| rdfs:comment | - If you want a picture of the future, imagine a plumber jumping into an invisible coin block, and falling to his death...repeatedly...forever. Video game protagonists often have bad days. It's not uncommon to have to Double Jump between Floating Platforms over spiked pits, dash between three sets of synchronized fire vents, then bounce off a flying enemy to hit an item block, all while dodging those Goddamned Bats and Demonic Spiders. It may be fiendishly difficult, but it's still par for the course. But not like this. Not like this. Might we be the first to say...welcome to Hell.
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| abstract | - If you want a picture of the future, imagine a plumber jumping into an invisible coin block, and falling to his death...repeatedly...forever. Video game protagonists often have bad days. It's not uncommon to have to Double Jump between Floating Platforms over spiked pits, dash between three sets of synchronized fire vents, then bounce off a flying enemy to hit an item block, all while dodging those Goddamned Bats and Demonic Spiders. It may be fiendishly difficult, but it's still par for the course. But not like this. Not like this. The first item block? Falls and crushes you when you hit it! The pit spikes? Shoot freaking lasers when you jump over them! The safe platform at the other end? Suddenly tilts sideways for no reason at all! The harmless bush you just walked past? Grows teeth and bites your head off! The tiny white cloud that you thought was part of the background? Just blasted you with lightning! The secret Warp Zone you found? Sends you back to the first level of the game! And when you finally, finally get that precious Super Mushroom? Makes you grow so monstrously huge that the floor cracks in half and you plunge into the center of the Earth. Might we be the first to say...welcome to Hell. This isn't Nintendo Hard; it's murder. Every platform has booby-trapped spikes. Every empty hallway has a wall of cannons waiting just offscreen. Most of the power-ups will kill you, but every power-up that doesn't is absolutely necessary for survival. And when you think you've figured out the twisted mind of the game designer, something incomparably worse gets thrown at you. The entire experience is a humongous, hilariously sadistic Kafkaesque Parody of a Nintendo Hard video game.
* Difficulty as slapstick comedy: these games try to make their sudden and completely unfair deaths so ridiculous as to be hilarious. The player engages in self-aimed schadenfreude.
* Difficulty as Running Gag: The difficulty never, ever lets up, and after a while it becomes ludicrous in its persistence.
* Self-awareness: The aforementioned comedy often comes from the game knowing exactly what the player is going to do, and catching them when they least expect it.
* Difficulty as parody: These games deconstruct well-known videogame challenges, such as Mega Man's disappearing blocks, taking them to completely unreasonable conclusions.
* Twisted familiarity: The game levels generally fit the classic settings of the game they're based on, and theme their deathtraps and challenges appropriately. This also saves time in level editing. Even original games such as IWBTG are generally one big Nostalgia Level From Hell.
* Invisible blocks: Some of them will just be there to trip you up (as in the picture above), some need to be hit in order to pass a seemingly impassable obstacle, and some will leave you trapped between a rock and a hard place.
* Background elements (such as seemingly distant mountains) actually being treated as foreground elements (e.g. Spikes of Doom).
* Traps at the end of the stage which result in your death unless you've prepared something from the beginning of the stage, such as the famous "Kaizo Trap" in Super Mario World romhacks: if you don't turn the coins into blocks, the auto-scroll as part of the victory fanfare will cause Mario to die.
* Traps at the beginning of the stage that will kill you a couple of seconds after entering unless you act immediately.
* Trial and Error Gameplay, typically in the form of paths that appear to lead somewhere interesting but instead drop you into an inescapable Death Trap. (Of course, Platform Hell games also have areas that merely look like inescapable death traps.)
* Killing you in the intro cut scene before the game actually begins, especially in Super Mario World hack examples.
* Pit Traps and Fake Platforms that look exactly the same as solid ground and real platforms, respectively.
* Classic Video Game Screw Yous, turned Up to Eleven. They will also usually go by names that outright suggest the cruel difficulty and trickery contained within, usually with names based on 'hard', 'impossible', 'difficult' and 'unfair'. For obvious reasons, very few commercial companies would dare release a game like this. Hence, this variety of videogame is almost entirely the domain of ROM Hacks and homebrew. Romhacks especially are made for game emulators, fully expecting and taking advantage of the fact that players will be Save Scumming. Also known as "Masocore", after this blog post. This should not be confused with very Nintendo Hard games like Jumper, N, Super Mario Bros the Lost Levels (the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2), and Battletoads, which, while being immensely difficult, play (mostly) fair and straight. It should also not be confused with masochism-themed games like Mighty Jill Off, which are more homage than parody. See also Classic Video Game Screw Yous, which these games generally take Up to Eleven. Compare Bullet Hell, which is roughly the Shmup equivalent. Examples of Platform Hell include:
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