Collision Damage: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Perhaps the character bruises easily. Perhaps the enemy is toxic. Perhaps they weren't able to give the enemies an attack animation. Or perhaps the character is just obsessive-compulsive.

 

 

 

 

 

It's particularly jarring when the boss attempting to swing its claw at you does the same amount of damage as you accidentally touching the claw. Apparently, attacking doesn't hurt more, just makes you more likely to touch the Big Bad.

Not to be confused with the real-time model damaging employed in modern 3D games. See also [[One-Hit-Point Wonder]].

{{examples}}

** Unsurprisingly, colliding with most of the bosses is much more damaging than touching a mook.

** Which you will have to do sometimes if you want to get the alternate "Pacifist" ending.

 

** Except in the original Japanese versions, where you get three hit points per life. Since, like, forever. The option's never even once made the transition. If the Konami Code still works in the Japanese version of Contra, that'd be like having 90 lives!

* ''Smurf Rescue'' is famous for doing this with, among other things, picket fences and ''tufts of grass''.

* In the original ''[[Rolling Thunder]]'', touching an enemy causes you to lose one of your two hit points. In ''Rolling Thunder 2'' onwards, however, touching an enemy simply knocks you back without any damage.

* Seen in ''[[Car Battler Joe]]'', but only in the first battle as your car isn't weaponized.

 

* Averted in in the 2D shooter ''Mars Matrix'', in which your ship will simply fly on top of an airborne enemy instead of crashing into it. Due to the game's scoring and weapon powerup system revolving around chaining together cubes that come out of destroyed enemies, this feature is a necessity.

 

** [[Truth in Television]] — Have you ever seen what happens when open-wheel race cars bump into each other at 200+ mph?

* In ''[[F-Zero]] GX'', touching certain things in the course scenery will blow your machine up into pieces, even if the object is otherwise non-lethal to the touch or you touch it at a snail's pace.

* The collision physics in ''[[Track Mania]]'' are especially brutal. In a turn, if you bump the inside barrier you'll often go flying into the other barrier. The cars and track seem to be made from rubber!

 

** Sword lunges at a wall can kill the user.

** The ''[[Halo 3]]'' beta had a form of this, wherein players who set the characters' speed as high as it would go had them running at super-fast speeds and pasting themselves on anything they ran into.

** Super-sprinting into a tree and dying is possibly the most humiliating thing ever.

** Running into larger enemies, like bosses or [[Elite Mook|Badass]] enemies, may destroy the vehicle (and you, subsequently) if you try to run them down.

* In ''[[Nightmare House]]'', the player is encountered by [[Living Shadow|shadows]] that do not move. If the player touches them, they lose 5-10 points worth of health.

 

* Even older than the ''[[Donkey Kong]]'' example is ''[[Pac-Man]].'' One touch from a ghost monster caused the titular character to shrivel up and evaporate, but with power pellet, the tables turned, allowing Pac to chomp the baddies.

** Speaking of ''[[Donkey Kong]]'', in the NES version, you can actually commit suicide nearly the instant you gain control of Mario by running to the left. Mario will die when he touches the oil drum, ''before it's even set on fire.''

 

* In direct defiance of the fact that this trope is supposedly not seen in RPGs, ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' has one of these: the infamous "frogger" encounter in Naxxramas. Green oozes lazily slink across a hallway. Your party is on one side of them. You and your party need to get to the other side. It's harder than it sounds, since any lag at all will throw off your timing. The frogger hall has claimed many lives.

 

** Special mention should probably also go to the Doc Robot fights in ''3'', namely Quick Man. To wit, the best strategy for winning the fight meant actively trying to get hit by his boomerangs - which did only minor damage - so that the resulting [[Mercy Invincibility]] would protect you from the inevitable collision damage from an enemy much faster than you that would otherwise kill you in 2-3 hits.

** ''[[Mega Man Powered Up]]'' allows you to play as the Robot Masters after unlocking them. When you do so, a Wily-built Mega Man copy serves as a replacement boss for your character. And you take damage when you touch him. Hmm...

** ''Metroid'' is also notable for including the Screw Attack, a permanent upgrade that lets you reverse collision damage back at weak enemies.

* In ''[[Symphony of the Night]]'', when Alucard first enters the castle, if you fully unequipped your gear, you could use Collision Damage to fly so far back it was possible to skip the room with the Death cutscene and keep all your equipment. This does, however, require a cheat that cuts all stats but Luck (which turns up to 99).

* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' reverses the equation and smashes through enemies when he's spinning.

* Played with in some of Taito's older games: in ''The Fairyland Story'', the [[Cute Witch]] Ptolemy doesn't die if she stays on her enemies' heads (until they jump, anyway) and can actually use them as means of transportation. In ''The Newzealand Story'', only enemies with spikes could kill the main character by touching him.

* The ''[[Rayman]]'' games (at least the non-Rabbid titles) have this.

* Be careful when playing ''[[Lyle in Cube Sector]]'', you can easily damage yourself with your own cubes. Wait for them to stop moving.

* This is rather prominent in ''[[Banjo-Kazooie]]'' and its sequels, even though most enemies have actual attacks and attacking animations. As a matter of fact, in Banjo-Tooie's Terrydactyland level, after becoming a baby t-rex, the bargasaurus enemies won't attack you and you can even talk to them, but, confusingly, they still do contact damage. Another similarly confusing example is that, if you approach Mingy Jongo as any character other than Banjo and Kazooie together and touch him, you will take damage despite the fact that he's '''sleeping'''.

* This happens in the [[Blinx the Time Sweeper]] series, but it's pretty fairly balanced by the fact that the good targeting system makes it very easy to snipe enemies.

* ''[[Ecco the Dolphin]]'', which could get really annoying in levels with a ton of jellyfish or sharks all over the place.

 

 

 

* The Game Gear game ''Tails Skypatrol''. Contact with enemies wouldn't kill you; you would simply spin out of control and begin crash-landing, but you could recover with good timing. Contact with a solid surface, though, was instantly fatal. Which is odd, because flying into ceilings or walls - or, God forbid, ''walking'' - doesn't hurt Tails at all in any other game.

* ''[[Metal Slug]]'' plays with this. Touch with mooks? Kill them with knife. Touch with tanks? You're dead. Or when they rush you anyway.

** Touching tanks is only lethal when tanks are moving - you're run over. Touching spiky bits also kills you unless you're in a [[Dawn of War|METAL BOX]].

** In Atmos Quake, the flaky collision detection [[Kill Screen|makes the last stage impossible to beat]].

 

* In ''SAS Combat Simulator'' on the Amstrad CPC, upon starting the game, you were immediately swarmed by vast numbers of enemy soldiers. Your "SAS Commando" would instantly die if he touched one of them. (The fact that they also shot at you wasn't helpful either). However, part way through the first level, you could get a jeep powerup. Not only was this "jeep" a virtual tank, that made you immune to bullets, the collision-damage was reversed: now enemies died if they ran into you (even if you were stationary). But if you were hit by a grenade (or completed the level), you lost the jeep. This resulted in the most uneven difficulty curve ever seen.

 

** And played with. What happens when you bring the Touch of Death into a fighting game? [[Hilarity Ensues]].

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Video Game Physics]]