| rdfs:comment | - One hallmark of the Platformer is Everything Trying to Kill You, and this killing is usually done by the simple act of touching the player character. Since this collision is injurious to the player and harmless to the attacker, even if the player is permitted more than one injury before death occurs, he might quickly deplete his entire Life Meter before being able to disentangle himself from the enemy. Enemies, particularly bosses, will often have this as a guard against the player Button Mashing and/or rapid fire controllers, which affects the overall length/ease of the fight.
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| abstract | - One hallmark of the Platformer is Everything Trying to Kill You, and this killing is usually done by the simple act of touching the player character. Since this collision is injurious to the player and harmless to the attacker, even if the player is permitted more than one injury before death occurs, he might quickly deplete his entire Life Meter before being able to disentangle himself from the enemy. As a small mercy, most games that work according to these rules grant the player a small span of invulnerability whenever damage is taken, giving him time to extricate himself before another hit can be taken. This is visually indicated in most games by partial transparency or flashing of the player sprite. The origin of this effect comes from very early platform games which were released on extremely low-powered systems (such as NES or Atari 2600). Therefore the only visual effect available was to flash the sprite character on and off. Modern systems could do much more, such as surrounding the sprite with a flashing gold halo but, strangely, games usually stick to the same old visuals (which can result in the player unable to see their character). The momentary invulnerability may be substituted for (or coupled with) the player character being physically thrown backward from the point of impact. Enemies, particularly bosses, will often have this as a guard against the player Button Mashing and/or rapid fire controllers, which affects the overall length/ease of the fight. Fighting Games, especially 2D fighters, have a version of Mercy Invincibility where a character receives a couple frames of immunity after he or she is knocked down. This allows the knocked down player to get up without having to worry about being hit while his or her character is down. Another, related ability to that is the Recovery Attack, where a character, while not necessarily being invulnerable, may be able to fight back. A similar function can be found in most games that have Random Encounters. Rather than having a purely random system (which can often lead to encounters at every other step), there will be a built in minimum delay between each encounter. This is to prevent a situation where an encounter at every other step overwhelms the players. More modern games may even give you a coloured indicator that starts flashing as the next random encounter approaches, giving you time to chuck some health potions at your party. Very common in all kinds of Platformer. Shoot Em Ups also have this, typically after losing a life, giving your new life a chance to position outside of enemy fire. Occurs much less commonly in the First-Person Shooter. Many Speed Run strategies exploit these invincibility frames for more efficient maneuvering. Compare Invulnerable Attack. Examples of Mercy Invincibility include:
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