last level in Combat School, you have a life bar, but everything in the level (being shot, touching an enemy, touching something on fire, etc.) kills you instantly. Except the final boss, whose hits aren't fatal -- so that's what the life bar is for...
 * The ninja in N: The Way of the Ninja is about as flimsy as wet cardboard - there's an X-Box Live achievement which requires you die 2,000 times in the single-player mode. It's easier than it sounds.
 * One More Extra Stages in Dance Dance Revolution force you to play with the "Sudden Death" modifier; if you get one Good, Bad, Miss, or NG, you instantly fail the song. The same applies to Dance ManiaX 's Extra Stages. DDR's Oni/Challenge mode is like this as well, but you get three chances to screw up, and you get a chance back after clearing certain songs.
 * Normal Extra Stages in Dance Dance Revolution X could be anywhere from this to a four-hit-point-wonder. oh, and let's not forget you have to pick a specific song as your "final stage" and get a specific grade on it on a specific difficulty to get one. Considering some of the songs are loaded with Fake Difficulty (Pluto on the CS version being a major offender - stops are less predictable than CHAOS from DDR SuperNova), you're kinda screwed.
 * Pop N Music's Cho-Challenge mode has the DEATH norma, which when activated will cause a miss to wipe out your life meter. However, this doesn't end the stage; you just have to rebuild your life meter all the way back up. For extra fun, activate the "COOL or BAD!" norma, which removes all timing judgments except for COOL and BAD, so if you're outside the timing window for a COOL...
 * Beatmania IIDX. Hazard Mode. Break your combo? FAIL. Get a poor from hitting a key one too many times? FAIL.
 * The titular Butt Monkeys in  ~Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero?~  have only one hit point. But you'll have a lot of them.
 * That's only if you played it on Hard Mode. Easy Mode allows you four hit points. Doesn't make the game any easier.
 * Original edition of Knights of the Sky, WWI-style air combat sim from 1992, had 1 HP planes (including yours, of course). To be honest, their real counterparts were not much more durable either.
 * Three of Apogee Software's early CGA games: Arctic Adventure, Pharoahs Tomb, and Monuments Of Mars. One hit from anything would mean losing a life
 * Not to mention that to run the game faster, enemies are circumscribed by their hitboxes to simplify collision detection, so you had to compensate for invisible death-squares around every bad guy. The game even calls this "F.A.S.T. technology" and brags about it in the instructions.
 * Bubble Bobble series. Even wind-up-toys can kill you. Keep in mind that Rainbow Islands and Parasol Stars ditch the bubble dragons for human protagonists. Who also die when they touch anything. This carries on when the bubble dragons return for Symphony and Memories, both made in 1994-95. And in Symphony, when the characters turn back into humans, they can still die easily.
 * To access any secrets, No Damage Runs (thus, No Death Runs) are a necessity too.
 * Another Harder Than Hard mode example - Rocket Knight Adventures' hardest difficulty setting starts you off with one life, no continues, and everything kills you in one hit. Take any damage at all, and it's an instant Game Over.
 * Bullet Hell games, such as Ikaruga or Touhou, will kill the player if a single bullet touches their hitbox. It helps that the hitbox is significantly smaller than the sprite.
 * Although you typically have several lives in the conventional Touhou games (starting with at least three), in the First Person Snapshooter games Shoot the Bullet and Double Spoiler, one hit will end the game--that is, end the scene in which you're playing. There's nothing more soul-crushing than taking 9 photographs on a 10-photograph scene and then dying as your camera zooms in to take the last one.
 * Similarly to Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog is a One Hit Point Wonder, except when he has at least one ring on him, or a barrier.
 * Having multiple rings, unfortunately, is no more effective in terms of protecting Sonic than is having only one ring.
 * However, in some games, the number of rings does matter.
 * Sonic Chronicles, an RPG-style game that uses HP bars, has an example, interestingly enough..
 * Shining Force has this in the form of Jogurt, who has exactly one point in every single statistic. Though his hit points can be raised through items.
 * Jogurt was largely a Self Imposed Challenge, though successfully defeating an enemy with him awards you with the Jogurt ring, which doesn't do anything but change the sprite of another character into Jogurt.
 * It should be noted, Jogurt has 7 movement, which is higher than most characters. Still, since you can't boost any of his stats nor level past 1 (other than by equipping Rings... leaving him still doing effectively 1 damage), he's still the most useless character. Unless you want to work super hard to earn lots of Jogurt Rings to sell for 'unlimited' chump change (less than earned from the defeated enemies...).
 * Gaiares, at least until you get a shield, then your a 6-or-so-hit-point-wonder. unless you die on the final stage, which has no such shield item, which is one of the reasons why that stage (which is ONLY a boss fight) is That One Boss. Oddly enough, your TOZ can block some bullets.
 * All the Glider games would make you lose a glider if you hit almost anything that wasn't a prize. Having aluminum foil in Glider PRO would shield you to some extent, but foil wasn't a guaranteed find and would be hard or literally impossible to keep.
 * In Gradius, if you don't have a force field, the only things your plane can touch without blowing up are power-ups.
 * Bubsy, though not in the sequel. At least every death gives you a different death animation.
 * Genzo from Daiku no Gensan in the original arcade game and Hammerin' Hero. In most of the other games, he does, in fact, have a health bar of some sort... but in those games, he's down in one hit unless he has a hard hat to absorb it.
 * Metal Slug characters die in one hit from bullets, melee weapons, or getting run over by a tank. Unless you pick one particular character in Metal Slug 6.
 * If Harder Than Hard mode examples count, player aircraft in the Ace Combat go down with just one missile hit when played on the highest difficulty (except in X: Skies of Deception where a high enough defence allows you to get away with 90+, maybe 80+ % damage taken... not that many planes are both that survivable and still good dogfighters). Enemy aircraft, on the other hand, remain just as durable as on normal difficulty.
 * The infamously Nintendo Hard Flash game Owata (aka The Life-Ending Adventure) features a 1HPW with a Punny Name ("Owata" sounds like "Owatta", which basically means "it's over"). You will not be able to get to the end without Trial and Error Gameplay and/or a guide.
 * Adventure Island does this. Even though you have what looks like a Life Meter, it's actually the timer. One hit kills you. Tripping on rocks also decreases the meter. Averted in Adventure Island: the Beginning, in which taking hits knocks time off the meter.
 * Little Big Planet has Sackboy, who basically explodes if he comes in contact with any of the various hazards in the game. The exception is fire, which he can bounce on once before being burnt to a crisp.
 * GoldenEye had this as an optional game mode in multiplayer, aptly named "Licence to Kill."
 * It also has Scaramanga's gun (from The Man With the Golden Gun), which is a weapon that basically turns the entire world into One Hit Point Wonders, because it instantly kills anything it hits. If you know your Bond, you'll know this is because Scaramanga was such a good shot, he never needed to shoot anyone twice. In the game, even shooting someone in the foot with it will instantly kill them, but the gun has only one bullet. There's also a golden PP7, which acts like the golden gun, but with 7 bullets.
 * Though it wasn't programed as "this gun kills everything in one hit." It was programmed as "this gun does a lot of damage". Play with max health handicaps and a body armor pickup. If they shoot you in the foot, you live. A torso show will still kill you, though. Also, Janus is immune to the effects of the Golden Gun. Janus can be killed from the golden gun on the last (non-bonus) level if you shoot him during one of the windows when he's vulnerable.
 * You could also play with no guns in license to kill mode with everyone running around judo chopping. This essentially turned multiplayer into a game of lethal bumpercars mixed with a Benny Hill sketch.
 * In the Deadly Rooms of Death series, the player and everybody else has one hit point, with the exception of very large enemies that shrink when you hit them (snakes and the rock giant). In addition, some enemies can't be killed with any of your own weapons. Added to this that it is a turn based tactical game with tiny turns, to the point of being a puzzle game, and it was designed by a bunch of total sadists, the series is one of the hardest around. DROD RPG uses HP for the player and the monsters, and employs deterministic statistic-based combat mechanics, which also cause a need for difficult strategizing.
 * In System Shock 2, if you play on Impossible difficulty as an OSA operative, you start with 10HP... which is coincidentally the exact amount of damage done by the very first enemy you encounter, a pathetically weak (on any other difficulty) pipe-wielding parasite zombie. While there are enemies that deal less damage, the fact that you're a one-hit-kill at the very start of the game means that the Impossible OSA path definitely qualifies for this trope.
 * Jumper series takes this trope, uses it, loves it, becomes one with it. It also does the same with Malevolent Architecture and becomes many times harder because of the most evil game mechanic known to man -- the golden arrows, which allow you to make more than one Double Jump in midair. This leads to aerial "jump mazes", usually completely surrounded by hazards, requiring pixel-precise jumps to pass it. Yes, it's as hard as it sounds and, yes, this is part of the fun.
 * Iji has the Sudden Death sectors, which are Exactly What It Says On the Tin. Oh, and you have to complete them to unlock one of the game's secrets.
 * You can still survive being shot with machinegun fire and hyper pulse. The good news is that enemies has the same health as you, even bosses.
 * Your units in X-COM actually have life bars but, until they are experienced and get armor (and it takes a while), for practical purposes they might as well be one of these. The health bars average between 40 and 60 health points, and the weakest alien weapon (Plasma Pistol or Sonic Pistol) does 80 damage. An extremely lucky soldier will survive a single hit, be knocked unconscious from the pain, and then die the following turn from bleeding out. Apocalypse actually tends to avert this trope, however, as your soldiers start with basic armor that can actually resist a few shots.
 * In Ratchet and Clank Up Your Arsenal, while you had hit points in the rest of the game, one of the deathmatch types at Annihilation Nation, appropriately named "One Hit Wonder", forces you to kill waves of enemies without taking a single hit.
 * Going Commando, the previous installment, had a similar gametype available in its arenas. Ratchet didn't die, per se, but he did have to start the round over if he wanted credit for completing it (and he would, naturally, need to buy new ammo).
 * However, in these games you have access to energy shields which allow you to take hit(s) before losing these challenges.
 * In the first two Oddworld games, anything (including the player character) could be killed by anything else with one hit. Unless they're being slapped or licked. That takes more hits.
 * In An Untitled Story, completing the game on Masterful difficulty unlocks Insanity Difficulty. Technically, you start with 100 HP and can get over 1000 if you collect all of the hearts, but everything deals so much damage that you die in one hit whether it be the Final Boss or a simple snail.
 * T2 The Arcade Game has the level after Cyberdyne in which if the T-1000's police helicopter rams into the protagonists' SWAT van even once, the player has to start the level over. Definitely worse than That Truck Level.
 * Course, the helicopter was itself something of a one-hit wonder, as far as deflecting the attack went. Whereas that damn truck...you knew where it was, but good god, it was hard to stop.
 * Jumpman (later renamed Mario), from the Donkey Kong arcade game. Not only will he die from touching one of the various hazards (barrels, spring-things, fire, pies), he'll also die if he falls several feet.
 * Donkey Kong Junior doesn't fare much better.
 * Jumpman, a game for the Commodore 64 not related to Mario, is like this as well. Getting hit, jumping or walking off a ledge, climbing into solid wall, and a few other things are instant kill. Just don't set run speed to 01.
 * All three Donkey Kong Country games, although if you have your friend then you switch to him/her when you die.
 * The second game did have an example of a boss with only one hit.
 * In Donkey Kong Country Returns,
 * Also played straight in the same game's rocket and minecart sections. If you're on the minecart or rocket and you get hit once - you instantly lose a life regardless of your heart meter. Of course, you can expect that to happen if you're not careful.
 * An interesting example is the game My Hero for the arcade and Sega Master System. While during the level the titular hero as well as the mooks can be killed in one hit, the boss battles feature life meters for both the hero and the boss.
 * The freeware game Mondo Agency is a rare modern 3D example.
 * Alex Kidd. One hit from something and he turns into a ghost, floating to the top of the screen waving his arms with a humorous "mwoop mwoop mwoop" sound. The Narm almost stops you from being pissed off at being killed from one hit by making you laugh.
 * Dizzy in the first three games of the series. (In the second game, Treasure Island Dizzy, you only had one life, too. The fourth game, Magicland Dizzy, added a Life Meter, but some of the hazards - in most games including water - remained instantly fatal.)
 * Konami's Jackal. Apparently being hit by a single bullet will destroy a jeep, every time.
 * Crash Bandicoot lives (Or rather dies) by this trope (at least in earlier installments), sure you can get Aku-Aku masks to take up to two extra hits, but those tend to be rare unless you die several times in a row between checkpoints (where you're then given a freebie mask upon respawning). Regardless, when Crash is by himself, he croaks at even the slightest contact with an enemy or hazard... even seemingly harmless ones like turtles and skunks.
 * The freeware platformer Poyo by Lazrael plays this completely straight, but balances it out because the stages are all pretty short.
 * The Shigurui difficulty level in Muramasa the Demon Blade turns your character into this. Although to balance it out, any time you're not in a bossfight, Death Is a Slap On The Wrist and as long as you have at least 1 sword intact, you can block pretty much any attack and not die from it. You can also do it in midair during some attacks, making it seem that the character is casually shrugging off an attack that should've killed'em several times over.
 * Crystal Quest has no armor, but its sequel has five different types as powerups. Most only protect against one kind of hazard, leaving you a One Hit Point Wonder to everything else.
 * Spelunker is infamous as one of the easiest-to-die characters in video game history. If you don't jump or jump wrong when you get off the elevator, you die. If you step into a pit that's as deep as your ankles, you die. The obscure arcade and Famicom sequels averted this. The remake, Spelunker HD, makes earning extra lives very easy, because you're expected to die so much.
 * Bugs Bunny: Crazy Castle (an old Game Boy and NES game) has Bugs running around dozens of floors of a castle where the other Looney Tunes have been brainwashed or something, and running into one of them just once sends you back to the start of the level. Only two items can circumvent this: one that temporarily lets you walk through other characters and one that temporarily lets you walk through and kill other characters. Made worse in that some characters follow you around and a few float through walls and floors.
 * Every unit in DEFCON, quite realistically. How many torpedo hits do you think a sub can take? To balance this, the chance to hit is quite low.
 * This was done because the developers felt that tracking hit points for every single entity in the game would bog it down too much, so instead gave things varying chances to be hit.
 * The Risk debuff in Phantom Brave turns anyone into this: any attack, no matter how weak or strong, either kills them instantly or misses them.Quite annoying when a randomly-generated dungeon gives this debuff to a roomful of enemies that you would one-hit kill anyway...
 * Sly Cooper was another example of this, even though you could get up to two horseshoes to withstand additional hits. The sequels actually gave you a health bar, though.
 * Kingdom Hearts II's gummi ship minigame has one of these. Your reward for getting 100% completion on all levels is the Crown/G gummi piece, which, when equipped, starts you off in "berserk mode". The catch is that you become the embodiment of that trope.
 * In 358/2 Days, equipping the Extreme ring sets your HP to one, but gives you infinite use of Limit Breaks.
 * re:Coded has an unlockable cheat that makes everyone into an example of this trope.
 * Battle Kid Fortress of Peril, as a natural consequence of being heavily inspired by I Wanna Be the Guy.
 * The classic Atari videogame Star Raiders, the ship goes down in one hit from an asteroid or enemy photon. Fortunately the ship's energy can retain a shield which changes hits from fatal to merely damaging some key component of your ship (at easier levels, there's a chance it won't even hurt). The shield itself is a damageable component, so you are at least two photons away from death.
 * Almost every enemy in the Time Crisis series can be killed with one shot anywhere, including the finger.
 * Hotel Dusk Room 215, interrogation sequences. If even one answer you pick causes the person to turn red, 90% of the time you're headed for a Game Over.
 * Willy, the protagonist in the classical platformers Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy.
 * Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon has optional mind zones where both you and monster's max hp are dropped to 1. The latter stages are even worse since it only your max hp which is set to 1 while the enemies have more HP than you.
 * Probably the Ur Example of this trope in video gaming was the 1961 game Spacewar! which was created for the PDP-1 computer, and which had its players dueling each other while maneuvering in the gravity well of a star. If you got hit with a missile from the other guy or hit the star, you were dead. There is only one PDP-1 still in existence, though the game has been ported to numerous platforms ever since.
 * The arcade machine in the cantina segment of Starcraft II has the game Lost Viking, a Bullet Hell type shooter. Although you can gain power ups to give you additional "health" you are usually will die to one hit of anything.
 * Grabbed By the Ghoulies gives you a life bar at all times, but will change the number of hit points you start with on a room-by-room basis, and several rooms give you only 1. Usually however, these rooms will come without a prescribed challenge besides reaching the open door on the other side, with only a small number of low-level enemies to evade if any at all. Not always, though.
 * There is also a trick power-up that temporarily reduces your health to 1. It will return to its previous total in a few seconds if you can survive.
 * In the Wanted multiplayer mode of ~Assassin's Creed~: Brotherhood, everyone dies in one hit.
 * In the DJMAX Portable series, as well as DJMAX Trilogy, some missions have you clearing a song or set of songs without missing a single note; instead of allowing you to continue having failed the mission, the game simply throws you an instant Game Over. There's also one particular mission in DJMAX Portable 2, "Just 1%", where getting a MAX 1% (the lowest judgment you can get from hitting a note) is an instant game over as well. DJMAX Portable 3 offers modifiers called "1 BREAK: GAME OVER" and "1%: GAME OVER", which have the same effects.
 * In Galactic Civilizations II, it is possible to design a ship armed to the teeth but with just one HP. This is accomplished by using the cargo hull as the base. This is usually done out of desperation in the early stages of the game in order to fight off a much stronger enemy (like the Dread Lords) until you can research bigger and stronger hull types. The ship usually will be destroyed but may deal significant damage to the enemy. Combine a few of these in a fleet, and you got yourself a disposable armada. Granted, the costs are higher than those of smaller ships, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Also, putting defenses on these is usually pointless, unless you can put more defenses than the enemy has firepower.
 * Non-video game example: In the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons, there's a "minion" class of monster who basically has the same stats as a normal NPC/monster of its type, but only 1 hit point. They basically have two purposes: to give the PCs a horde of easily dispatched enemies so the players can feel all Badass, or to run interference for a more powerful enemy.
 * In the earlier games, it was quite possible for a first-level player character to be this. First-level magic users were especially prone to being this due to having the smallest hit dice in the game and their inability to equip any armor, leading to a tendency to die if an enemy so much as looked at them funny. This was partially fixed in version 3.5 with the rule that all characters get their maximum hit die roll at first level.
 * Duncan died in one hit from anything in the first Dark Castle. Beyond Dark Castle combine the level timer with a Life Meter to allow Duncan to survive some hits at the expense of time.
 * In FAST Racing League your vehicle can only hit any obstacle once before turning into a flaming wreck. Strangely this does not apply to hitting the course walls or other racers, who do no damage, only to flying to the side of the course, hitting walls set to block off your path or running into the flamethrowers which all kill you instantly.
 * Hard mode for Metroid Other M. You only start with 99 energy (one Engergy Tank) and 5 Missiles; all extra Energy Tanks, Missile Expansions, and Accel Charges are gone. By halfway through the game, most enemies and bosses will do more than a whole energy tank's worth of damage, killing you in a single strike.
 * Thank goodness they added the checkpoint feature, so you don't go all the way back like most games, as well as the Sensemove dodge (completely avoid damage, similar to Smash Bros.). Not quite as Nintendo Hard as it otherwise would be, but still extremely hard. Of course, some attacks get past Sensemove (such as Metroid Queen's flames) by having simply too large/lasting of hitboxes to avoid.
 * Also, probably nice that you don't have the Extra Final Boss,, in Hard mode. It's near enough to Nintendo Hard with all expansions, but trying it in a OHKO situation? Sure, it'd be neat and bragging rights...
 * Spyro the Dragon, in the original games at least, should count. Without Sparx, one hit and he's a goner.
 * Lolo of the Adventures of Lolo/Eggerland series is one, as well as Lala, when she's playable.
 * Gilgamesh in The Tower of Druaga.
 * In the Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom arcade game, pretty much everything can kill Indy in one hit. In the NES version, Collision Damage from enemies and falling onto ground will merely stun Indy, but other hazards will kill him outright.
 * The eponymous chick in Toki Tori dies in one hit from an enemy or spikes. Since the game is a Puzzle Platformer, it is mandatory to find out how to avoid the monsters; avoiding them is the easy part.
 * Chelnov from the Megadrive/Arcade game Atomic Runner is probably the wimpest example of this trope. Not only does any given enemy or bullet kill him, but so can the candles you obtain power ups from. So much for the Atomic Armor!
 * In the puzzle game Chips Challenge, any enemy and obstacle can kill you upon contact, making the levels harder than they already are.
 * In Killer 7, every enemy in Killer8 mode can kill the Smiths in one hit (except, luckily, most of the bosses, probably because of the different ways they're fought).
 * Meat Boy is this, everything from salt to sawblades will kill him on contact.
 * Tiny Toon Adventures does this in the NES game, and other games often make you a one hit point wonder in hard mode, such as in Buster Busts Loose for the SNES and Babs' Big Break for the Game Boy,
 * Rygar had one-hit deaths in the arcade version, though the NES version had a life meter.
 * In Mega Man: Powered Up, many missions in Challenge Mode only gave Mega Man 1 HP.
 * In Miner 2049 er, Bounty Bob would die instantly from any type of harm, be it Collision Damage or falling more than 1.5 times his height.
 * In case you thought the game wasn't Nintendo Hard enough, a special mode in Punch Out makes you lose the match if you get punched even once. The only exception to this being Aran Ryan's rope-glove attack when you knock him down.
 * The Choujin Sentai Jetman Licensed Game has two secret difficulty levels that reduce the life meter to one.
 * In Amagon, Amagon can't take a hit without dying. When he transforms into Megagon, he gains a life bar.