One-Hit-Point Wonder: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''"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 (video game)|Silver Surfer]]'' for the [[Nintendo Entertainment System|NES]]}}
A character who dies from a single hit or other incident of damage. Needless to say, [[Contractual Boss Immunity|this rarely applies to bosses,]] unless they are of the [[Zero Effort Boss|Zero-Effort variety]]. In older video games, this was frequently true of ''the protagonist''; nowadays, the [[Player Character]] is usually only a
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.
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** 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
* Hexers can become this in [[Etrian Odyssey]], if you try to maximize the damage for their Revenge
* 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 (video game)|Silver Surfer]]'', exacerbated by the fact that [[Deadly Walls|touching walls will kill you]]. Made even more annoying by the fact that one of the Silver Surfer's superpowers is being [[Nigh Invulnerable]]!
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** 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|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 [[Combining Mecha|join ships into a more powerful ship]]. Each ship was a
** 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
** Talking about fighting game examples... [[SNK vs. Capcom|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
* ''[[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).
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* 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
** What makes this funny is that he could be one-shotted by bumping into ''balloons'', [[Everything Is Trying to Kill You|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 [[Hoist by His Own Petard|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 Point|save points]] of any
* 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 (video game)|Another World]]'' (known as ''Out Of This World'' in US) [[Nintendo Hard|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.
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** 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 (video game)|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
*** 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
* ''[[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 [[Standard Status Effects|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
** 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?
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* 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
* The ninja in ''[http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/ 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.
* [[True Final Boss|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.
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** ''[[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 [[Sarcasm Mode|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|Beatmania IIDX]]''. Hazard Mode. Break your combo? FAIL. Get a poor from hitting a key one too many times? FAIL.
* The titular [[Butt Monkey
** 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.
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** 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 [[Everything Trying to Kill You|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 [[And Your Reward Is Clothes|the characters turn back into humans, they can still die easily.]]
** To access any secrets, [[No Damage Run
* 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 [[Hitbox Dissonance|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
* Similarly to Super Mario, ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' is a
** Having multiple rings, unfortunately, is no more effective in terms of protecting Sonic than is having only one ring.
*** However, [[Sonic the Hedgehog Triple Trouble|in some]] [[Sonic Unleashed|games]], the number of rings does matter.
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* In the ''[[Deadly Rooms of Death]]'' series, the player and everybody else has one hit point, with the exception of very large enemies that [[Asteroids Monster|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 (video game)|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
* ''[[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.
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*** In ''[[Donkey Kong Country Returns]]'', {{spoiler|there is a Mirror Mode where Diddy Kong doesn't appear at all and Donkey Kong only has one heart instead of the normal two hearts.}}
**** Also played straight in the same game's [[Unexpected Gameplay Change|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. [[Nintendo Hard|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 [[
* 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.
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* [[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 Break
** 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]]''.
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