Button Mashing: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|''"I've never liked most fighting games because I argue there's got to be something wrong with a game in which you can spend fifteen years practicing and learning every slightest nuance and still lose to someone randomly smashing buttons."''|''[[Zero Punctuation]]''}}

In a [[Fighting Game]], the idea is that random button-pressing will somehow unlock a super-powerful attack or result in a series of attacks that will overwhelm your opponent. As you may presume, this is the act of an amateur, and is derided by [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|"serious" players]]. Only someone completely unfamiliar with the game or their chosen character has to resort to this tactic. Of course, it can be a bit infuriating for these [[Scrub|"serious" players]] when, due to some poor design decisions, their skillful finesse on the joypad leads to them getting walloped by someone who just taps the "punch" button so fast they can never get a move in.<ref>Same "serious" players would never cut a newbie a moment's slack to get oriented with the controls, and take it as a personal shame when they get trashed by a [[Beginner's Luck|random neophyte as a result]]. What a pity.</ref>

 

 

 

Some games will have ''streak breaker'' code in place to make button mashing less effective, as well as to make it harder for someone to simply spam the same cheap attack repeatedly. Often this works by making the attack miss automatically if used too many times in a row.

With the advent of motion control in video games, the term "[[Waggle]]" has been used describing a similar practice in which one simply shakes the controller frantically.

 

 

 

Unrelated to [[Rapid-Fire Typing]].

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{{examples}}

=== Action Game ===

* The final boss battle of the indie game ''[[Assassin Blue]]'' ends with this. As do the ''[[Marvel Universe|Marvel]] vs. [[Capcom]]'' games.

* ''[[Devil May Cry]] 3'' has "crazy combos" activated by button mashing during execution of certain moves. All of them are variations of "hit it two dozen times per second"

** This isn't so much the "spray-and-pray" button mashing as it is just hitting one button rapidly, as stated above, to execute a secret move. Exactly how fast you need to mash to trigger the move is determined by your current [[Awesomeness Meter|style ranking]].

* Despite what some critics have said, this only works in ''[[Bayonetta]]'' on Very Easy ... and up to a point.

* ''[[Enter the Matrix]]'' for [[PlayStation 2]]. Toggle [[Bullet Time]] and mash to your heart's content. It usually ended up looking pretty cool though.

 

=== Arcade Games ===

** Pai Chan is especially notable in her ability to grab opponents attacks, by pressing punch+back. A number of people rather quickly figured out that if you just kept pressing punch and back repeatedly, you could advance towards your opponent and fairly often counter their attacks, ala Geese Howard from Fatal Fury. Any decent player will of course spank you if you try this, but it will get you through the first few rounds against the cpu quite handily, especially in the first one.

*** That only worked in the first two games. From the third onwards, you get a reversal miss animation if you try a reversal without the opponent preforming a matching attack (and the move was changed to Back+P+K).

* ''[[Blaz Blue: Calamity Trigger]]'' has a few characters that use this, most notably Nu-13, the sword-spamming cyborg loli who can hit you with thrown swords from clear across the screen. The trick is that these swords aren't a combo move, they're her basic Drive attack, and mashing the Drive button and playing keep-away is a cheap but viable tactic for Nu players, making her a [[Tier-Induced Scrappy]] for those who care about such things. This is rectified in ''Continuum Shift'' when she's replaced by Lambda-11 and gets the range on her Drive attacks cut back significantly, but [[SNK Boss|Unlimited Nu]] makes up for it by spamming two swords instead of one with every button press and doing more hits with her Distortion Drives.

** Its sequel ''Continuum Shift'' actually has a beginner mode where you can pull basic combos by mashing. If anything it does disable more advanced techniques and abilities, and the tutor for the tutorial mode is Rachel Alucard, who will mock your "hollow cavernous void you call your mind" when you go through the tutorial.

* ''[[Sonic the Fighters]]'' falls afoul of this, especially the [[Game Cube]] version as seen on ''Sonic Gems Collection''. Button Mashing is a lot easier when the buttons are labeled, like on an arcade game.

* [[Super Smash Brothers]] averts this trope completely. Most fighting games use only the control stick/pad and [[Attack! Attack! Attack!|4-6 attack buttons]], but Smash Bros. is more elaborate, making diverse use of its buttons. Instead of pressing back to guard, you have a guard button. Instead of grabbing being something you automatically do when you're really close to an enemy, you have a grab button. You can tap up to jump [[Damn You, Muscle Memory!|if that's what you're used to]], but since jumping is something you MUST have as much control over as possible if you want to survive, it's better to assign that action to a separate button too. As a consequence, button-mashing only gets you killed. (Tragically, the quote on top of this page was said about this game.)

* Each installment of the ''[[Metroid Prime]]'' series has at least one semi-automatic beam, which fires as rapidly as the player can hit the fire button. Naturally, when that beam is used, the players tap the button as rapidly as they can (while still dodging and weaving, mind you)

** The first one practically required it at the beginning, as you lost literally everything except the Power Beam when your suit got damaged, meaning the only reliable way to cause damage was to just spam.

* Pistols in first-person shooters often have no maximum rate of fire, so clicking as fast as possible will fire as many bullets as possible. Since pistols are usually weak, this is not in and of itself a [[Game Breaker]], but changing the controls so that you fire by spinning the mouse wheel tends to result in [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|overkill]]. Partially averted in that really, it's more fun to kill your opponents with a rocket launcher.

 

=== Platform Game ===

* In the game ''[[The Legendary Starfy]]'', after beating the final boss's two forms, he launches a meteor at you which you must button mash to repel; not doing this quickly enough kills you and sends you back to the boss's ''first'' form, making it something of a ''[[Press X to Not Die]]" as well. As the game is rather easy and not really hardcore, the game's target audience seems to find this quite difficult. A common method of beating this is taking a long, somewhat thin object like a pencil or the DS stylus and rub it against the edge of the button.

* In the N64 game ''[[Banjo Tooie]]'', in Glitter Gulch Mine and Cloud Cuckooland, you race an annoying bird name "Canary Mary"; both instances require button mashing to beat her. In particular, the 2nd time you race her in Cloud Cuckooland, it is nigh impossible to beat her without some sort of turbo controller, and even then, you have to utilize the ''[[Rubber Band AI]]'' aspect of the race to win.

** It is still possible to beat her without a turbo controller if you vibrate your hand rapidly. Just be prepared to pause the game often during the race to take rests.

 

=== Rhythm Game ===

* ''[[Rock Band]]'' has the Big Rock Ending at the end of some songs, which represents the tendency for bands during live concerts to finish songs by whaling on their instruments for about 10 or 15 seconds. However, this is actually a subversion, as the mechanics for scoring these Big Rock Endings means if you hit notes quickly, each note is worth fewer points, so you get the same amount of points regardless of how much you're actually mashing the buttons. Basically, as long as you hit a note in each lane for guitar or bass every 1.5 seconds, or any note for drums every 1.5 seconds, you'll get about the same amount of points.

* Wii's motion controls for ''[[Dance Dance Revolution]]'' are very subject to random 'waggle'. Practically every hand indicator can be satisfied with a punch in any direction, and the time frame is rather forgiving so it doesn't necessarily need to be in rhythm.

* The ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' games, especially the sequel, are frequently accused of being button mashy, because most enemies can be defeated by simply using physical attacks repeatedly (tapping the X button), rendering magic and special attacks largely unnecessary.

** In the GBA game, ''Chain of Memories'', however, this attack strategy will quickly lead to your demise, even in the early stages. Thanks, card system.

** Sadistically averted in ''Birth by Sleep'' which is the series' equivalent of a [[Wake Up Call Boss]]; if you try to spam X, you ''will'' die. For example, [[Fragile Speedster|Ven]]'s first boss easily qualifies as [[That One Boss]] and he and [[Squishy Wizard|Aqua]] face [[Wake Up Call Boss|Vanitas]] early on in their stories ([[Mighty Glacier|Terra]], on the other hand, instead gets to deal with [[Get Back Here Boss|Braig]], but all three storylines are quite notorious). Almost every strategy that you may have utilized to systematically wipe out your foes in the previous games can and ''will'' be a liability here.

** There's also the fact that even typically [[Useless Useful Spell|useless spells]] like Stop are here incredibly useful and almost guaranteed to work on mooks.

 

=== Sports Game ===

** In ''[[Lucky Star]]'', Konata [[Deep-Immersion Gaming|imagined herself playing this game]] while running a real footrace, using the ruler method.

** Parodied in ''[[NieA 7]]'', when the final round of a video game tournament uses this game. The winner? An old lady with the shakes.

* ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'' features many powers, but unarmed style fighting gives the player '''plenty''' of options regarding offensive maneuvers. The most button-mashy moves are simply chaining normal attacks as well as the notable Air Combo with a complimentary Spike Driver finisher for it.

 

=== Anime and Manga ===

* Konata of ''[[Lucky Star]]'' explains that the way she wins track races is by imagining them as video games... and then button mashing.

=== Real Life ===

* [[wikipedia:Takahashi Meijin|Takahashi Meijin]], who became famous in the 80's for being able to pull the light gun's trigger as fast as 16 times per second.

 

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