Spikes of Doom: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Castlevania]]: [[Symphony of the Night]]'' has entire corridors lined top and bottom with these. It also has the Spike Breaker armor, which causes them to shatter harmlessly when you walk over them.

** They make you navigate a spike-filled, pitch-black corridor with only your little bat-sonar-peep for guidance to get at the stuff, too. Or you can do a little [[Sequence Breaking]] and navigate it blindly as invulnerable Mist instead.

** ''[[Super Castlevania IV]]'' upped the ante by making you deal with a ROTATING ROOM full of spikes only avoidable by the Tarzan-swing-with-whip trick. As an added incentive for Simon to hang the hell on, there's an example of the cost of failure in the skeleton of a former, less savvy hunter lying in one corner... In that same room, if you choose to hang on to the platform instead of the Swing Ring, a new set of spikes appears on the floor you're trying to land on. Lose-lose situation there.

* ''[[Cave Story]]'' has two types of spikes. One type is found on floors, walls and ceilings throughout the game, and damages you a good bit if you run into it. There is another type of floor spikes which glow red; landing on them is instant death. The [[Bonus Level of Hell]] contains extreme amounts of both spike types.

** Rambi can destroy the Spikes of Doom in ''[[Donkey Kong Country Returns]]''.

* ''[[Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project]]'' used these in the 5th episode, Fearsome Factory. What's strange about these is that the game is fully 3D rendered, despite being a side-scroller, so there are often instances where you can clearly see a way Duke could walk around obstacles [[No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom|if only he weren't forced to conform to the path.]] As you might expect, even [[Collision Damage|lightly stubbing your toe on these spikes]] [[Chunky Salsa Rule|is enough to make Duke]] [[Ludicrous Gibs|explode into a pile of gibs.]]

** This entry menaces with spikes of onyx and adamantine. On the entry is an image of spikes in camel bone. The spikes are menacing.

* In a rare JRPG example, ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' has one area where, if you run instead of walking, you will slide into a wall of spikes that will take off a significant amount of your party's HP.

* In ''[[Nethack]]'' (non-bottomless) pit traps often have spikes at the bottom, which merely cause more damage than a normal pit trap rather than causing a [[One-Hit Kill]]. However, the spikes are often coated with poison, which have a chance of causing a [[One-Hit Kill]] if the victim isn't immune to poison.

* ''[[Distorted Travesty]]'' offers plenty of painful spikes. The sequel even manages to force you to ascend a verticle shaft lined with said spikes using wall clinging. And descend through a maze with every platform protruding said spikes. But starting about halfway through the first game the player is introduced to INSTANT DEATH SPIKES. Before long you find yourself facing huge pendulums and other traps made of said instant-death spikes. As may be obvious the game is [[Nintendo Hard]].

* Some of the spikes in ''[[Cosmos Cosmic Adventure]]'' are stationary, while others continually retract into the walls and then come out again. Most of the spikes can be removed with bombs.

* Even skateboarders aren't safe. Several ''[[Tony Hawks Pro Skater]]'' games had "Punji Pits" in the editor.

** The Viet Cong's traps were designed to be somewhat less than lethal so that the enemy would have to evacuate wounded and treat them at a hospital, which they believed to be more damaging to the war effort than simply killing them.

*** There's some truth to that, as it would tie up more soldiers and resources to try to keep a wounded soldier alive than to simply deal with a dead body. Alternatively, the Viet Cong would attack while the other soldiers tried to help the trap's victim.

* [[Caltrops]] are four spikes arranged so that however you drop one, it will land with one spike pointing up (kinda like the jacks in a game of Pick Up Jacks). The idea is to drop them in the road or in a field somewhere to prevent vehicles or cavalry from operating freely without fear of injury or damage. They were used in the Korean War by the Air Force to cut off roads used by Communist supply lines, so they could come back and bomb the disabled supply vehicles. Pictures of the beaches at Normany show giant caltrops designed to hinder landing craft and tanks. Maybe not immediately threatening, but remember that while you're trying to get around these things or clean them up, you've probably got bad guys opening up with [[More Dakka|machine guns]], [[No Kill Like Overkill|artillery]], and maybe even [[Death From Above|air strikes]] if you're particularly [[Butt Monkey|unblessed in life]].

* This is being tossed around as an idea to ward future Earthlings away from highly radioactive places. Played with, since the spikes would be too massive to be really dangerous (Just foreboding) but the radiation is certainly lethal enough. The idea behind it is that most types of radiation that we generate these days has a half-life a lot longer than [[Eternal English|any language we've ever spoken]]. A "Warning, Radiation" sign would go unheeded if no one can speak English or even read. A giant wall of spikes, however, would certainly act as a [[Shmuck Bait|deterrent]].

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Death Course]]

[[Category:Video Game Difficulty Tropes]]

[[Category:Death Trap Tropes]]