Hostage Spirit Link

Curious phenomenon in modern Light Gun games where accidentally shooting innocent people will cause damage to you.

This is used to add difficulty and to prevent the player from spraying bullets everywhere whenever he turns a corner. Naturally, these innocents will be in places where it's easy to get startled and confused and shoot them. If handled poorly, it can often seem that the innocents are simply trying to get shot.

A form of Video Game Cruelty Punishment.

Contrast Friendly Fireproof.

Examples of Hostage Spirit Link include:

Action Adventure

This is what made the not-so-final boss of the not-so-obscure Game Boy game Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages difficult. Defeat the boss using a specific sequence of attacks? Easy, given time to figure out which ones. But the boss is holding your friend's ancestor (sorta) hostage, and hitting the ancestor drains Link's life instead.
- This also happens earlier in the game when the titular and still-possessed Oracle is battled in a similar way. Additionally, in sister game Oracle of Seasons, Onox uses Din, who is still trapped in a crystal, as a shield in one phase of his fight. Hitting her with anything but the Rod of Seasons damages Link.
- In the final battle of Spirit Tracks, Zelda is Friendly Fireproof but must be defended from enemy fire. If she's hit, you lose some life.
In the video game adaptation of Superman Returns, Superman does not have a health meter of his own; he's indestructible. When he's hit, his power meter goes down and he's stunned for a bit. Instead, the health meter is the health meter of Metropolis itself! So if there's too much damage to the city or the people, it's game over for Supes. Annoyingly, most of Superman's more powerful abilities tend to cause collateral damage.

Action Game

In the old NES game version of Mission: Impossible (a top-down action-adventure), the fourth level boss used a hostage as cover. Accidentally hitting the hostage would instead cause you to lose health. Fortunately, you had far more hit points than most characters in light-gun games.
The Dick Tracy game for the NES has a bizarre variation. The eponymous detective is only allowed to shoot enemies who are shooting at him; if he shoots an unarmed enemy who is merely trying to punch him in the face, it is at the cost of a full unit of health. Keeping in mind that getting hit or shot by an enemy only costs half a unit of health, this is an especially extreme penalty.
Batman: Arkham Asylum gives you a game over if you let any hostages die.
- Made somewhat more annoying when one of said hostages dies in the cutscene that follows immediately after.

Adventure Game

In Snatcher, there's a scene where the Snatcher that has replaced Benson Cunningham takes a woman hostage. Hitting the woman causes Gillian to take damage.
- It's done once again in the Genre Shifted remake, SD Snatcher, where a certain robot will take an NPC woman hostage, and hitting the woman will cause Gillian to take damage.
- The best use of this in Snatcher, though, is right at the end of the Sega CD version, when Gillian leaps into a room and sees a figure. Shooting the figure will give you a game over - it's Jamie, Gillian's wife.

Beat Em Up

The Konami beat'em'up Oz, also known as The Sword of Etheria in Europe and Chains Of Power in Korea, has a level with the ghosts of innocent people who were killed. Damaging them damages you.

Fighting Game

In the Playstation port of the Capcom fighting game based on JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, the minigame based on the "Strength" chapter is in the vein of a light gun game. Here, the innocent is the stowaway girl that was introduced in the "Dark Blue Moon" chapter.

First Person Shooter

America's Army has an early training mission use this. The trouble is, the difference between "hostage" and "hostile" is a lot less than three letters. You'd think it's the people with guns, right? No; several hostiles don't have guns, and one innocent has a gun.
In Soldier of Fortune II, if you accidentally shoot an ally, or if an Escort Mission character dies, you die too. In the first game, the game ends if too many innocents die or Hawk is killed.
A nice way to stop team-killers without just preventing friendly fire: in some multiplayer modes in more recent Call of Duty games, any damage you inflict on a teammate is applied to your character instead. This is also an option for local and private games.
- Other games like Left 4 Dead also have this feature if one is playing on a modded sever.
Halo: Reach causes Noble Six to die the moment s/he kills a civilian, even accidentally. This may lead to some frustration if you're trying to save that first civilian on New Alexandria and you forgot you had a Needler out.
If an escortee is killed in the Medal of Honor series, it's Mission Failed.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: "Mission Failed. You killed a civilian."
In the Rainbow Six series, the death of a hostage causes immediate mission failure.

Light Gun Game

While the Time Crisis games don't usually have innocents to avoid (except in those sequences which involve rescuing hostages), on the rare occasions where the final boss uses one as a Meat Shield, you only lose points rather than a life if you accidentally shoot her.
- Done straight in Time Crisis 3's Rescue Mission, in which shooting an innocent will take off a life rather than points. This has the side effect of making its third stage a Scrappy Level.
- Also done straight in Spiritual Successor Razing Storm, where several civilians have not been evacuated before the gunfight starts. Shooting them penalizes a life each, but the main problem is that some of them run back and forth, making your shots harder.
One of the original Light Gun games, Nintendo's Hogans Alley, penalized you with a miss for each "innocent" you hit. This isn't really as peculiar, though, since the game apes the paper-cutout style of firearm training course, and hence scoring is expected to be artificial.
Notoriously bad in the Virtua Cop series, where, after seeing you blast away hordes of terrorists, a civilian will always leave the safety of their cover to wave their arms at you wildly.
- In VC3 there's one bit where two civilians stand up, and then one pulls a gun on you. You don't lose a life for shooting him but it counts as a civilian shot on your score. And yes, he does shoot you if you don't do anything.
In the Police 911 series, you don't actually die, you just get treated to a time-wasting cutscene, and you lose a few ranks. The same applies to Lethal Enforcers 3, in which it shows a news headline reading "[occupation of civilian] shot by mistake."
- It should be noted that in Police 911 every mission is timed, and you get a single timer for an entire level. The timer is replenished slightly every time you shoot all the criminals in a particular section, and the higher your rank goes, the higher your time bonus for each "apprehension." Running out of time gives you a Game Over no matter how many lives you have left, so this can kill you, it just does so more slowly.
Carn Evil also has this, every so often a girl characters pops up and you have to avoid hitting her or lose some life.
Silent Scope. ":BEEEEP!: Don't shoot innocent people!" Doing so takes off a full life box, as opposed to the half-box taken off by most damage.

Platform Game

In Dynamite Headdy, one of the bosses holds love interest Heather in its hand, and uses her as a shield to cover its face. Accidentally hitting her reduces your health.
This is what made the final boss of the obscure NES game Wrath of the Black Manta difficult. Defeat the boss using a specific sequence of four ninja powers? Easy, given time to figure out which ones. But the boss is holding the kid, a friend of the Black Manta, hostage, and hitting the kid drains BM's life instead.
In Super Paper Mario, killing a brainwashed Cragnon in Chapter 5 (which equates to accidentally jumping on them once) will dock you a few hundred experience points.

Rail Shooter

Area 51, Maximum Force, and other Mesa Logic arcade shooters all follow this pattern.
- Area 51 handled it exceptionally poorly. Often, in the middle of a pitched firefight, one of your teammates would suddenly jump directly into your line of fire, not to mention blocking 80% of the screen. Since accidentally shooting your teammate damages you, you're forced to stop shooting until the idiot moves out of the way. Of course, the enemies are still shooting at you while you wait, so you end up taking unnecessary damage anyway.
- The game takes this trope to the next level by turning you into an alien and tasking you with killing soldiers in a special mode if you consciously off your buddies and don't kill any of the proper targets.
- In Target: Terror, if you shoot the pilot on the final mission, you get a Nonstandard Game Over with the plane crashing into the White House. If you directly shoot the hijacker, he blows up the plane with a Dead-Man Switch.
The first two House of the Dead games had innocents being threatened by zombies. Killing the zombies before they harmed the innocents would often result in them rewarding you, but you would lose a life if you shot the innocent (but not if you simply failed to save him).
- Averted in III in which you occasionally rescue the other player, and if you shoot him/her... nothing happens. In fact, this is prominently shown in a hint video in The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return. The House of the Dead 4 simply does away with having to rescue anybody...for not-so-positive reasons.
  - Plus, in House Of The Dead 4, you've got a freakin' machine gun!!
- In Overkill, you're docked 5,000 points (the amount you get for saving them) if you shoot them yourself, and Washington criticizes you - "Shit, man! That was a live one!" You suffer no penalty if they get killed, and G frequently makes a "can't save them all" comment.
Lethal Enforcers featured both hostages/civilians and fellow police officers that, when shot, would detract a life from the player.
- This game also had an interesting occurrence in one mission where an apparent civilian in a white suit would appear with hands raised and the usual "Don't shoot!" but instead of hiding again would pull a gun! Turns out it was a bad guy playing hostage. You can shoot them before they draw though without penalty if you know who it is.

Shoot Em Up

The second boss of Operation Wolf was one of the earliest examples.
In the Point Blank series, shooting certain objects (usually bombs and targets of your opponent's color) will take off a life.
Happens in the last stage of the video game of RoboCop. The Corrupt Corporate Executive uses his boss as a meat shield, and hitting him nets you an instant Game Over.
In the old Amiga game Gunshoot, you're manning a bank and have to receive money from customers, as well as shoot any robbers that come in. If a robber shoots you, you die, but if you shoot an innocent customer (or shoot the poncho-clad robber before he's drawn his gun) you also die, with the odd game over message "You lost your brayn."
The indie game Graveyard Shift is particularly mean about this. You take damage any time a "damsel" dies, whether or not you're responsible, and typically there are quite a few zombies between her and safety.
The Punisher for the Xbox. Blasting a hostage? Instant death for our hero, no matter what.

Stealth Based Game

Metal Gear:
- In Metal Gear for MSX2 and NES, shooting a hostage would cause you to be demoted to the previous rank, which resulted in reduced maximum health and carrying capacity. Given that you had to be of a certain rank to get a specific item needed to beat the game, and rank was gained by rescuing hostages, this usually resulted in making the game Unwinnable. One of the bosses, Coward Duck (or Dirty Duck if you're playing one of the re-releases), actually uses this trick to kill you.
- In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, shooting a child caused Snake to take damage.
- Metal Gear Solid does this pretty directly: the fight with Ocelot centers around a hostage hooked up to quite a lot of explosives. Accidentally (or not) shooting him causes the entire room to explode, instantly killing you. And OCELOT will call you an idiot. In the same game, killing Meryl will result in an instant game over. Harming her in any way outside of your Manchurian Candidate fight results in the bitch-slap from hell. Fortunately there weren't a lot of other hostages to avoid.
Killing civilians in Assassin's Creed causes you to lose several points of synchronization. Justified in that synchronization reflects how well you're following your ancestor's memory, and the ancestor never attacked civilians.
- Subverted in ACII and onwards: Your synch and health is not the same anymore, but insted when you kill a civilian, you get desynch'ed for each civilian killed, but after 3 strikes you're out, and the game reloads you to a checkpoint nearby.

Tank Game

More of a Team Spirit Link, but in BZFlag, if you shoot a teammate, you hear a donkey bray and immediately explode.

Web Comics

Xkcd has commented on the trope.
In this Darths and Droids strip:

Obi-Wan: Why exactly are we bombing a random town?
Qui-Gon: It's full of evil gangsters, right? That's worth XP.
GM: The innocent civilians are negative XP.