If I'm not winning, I'm in such a severe rage state that all I can think about is causing a lot death. So yeah, technically true. Also, I stream on Twitch every day from 6am-midnight! (This is a joke, please for the love of god know it is a joke)
My favorite is the 'impossible' difficulty in the Penn & Teller game where you get obliterated in the very beginning to get destroyed and the game says "Impossible doesn't mean very difficult... impossible is eating the sun"
one similar to that is in a game that i totally forget the name of, but you're a robot trying to prevent people from dying in cryostasis after something bad happens... i think. it has an 'impossible' difficulty, where you start the game, move a few times, and the sun goes supernova and you die. game over
Here is one for you : The german language version of "I Have no mouth and I must scream", a 1995 Point and Click adventure game based on the Harlan Ellison short story, was unwinnable due to the publishers Greed , laziness and sheer stupidity. Due to it's content of the Nimdok chapter where you play a Nazi Doctor in a concentration camp, the game could not be released in germany in it's original state. But since Germany was one of the most lucrative markets for point and click adventure games at that time, the publisher didn't want to miss out on the profits (that's the greed part). Instead of rewriting and reprogramming the chapter, they decidet to go the easy route instead and completely deleted the entire chapter from the game (that's the lazy part) . What they didn't account for was changing the winning condition of the game, meaning that the game still expects the player to finish ALL 5 CHAPTERS to see the Ending, including the now missing Nimdok chapter. That was the stupid part.
"rewriting and reprogramming" is an overstatement. All they needed to do was remove Nazi symbolism from the assets and find-and-replace any specific Nazi terms, which given they were translating the game in the first place would just mean also "translating" words like "Nazi" to whatever is German for "Regime" and other euphemisms.
Or just set the flag to proceed to endgame when the other four were completed. Him being in the end puzzle would be confusing but at least you could finish the game.
Didn't think about that one. Thanks for pointing that out. Also it's so stupid with that Nazi Ban in fictional Media. Those People are absolute Crap, but that doesn't mean that they should be banned from appearing in Games and other Media, especially if they are depicted in a negative Way anyways. I think there was also the Case that Wolfenstein couldn't be released here, even though you literally fight against them🤦🏻♂️
Trogdor being unbeatable is so in-character, bc Trogdor has a few appearances in various HR adventure games and he is ALSO completely unbeatable there-even when the goal is to beat him. Part of me wonders if that was on purpose
Heck, in-universe, the only way Strong Bad is able to beat Trogdor in the Peasant's Quest section of the final episodes of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People is effectively by cheating with an overpowered version of himself and characters with specific traits collected in the rest of the episode
It’s also perfectly in character for Strong Bad to make a level in a video game that the player can’t beat (probably followed by him using cheat codes to beat the stage and claim he’s better than you)
i know this video isn't about them, but the funniest and cruelest example of an *intentionally* unwinnable game is the original arcade version of SMASH T.V. that promised players that if you did well enough you'd eventually unlock a "pleasure dome" that wasn't even in the game. this made people so mad that the developers eventually had to relent and in later versions you could eventually unlock the pleasure dome. EDIT: HOMESTAR MENTIONED
i read this comment before the video started and thought it meant the trogdor flash game having an unbeatable level then i saw the guitar hero chart and just knew SQUEALY WINS
Total Carnage, the spiritual sequel to Smash TV, also has the Pleasure Dome. Due to a bug though, the text crawl at the end will always mention how you haven't managed to pick up everything. Even if you pick up everything. The true perfect ending is unachievable. Also Smash TV can sometimes just be "impossible", at least on a single credit, because the game CAN and WILL spawn an enemy directly on top of you when you enter a new room like it's the fuckin' Dig Dug kill screen.
I remember playing a Hunger Games flash game that would intentionally kill you secondly out of the entire pool. After you died several times, it reveals that it was an April Fools joke and there's literally no way to win or progress any further than being the 2nd death
As a dumb kid, I saw the "April Fool's" text pop up after my first several deaths and thought "makes sense, they made the knife hard to dodge, but I'm sure I can get out of the way if I move well enough" I spent like an hour doing that before I was satisfied that they literally made it impossible. Good times.
The thought of Spiderman aiming to make a dramatic entrance by breaking through a window only to swing off course and crash into the side of the building is some grade A Loony Tunes nonsense.
I remembered from a Guru Larry video that there was an Amiga version of Dennis the Menace that you couldn't beat, because toward the end of the game, there was a jump that no matter what, you could not clear it.
@@misterbadguy7325 The worst part is that it's not even the only game of that era I've read about where the developers made it unwinnable because they couldn't finish the game in time, someone else mentioned the Commodore 64 RoboCop game and I'm sure there were more. People like to complain about games being developed in a lazy manner today but it wasn't all *that* different back in the day either, except back then you'd likely never find out about it and practically no developer would ever release patches or admit such things.
A lot of microcomputer games had this problem - if you thought consoles like the Famicom were the wild west of quality, holy shit, play some ZX Spectrum or Commodore Amiga games.
The Bubble Bobble Revelution Game does have a difference between the broken version and the fixed one. Fixed carts say USA-1 on the cartridge, broken ones are just “USA”.
At least Metal Gear Solid had a bit of foresight. If you lacked the game's jewel case to find Meryl's codec frequency you could pester the colonel enough times to get the number added automatically. While were here, the Psycho Mantis boss has an alternate means of beating him if you can't switch controller ports for any reason (like they got busted). Again, you have to call the colonel enough times for him to recommend the alternate method: shoot off the masks on the statues of the room, so Mantis will be forced to stare at a recreation of his disfigured face and lose his concentration.
Additionally, Psycho Mantis is STILL beatable without EITHER of those methods. Its.. not fun, but with enough bullets and missiles, you can still gradually whittle him down, and win. I personally experienced this, playing Twin Snakes blind, and stupidly not catching onto the port swap trick.. Or finding out about the statues. Its wild how few people know you need neither of those gimmicks to win. But I also don't recommend method 3 at all.
Shoutouts to the Spanish version of Digimon World Half the game is locked behind Ogre Fortress, which in order to access it you need to beat an Agumon, now the Agumon itself can be beaten no problem, but the fucker doesn't move to let you into the fortress after that
@@AnAverageGoblin It's really sad that you missed the reference this comment was making, especially since the comment is referencing *this channel*. You buffoon, you absolute cretin, you subaverage goblin. Shame.
multiple things about trogdor being un-completable- trogdor in of itself is not faster than TTFAF, the reason the notes appear so close together is due to a mechanic referred to a “hyperspeed”. this mechanic makes the notes scroll faster, and has them appear more spread out, making them easier to read, but it doesn’t actually change the timing of the notes. the guitar hero 2 strum limit does NOT apply to the dualshock 2/xbox 360 controller, and because of this, someone created a custom controller that fooled the game into thinking a guitar was one of these controllers, and succeeded in perfecting the song on NTSC.
That's the thing; if the boss was just absent from the game, the problem would have been discovered earlier; the game would have crashed, because a flag is looking for information missing from the DS cart. The way I've seen the same problem described on other TH-cam channels, the music is still playing fine, implying there was an error in the cutscene that spawns the boss; the data is on the cartridge, but the flag to make the boss appear was accidentally made impossible to flip, or permanently inactive.
@@elijahpadilla5083 so probably a similar fuck up to the one typo that fucked with the Xenomorph AI in one of the Alien games (I forget which one I just remember that being one hell of a story from when that game came out)
@@Triforce_of_Doom Yup! For anyone else reading who doesn't know, the FPS "Aliens: Colonial Marines" had INFAMOUSLY bad AI on the Xenomorphs where they'd run facefirst into walls, or brutally attack empty air, or get stuck on corners. Turns out, their AI was FANTASTICALLY programmed, brutally attacking and charging the player, scheming about when to attack, and being very hard to defeat, appropriate for a horror monster . . . but these actions were supposed to be pinned to the player, and a typo in the code had them trying to do all this to "olayer" instead, rendering them comedically stupid as their combat AI couldn't find the intended target and instead just ran around aimlessly.
I wasn't expecting it to be mentioned, but my personal experience with an unwinnable game (aside from Just Cause 2 completion) is Dexter's Lab Deesaster strikes. There's a machine in the house levels you cannot fix because to unlock the shelf blocking it, you need to fix the sink. Which due to a programming error (likely reusing the keycard programming) removes the wrench from your inventory. The machine requires all your tools to fix, and you need 100% to actually finish the game. That one damn machine makes the original printing of the game unbeatable, and because my mom refused to look up a walkthrough or even let me do it, I've ended up with unfinished business.
A patch you say to TXR3 you say? I'm glad you mentioned it. I was going to call that out because, well that's my patch. Thanks for the call out and I hope everyone finally can enjoy the game the way it was meant to be. You'll are very welcome. Been a long time subscriber of the channel and thrilled I can see my work in this video.
I looked at the comments early, I thought that was TXR3 in the thumbnail! Glad to know he mentioned the patch, and glad as always you patched it for us!
Big thanks for that btw. Just completed the game the other day. Had it back in the day and was pissed that I could never get Whirlwind Asshole to race me, that gold digging hoe. Enjoyed the retroachievements set too.
The TXR3 thing reminds me of the Persona 1 SQQ fuckup, where they did something similar, making all the shops and battle drops 1/100 of their original value, but forgetting to change the 10,000 yen for a mirror shard (KEY! ITEM!) trade.
Slave Zero, on the Dreamcast, is unwinnable on Hard difficulty because the boss had its HP increased so much that there literally isn't enough ammo on the arena to kill it, even if you land every shot.
Spider-Man not crashing through the window properly sounds like it would have been a gag the game used in the What-If mode it had where a lot of things changed to be sillier or weirder.
God, I can just imagine a scenario where some Joe Schmo is being mugged in a bank. But when Spider-Man swings in, he hits his head too hard on the way in and dies.
The funny thing about your Guitar Hero example... It's not even the only ultra-hard H*R song in the series. GH Encore: Rocks the 80's has the Limozeen song "Because It's Midnite" early in its setlist because Bow Wow Wow pulled their song "I Want Candy" out at the eleventh hour. And Midnite is infamous for the charted keyboard solo.
Bubble Bobble Revolution isn't a gamble though. The broken copies say USA on them, whereas the fixed copies say USA-1 on them. Same thing for WWF No Mercy for the N64.
7:45 Actually, Crave was the one who called it "Tokyo Xtreme Racer" Its known in japan as "Shutokou Battle" after the highway system the game takes place on. Its also known as "Kaido Battle" for the few entries we know as the "Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Drift" games that take place on mountain roads. Honestly im just surprised that TXR3 even made this list.
I can't believe Strong Bad personally came to the house of every Guitar Hero 2 player just to punch them in the solar plexus and call them stinky losers.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the commodore 64 version of Robocop by Ocean. Basically, there was a game breaking bug on the 3rd or 4th level that wasn't patched. This bug was caught before release but they didn't have time to fix it. So they just made the previous level before the glitch basically impossible by shortening the time limit. Imagine a publisher doing something like this today. The stuff you could get away with back then
Speaking of Commodore 64 games, one game which I used to play back in the day was the Space Rogue for the Commodore 64 (with the C64 running actual vector graphics in the space flight portions!), I never got that far but allegedly the C64 version was accidentally unwinnable because there's a point in the game where you need to gamble to get a plot item but the item is missing from the item pool for the prizes.
Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 have unwinnable arcade modes. The AI gets to cheat more and more as you win, up to the point where the AI has 0-frame reversals with priority over every move you can make.
@@AnAverageGoblinMK1 still kicked my ass mainly just because I could never get Goro down lol, but I eventually beat it, MK2 however was made by Satan himself. How do you make your sequel a better game in almost every single aspect and then proceed to make it so the arcade mode is borderline unplayable lmao
I can pretty consistently 1CC Mortal Kombat 2 after a lifetime of playing it. Certain moves and strategies cause the AI to react incorrectly, so you basically exploit the game's own button reading. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is the REAL nightmare to beat.
Remember when games just stopped you from playing the final level when you played on easy mode? Yeah I don’t miss that but that was better than a glitch in just cause 2 that stopped me from 100% it without a community patch
@@FubukiTheIcyKing if the game tells you ahead of time, then I’ll be happy, such as the game change where the game outright tells you you’ll only make it halfway on easy mode vs contra 4 waiting until you made it to the penultimate level to tell you that you aren’t beating the game until you switch to a higher difficulty
Completing the pokedex in gen 3 is _technically_ possible but it's so convoluted and expensive no sane person would it. You need every gen 3 game including in gamecube Pokemon games. Not only do you need to beat every game but you, need to complete their post games to even trade/transfer pokemon with each other and purify every shadow pokemon in the gamecube games. Oh and you'd need to have two GBAs, a gamecube with Pokemon Colosseum and XD, a link cable and a GBA adapter for the gamecube. That was expensive back when these games came out and their even MORE expensive now since these games have been out of print for 2 decades now.
I think all the mainline Pokémon games would fit the criteria, due to the event exclusives, version exclusives, trading and what not. Gen III is just the most extreme example
If we want to get technical, most pokemon games (especially older ones) are unable to be 100%ed since, without glitches, trading, and/or going to event distributions, some pokemon are simply unobtainable, you cannot catch them all
@@segadoeswhatnintendont Actually it wasn't distributed anywhere in the world period as Junichi Masuda said he thought the item would be too confusing for players to use. You can still get it in-game but you need an Action Replay to do so.
@@Flash33cAt least whit the Void Glitch you can still get the Arceus from the Hall of Origin, and then transfer it to a copy of Heart Gold/Soul Silver, go to the Sinjo Islands and play the event that gets you either a Palkia/Dialga/Giratina at level 1.
Atelier Firis on the PSP for Europe/Oceania has a bug that will kill-crash the game in the middle of the post-exam cutscenes, before you can actually save. Which locks you out of the entire second half of the game. And you've probably already put about 60 hours in because Atelier Firis is long AF.
Jacky Boy, this is, by far, one of the most interesting videos you’ve ever made. That’s not sarcasm, it ranges from legitimately intriguing to downright comical how many different ways video games can become unbeatable. I’d ask for a part two, but given you broke out Simon the Sorcerer 3D for this one, I’d imagine you’ve used everything applicable already
Right now my copy of Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 2 is unbeatable because the game won't load sword Trunks. Not Kid Trunks, not melee Trunks, just the sword one. It did load a few times in the Overworld and in the pre battle cutseen but I can't battle him at all. I can't even view him in the model viewer. I don't think this happens to ANYONE ELSE and I kinda hope so because I find it funny that the guy on the box art can't be used in the game
The same thing happened to my grandmother for Ape Escape 2, she got stuck in a cutscene load screen where she loads into a level and a cutscene starts on a beach but the cutscene never plays so she could never start the level. It took me finding a whole new copy of the game for the PS2 in order for her to finish the game.
Fun fact about the Silicon Valley entry: They corrected the programming for the faucet trophy in the PS1 version. …The problem is that you would need to play the PS1 version. And if you know how vast the difference between the N64 and PS1 versions of Glover is, then you already know how not totally worth it PS1 Silicon Valley would be to play.
Among some nitpicks like jitteriness and a distracting list of changing moves popping up in the lower left corner, the major downside of the PS1 version is the physics. To start, the ball can change into a variety of things, most notably the very slow and tough bowling ball and the much faster yet weaker ball bearing. Except they’re almost the same speed and feel in the PS1 version, so you never have a reason to use the ball bearing as it’s almost completely inferior to the bowling ball. Easily the most egregious though is the jumping. You can jump so high in the PS1 version that you can very easily skip through a bunch of puzzles. No more cleverly getting to the switch on the other side to get the ball through, you can simply jump over the wall whose entire purpose is to force you to do the puzzle. The PS1 version kills a lot of cleverness and creativity the N64 version did. I suggest looking at Nitro Rad’s video on Glover as that’s how I first learned of the PS1 version at all. It’s about in the final third of the video.
You ever played a game that you could beat, but developed a game breaking bug, or maybe the data got corrupted, to the point where you can't play the game ever again? I have, and was The Simpsons Hit & Run game for the PS2. Many years ago, I used to play this game a lot. It was difficult, especially during the final level, but I managed to beat it. But then one day, my data got corrupted. Everything I worked on was permanently gone. So I had to delete the corrupted data and start anew. But for whatever reason, whenever I try to play the game, a nasty bug will happen as soon as I finish the first level of the first area. As soon as I finish the challenge, the audio will be completely cut off. After the cutscene ends and Homer leaves the school, everything is screwed up. The audio is still missing, and worst of all, at a certain point, the map will become a void of nothingness. Homer's house is completely missing, meaning I can't continue with the missions, meaning I was stuck in limbo. Interestingly though was that I could still walk on the void as if the roads still existed, but the moment I jumped, Homer falls endlessly, meaning the game is completely broken. To this day, Hit & Run is the only PS2 game I have that has this problem, and sure I have dealt with corrupted data from some of my other PS2 games, but it never got to the point where the games received a game breaking bug that made it unplayable and unwinnable, except for Simpsons Hit & Run.
This almost happened to me with my PS1 copy of Castlevania Symphony of the Night. The disc was already scratched, audio skipping during certain music and cutscenes was common, but the game was consistently playable. Until one day it wasn't. From that day on, the game's condition kept deteriorating every time I played it. The audio skipped more frequently, it would fail to load new areas more often, sometimes when it _did_ load all the tiles would be messed up and freaky. Then it couldn't get past the Konami screen. Then it corrupted the PS1 bootup screen itself, the Playstation logo was all stretched and glitchy, which I still don't understand how that happened. I was ready to admit defeat. Then one day, the game magically reverted to how it was before. It started skipping only in the old spots, and never crashed or messed up the graphics again. To this day I'm stunned.
When I saw people in the comments mentioning that Trogdor was in the video, I thought it was gonna be about the bug that originally existed in TROGDOR! [sic] where Level 27 was nigh impossible due to its layout. I flat out forgot that Trogdor The Burninator was in Guitar Hero 2.
I have a story that marginally counts. Jack, you mention undiagnosed bugs preventing completion? While it was more damage over time, my GameCube copy of Tak and the Power of Juju had a scratch so bad it would crash at the post-*final boss* cutscene and prevent me from getting the actual credit of finishing the game.
That happened to me with a few PS1 games that my brother and I tried to revisit, most notably Legend of Legaia, Xenogears, and FF7. I guess that could be chalked up to user error, since the games would've been completable had the disc been in better condition, but we tried just about everything we could to get past those sections where our games would freeze.
First thing that comes to mind is the SNES Lion King. While completable, it was made ungodly hard to make in store demos basically uncompletable so folks wouldn't beat it in store or from a rental, they had to buy it.
Made no sense and didn't work, hence why publishers stopped it. Who is going to play a game so frustratingly hard that they then go out and BUY it? No. I will just return it and forget the game ever existed and move on to an actual fun game.
I figured this video would be about games where you couldn’t “win” because the last level is an intentional forced loss for story purposes (like halo reach) but this is cool too
@@jackhumphries1087 I can see your logic, but at that point you have beaten the game in that you have reached the end. In a story sense you don't win, of course, but you've completed the game's campaign.
Tales of Eternia mentioned and called by its actual name! But yeah, to be specific, the game just freezes in a cutscene after beating a boss called Volt if you have the wrong version of the game. Speaking of games that become unbeatable due to freezes in cutscenes, the PSN version of SMT 3 Nocturne, but *only* the PAL version. And that one is after beating the (on most routes) final boss, too. Weirdly enough, setting the game's language to French supposedly circumvents that issue, but playing in any other language makes you unable to see the credits. The PSN PAL version runs terrible in general, but this obviously takes the cake. Devil Survivor Overclocked also had an issue with freezing in its PAL version. Thankfully it is a 3DS game, so there was a patch to fix this... buuut now with the eShop down, that kind of became a moot point. EDIT: I've been made aware that another PAL-exclusive unwinnable game is Digimon World, unless you play the game in English. In German or French, however, a specific dialogue from Agumon will not trigger and without that you cannot progress, making basically the back half of the game inaccessible.
@@durandal_273 even better :'D So you either knew English well enough to play the game, which is very unlikely at the target audience's age, or you're just getting half a game.
@@RuiTsuki The PAL Digimon World didn't have a language selection option, so the games released in PAL regions with non-English localizations were impossible to complete. To add salt to injury, you could technically fulfill the requirements to access the final dungeon of the game without all the events locked behind that Agumon, but even then, there is a teleporter in the last dungeon that doesn't work, locking you in that screen until your Digimon loses a life. And the post-credits FMV doesn't have any subtitles (unlike the introduction clip that had them), so it would look like the games were released knowingly in an incomplete state of localization, and their fix was... not having access to half of the game, including the final boss battle.
I had that glitch happen to me. And it's not a cutscene, more like dialogue. It was supposed to bring up a sort of slot machine, if I infer from the clues.
That last comment gave me an idea: release a game in an unusable state, release a day one patch for it, wait for people to get to an intentionally unbeatable part of the patch and have them figure out they have to temporarily downgrade the game to the unusable version that works in that section now to beat it
I think people would send actual pipe bombs if the joke wasn’t explained to them Also I’m not sure how many people know how to downgrade back to previous versions anyway
could always hide it in steam's beta branch feature... but what about every other storefront. better to just pull a Who's Lila and have a free dlc pack with a demon in it.
I actually ran into the Spiderman issues when I was a kid and never knew why it was happening. I thought my copy was just corrupted or something, so I had to use the level select code to skip the impossible levels.
There are only 2 games I can think of for this, specifically for 100 percent. First is Monster Madness: Battle For Suburbia on Xbox 360. Its original unpatched version is buggy out the ass and has issues with not only enemy spawns, but also item spawns on harder difficulties. As in Horror and Madness mode have multiple miniboss enemies in level 2 that, if you end up killing the wrong one, the key won't spawn because it was held by the first one you killed. It had to be held by the last one killed in order to continue! Even after the bug patch, it has problems with the final level on any difficulty. In Madness Mode... almost impossible. You need to gather tons of spare parts on floating platforms to get a part grade. Find either Carrie's secret sword or the nerd's secret hammer. If you tried to find either Andy or Jennifer's secret weapon to up the grade, it'd break the game and spawn inside tons of stairs out of your grasp respectively. And the other? Harvest Moon DS's early copies These versions are so buggy, they can either ruin your save file or prevent you from marrying the secret bachelorettes because of multiple issues. For Witch Princess and Harvest Goddess, Buckwheet Rice is unobtainable, so you can't get their requirements. For Leia, if you return her to the ocean and accidentally let a storm happen, she'll be swept away and never appear again. And for Hera, she'd either never wake up in her room in the mines, or she'd never accept any gifts. But the best bug... everyone on the title screen will turn into variants of Leia the mermaid. This one funny video showed that each of them were different regional variants. Ya got Galarian Leia, Hisuian Leia, Alolan, Paldean, even a corrupted Missingno Leia XD!
Technicality time! Even tho Halo Reach has an ending, it’s made clear from the beginning there is no winning, you will die, and Reach will fall. Only lasting as long as you can so hopefully others can escape.
Extremely funny that this video came out the same day as AstralSpiff's video about FNAF in real time and how they physically didn't give you enough battery to win the 6 hour version, then when this was pointed out the team released an update which ALSO didn't have enough battery, then another update made it possible. In terms of my experience with this, my Steam copy of Civilization III: Complete will crash on winning without fail. The culprit appears to be the transition between the "Here's all the civs that were in this game, look how much of a winner you are" and the actual scorecard. Is the scorecard the one after the civ heckling screen? I genuinely don't know anymore. I can get the "You Win!!" text box and proceed, but it won't ever be counted as a win. Just Sid Meier making sure we can't have nice things I guess.
the unwinnable game that will torture me forever is the monster high ghoul spirit wii port. no matter WHAT you do, HOW many people you help, you will NEVER be scream queen. it ENRAGED me, and im so close to buying the ds version just to beat cleo
My favorite uncompletable games happen to be Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 1 and 2 on the DS. They have monsters that you mainly can only get by completing certain library milestones. _(All monsters for Prince of Thieves, all skills for Leopold, etc.)_ But those monsters and their unique skills count for the completion. So unless you already have them through ill-gotten means _(action Replay,)_ you're simply never gonna get them, meaning you're never gonna beat the game 100%. Then there are some monsters you can only get through competing in online tournaments _(also required for 100% completion, obviously.)_ not only are the online servers dead and gone, they pretty much died not long after these games were localized and released to the west. in favor of the updated Professional versions, which _never_ made it to the west! *_Being an American Dragon Quest Monsters fan is to know only suffering..._*
As a child of the 90s my sister and I would play og bubble bobble on the nes she made it all the way to level 60 something and she lost I will never forget seeing her play that game for hours mastering it to get to that level and being in awe of it all
I'm a huge Bubble Bobble fan, and I probably got Revolution sometime around its release date. I dug my cartridge out of my closet to confirm it was indeed the European version, so I never encountered that infamous bug. For what its worth, I remember actually enjoying that game for what it was. Also I tried to remember where I was in life when I got that game but that was almost two decades ago and all of a sudden my back hurts
This is pretty much a common theme in ProjectMoon games since in Lobotomy Corporation, your quest is to get the Seed of Light germinated to 100% (spoilers) only for a rather embittered Angela to snuff it out at the last second because the character you're playing as was a real prick to her and didn't enjoy that. There's also Library of Ruina where you literally cannot beat the final reception. This post-credits bonus battle is pretty much scripted to such a degree where even if by miraculous luck (or maybe a real thorough understanding of the game's mechanics) you manage to run the boss's health bar down to 0, she'll still teleport the entire Library away to the Outskirts of the City, it's the first of two unwinnable battles in the ProjectMoon universe where you kinda just have to survive long enough until something happens that allows the clearly scripted and unwinnable battle to be ended prematurely before your entire team gets clobbered. Also honorable mention to Limbus Company for having two of these battles (I say honorable mention because these scripted fights don't necessarily take place at the end of the game on account of the game being a gacha), the first of these battles is in the tutorial (yes I am dead serious) where you have to fight these 3 bandits that try to rip open the prosthetic clock head of your character for... reasons and they always end up clobbering the crap out of your team, and also a certain boss in the middle of Canto 5 who is pretty much Limbus' version of the classic "vertical difficulty spike" that PMoon games are often known for, with him also doubling as a representation of how much more inferior the Limbus cast is compared to the bigwig Syndicates, or The Fingers as they are called in the game. (CENSORED FOR SPOILER REASONS) is a scripted unwinnable fight where you kinda have to rush his health bar down to half before he can spam his AoE so that you can trigger a special defeat cutscene that ends the boss prematurely. Just like with the final reception, both the Limbus scripted battles while still treating the battle's outcome as a loss on your end are completely winnable, but it takes specific builds that I'm not at all well-versed to explain about.
21:49 I remember being stumped on this as a kid because my mom bought this from a garage sale in the mid-90s. I actually wrote to Nintendo, got a response and still have that letter to this day.
Yugioh tag force like, has at least one of these per game. Tag force 3 had a character you couldn't unlock, and 5 or 6 wouldn't have the Machine emperor cutscenes unlock in the gallery after seeing them
@RoninCatholic that's the thing, isn't it? They don't- everyone's expected to use streaming services now. Companies WANT people to use their streaming services over possessing physical media, because it gives them greater control over what "version" of the movie/show people get to see. Or it allows them to pull it from your laptop without a trace should someone decide to revoke your priviledge to see it.
35:55 I'd just like to point out that the song played here isn't just from Thunder Force 4, but a remix done by legendary game remix guitarist S.S.H. This song is amazing. But sadly it's not the same song as on the Genesis.
I had to do a double take because I thought you were going to rip off Guru Larry's video on unwinnable games. Glad you didn't. Something I want to point out, though, is that the glitch in Space Station Silicon Valley was fixed in the PS 1 port as shown by Nitro Rad in his video on the game.
Speaking of Trogdor: Guild Wars 1 has two skills named Rodgort's Invocation and Mark of Rodgort. Now reverse that name Rodgort. Both are also extremely powerful skills. Gotta burninate everything.
Hooray a Spectrobes Origins reference :D Also, personally I would find it far worse if the long RPG I was invested in was suddenly unbeatable 20 hours in, especially if it was a Tales game.
Had a bug with Skywalker Saga which made it so that I was bugged into a mission I already completed. From then I was completely unable to 100% since the entire save broke
I decided to play the Sands of Time trilogy for the first time since I was a kid this year. There's a glitch in the second game that happens randomly in the middle of your playthrough, but you won't find out if it happened until right before the final boss. If it happens, then you just can't beat the game. The only solution is to reload your save to before the glitch happened and hope it doesn't happen again. It was super frustrating.
Your coverage of Trogdor is good but you missed the minor detail of how Through the Fire and Flames has faster notes (26.6 Notes per second) that are HOPO’s (Hammer ons and Pull Offs) that don’t require strums. Therefore, Trogdor is not “faster” than Flames in “notes,” only in strum notes.
The most heartbreaking part of this video has nothing to do with any of these games being unwinnable or uncompetable and is instead the knowledge that Bumbles is too young for Homestar. I thought we were kin, man! Plus, Homestar's sense of humor seems like it would _really_ appeal to him in particular.
I don't remember what the game was called, but it was for the N64. The concept you were a Computer Chip that could take control of the animals on a space station to accomplish goals. One of the the collectibles that was required to 100% the game just would not complete. You could spawn the collectible, but you could not physically collect the thing, no matter how much you ran into it. It locked you out of getting to the final level and getting the true ending of the game. Edit: Space Station: Silicon Valley. That was the game. I am glad it was included.
Tokyo street racing Gran Turismo? Sign. Me. Up! A game with a title like that is something i'd usually automatically skip over when browsing used games, but you've sold me on it pretty well.
"Oh, wait, I never mentioned what GH2 song was unbeatable!" Yeah, was just gonna check the comments-- "It's TROGDOR THE BURNINATOR!" ...wait. WHAT?! XD
Neon White on Ps4/Ps5 has a game breaking glitch that blocks getting the good ending along with half of the level rushes so no 100% And to trigger this glitch that the devs somehow didn't catch all you have to do is collect all the hidden gifts in level order which if you're like me and played it at launch collecting everything in a level as you completed it before moving on means that you get a giant middle finger from the game for being diligent and have to redo the entire game from scratch to get the good ending and hell level rushes
How did they manage that? I've collected them in whatever order but didn't end up beating it, so I don't think I'll have this issue when I eventually get back to it
An annoying one for completionists was Rayman Raving Rabbids where the game keeps track of your highest score of every minigame you played and you unlock new bonus stuff (like artwork or promotional material) by having a total score that goes over a certain threshold. However, this system is broken, the maximum score of certain minigames just cannot be reached and the game had to be hacked so that people can view the last artwork video of the game
You call old arcade games unbeatable after a certain point, I call it "The arcade game flipped the table in frustration". You just have to change your definition of "Win".
![A Developer's Final Game [Bumbles McFumbles]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZmiCmGk1msk/mqdefault.jpg)
![A Developer's Final Game [Bumbles McFumbles]](/img/tr.png)
![Glitches Turned Gameplay Features [Bumbles McFumbles]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RDMXJCW82GI/mqdefault.jpg)
![Games Their Developers Hated Making [Bumbles McFumbles]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bTiZcvBPGSM/mqdefault.jpg)
“There are 2 states. Winning and death.” Implies that just by living we are winning and honestly I kinda needed that sentiment.
If I'm not winning, I'm in such a severe rage state that all I can think about is causing a lot death. So yeah, technically true. Also, I stream on Twitch every day from 6am-midnight!
(This is a joke, please for the love of god know it is a joke)
That's the kind of talk a politician and a CEO loves.
My favorite is the 'impossible' difficulty in the Penn & Teller game where you get obliterated in the very beginning to get destroyed and the game says "Impossible doesn't mean very difficult... impossible is eating the sun"
Funny as it is, the difference is that that is very much intentional.
Pfft, I could eat the sun, no problem.
Lou Reed was awesome for guest starring just for that joke
I mean yeah, if you get annoyed by games having a possible "impossible" difficulty who am I to stop you from making your point
one similar to that is in a game that i totally forget the name of, but you're a robot trying to prevent people from dying in cryostasis after something bad happens... i think. it has an 'impossible' difficulty, where you start the game, move a few times, and the sun goes supernova and you die. game over
All games are winnable, silly!
Just punch the cardrige, never seen one fight back
this guy gets it
You haven’t watched avgn
What if it's a disc?
Or a digital copy?
@@GmNdWtchr96 Punch the computer.
As for digital games, remove the storage theyre on and destroy it.
“Race me if you dare.”
“My wallet literally can’t hold any more money.”
“That sounds like a skill issue.”
Here is one for you : The german language version of "I Have no mouth and I must scream", a 1995 Point and Click adventure game based on the Harlan Ellison short story, was unwinnable due to the publishers Greed , laziness and sheer stupidity. Due to it's content of the Nimdok chapter where you play a Nazi Doctor in a concentration camp, the game could not be released in germany in it's original state. But since Germany was one of the most lucrative markets for point and click adventure games at that time, the publisher didn't want to miss out on the profits (that's the greed part). Instead of rewriting and reprogramming the chapter, they decidet to go the easy route instead and completely deleted the entire chapter from the game (that's the lazy part) . What they didn't account for was changing the winning condition of the game, meaning that the game still expects the player to finish ALL 5 CHAPTERS to see the Ending, including the now missing Nimdok chapter. That was the stupid part.
I mean, it's oddly fitting
"rewriting and reprogramming" is an overstatement. All they needed to do was remove Nazi symbolism from the assets and find-and-replace any specific Nazi terms, which given they were translating the game in the first place would just mean also "translating" words like "Nazi" to whatever is German for "Regime" and other euphemisms.
You can also add the french version too since it censor too
Or just set the flag to proceed to endgame when the other four were completed. Him being in the end puzzle would be confusing but at least you could finish the game.
Didn't think about that one. Thanks for pointing that out.
Also it's so stupid with that Nazi Ban in fictional Media. Those People are absolute Crap, but that doesn't mean that they should be banned from appearing in Games and other Media, especially if they are depicted in a negative Way anyways.
I think there was also the Case that Wolfenstein couldn't be released here, even though you literally fight against them🤦🏻♂️
Trogdor being unbeatable is so in-character, bc Trogdor has a few appearances in various HR adventure games and he is ALSO completely unbeatable there-even when the goal is to beat him. Part of me wonders if that was on purpose
And when i say unbeatable, it's not by shoddy programming, the game basically goes "you stupid fucker, NOBODY can beat Trogdor"
Heck, in-universe, the only way Strong Bad is able to beat Trogdor in the Peasant's Quest section of the final episodes of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People is effectively by cheating with an overpowered version of himself and characters with specific traits collected in the rest of the episode
It’s also perfectly in character for Strong Bad to make a level in a video game that the player can’t beat (probably followed by him using cheat codes to beat the stage and claim he’s better than you)
@@freakfoxvevo7915gosh I used to play the heck out of SBCG4AP.
@@freakfoxvevo7915 And evben then, the ending of the game is the Credits rolling while a suddenly un-beaten Trogdor appears and wreaks havoc.
i know this video isn't about them, but the funniest and cruelest example of an *intentionally* unwinnable game is the original arcade version of SMASH T.V. that promised players that if you did well enough you'd eventually unlock a "pleasure dome" that wasn't even in the game.
this made people so mad that the developers eventually had to relent and in later versions you could eventually unlock the pleasure dome.
EDIT: HOMESTAR MENTIONED
i read this comment before the video started and thought it meant the trogdor flash game having an unbeatable level
then i saw the guitar hero chart and just knew SQUEALY WINS
Total Carnage, the spiritual sequel to Smash TV, also has the Pleasure Dome. Due to a bug though, the text crawl at the end will always mention how you haven't managed to pick up everything. Even if you pick up everything. The true perfect ending is unachievable.
Also Smash TV can sometimes just be "impossible", at least on a single credit, because the game CAN and WILL spawn an enemy directly on top of you when you enter a new room like it's the fuckin' Dig Dug kill screen.
I remember playing a Hunger Games flash game that would intentionally kill you secondly out of the entire pool.
After you died several times, it reveals that it was an April Fools joke and there's literally no way to win or progress any further than being the 2nd death
As a dumb kid, I saw the "April Fool's" text pop up after my first several deaths and thought "makes sense, they made the knife hard to dodge, but I'm sure I can get out of the way if I move well enough"
I spent like an hour doing that before I was satisfied that they literally made it impossible. Good times.
The thought of Spiderman aiming to make a dramatic entrance by breaking through a window only to swing off course and crash into the side of the building is some grade A Loony Tunes nonsense.
I remembered from a Guru Larry video that there was an Amiga version of Dennis the Menace that you couldn't beat, because toward the end of the game, there was a jump that no matter what, you could not clear it.
Yeah, this was apparently done because they didn't have time to program the ending.
@@misterbadguy7325 The worst part is that it's not even the only game of that era I've read about where the developers made it unwinnable because they couldn't finish the game in time, someone else mentioned the Commodore 64 RoboCop game and I'm sure there were more. People like to complain about games being developed in a lazy manner today but it wasn't all *that* different back in the day either, except back then you'd likely never find out about it and practically no developer would ever release patches or admit such things.
Happened with the original release of Jet Set Willy. They did apparently reissue it with the ability to actually complete the game
A lot of microcomputer games had this problem - if you thought consoles like the Famicom were the wild west of quality, holy shit, play some ZX Spectrum or Commodore Amiga games.
The Bubble Bobble Revelution Game does have a difference between the broken version and the fixed one. Fixed carts say USA-1 on the cartridge, broken ones are just “USA”.
Same exact thing for WWF No Mercy for the N64.
"There are two permanent states in life: winning and death" is my new motto. Thanks Jack
Shoutouts to Age of Empires 2, where there was an achievement where you had to pre-order the game.
You're joking, right?
At least Metal Gear Solid had a bit of foresight. If you lacked the game's jewel case to find Meryl's codec frequency you could pester the colonel enough times to get the number added automatically.
While were here, the Psycho Mantis boss has an alternate means of beating him if you can't switch controller ports for any reason (like they got busted). Again, you have to call the colonel enough times for him to recommend the alternate method: shoot off the masks on the statues of the room, so Mantis will be forced to stare at a recreation of his disfigured face and lose his concentration.
oh my god that's actually so clever
@@lavenzavantasHoly shit a wild Homestuck
Additionally, Psycho Mantis is STILL beatable without EITHER of those methods. Its.. not fun, but with enough bullets and missiles, you can still gradually whittle him down, and win. I personally experienced this, playing Twin Snakes blind, and stupidly not catching onto the port swap trick.. Or finding out about the statues. Its wild how few people know you need neither of those gimmicks to win. But I also don't recommend method 3 at all.
Shoutouts to the Spanish version of Digimon World
Half the game is locked behind Ogre Fortress, which in order to access it you need to beat an Agumon, now the Agumon itself can be beaten no problem, but the fucker doesn't move to let you into the fortress after that
Say whatcha want about ScVi, but at least even in the unpatched version, it waa beatable
Pokémon wins again lmao
@@goldenhydreigon4727 Its really sad that you care that much about comparing Digimon and Pokemon
@@goldenhydreigon4727Comparing modern Pokémon to a 25 year old PS1 game is not as big of a win as you seem to think.
@@goldenhydreigon4727 Please punch yourself in the balls.
@@AnAverageGoblin It's really sad that you missed the reference this comment was making, especially since the comment is referencing *this channel*. You buffoon, you absolute cretin, you subaverage goblin. Shame.
multiple things about trogdor being un-completable-
trogdor in of itself is not faster than TTFAF, the reason the notes appear so close together is due to a mechanic referred to a “hyperspeed”. this mechanic makes the notes scroll faster, and has them appear more spread out, making them easier to read, but it doesn’t actually change the timing of the notes.
the guitar hero 2 strum limit does NOT apply to the dualshock 2/xbox 360 controller, and because of this, someone created a custom controller that fooled the game into thinking a guitar was one of these controllers, and succeeded in perfecting the song on NTSC.
Balan appears at 12:08 for everyone just looking for that.
Phew, I was at 12:04 and was getting worried
Probably the only instance of anyone actually looking for Balan in history
Silly! Balan Day already happened, so he and insider trading don’t exist until next year
He can't let it go...
Thank you
The Bubble Bobble one is the most offensive to me. Like how do you screw up in localization that you somehow delete the boss?!
That's the thing; if the boss was just absent from the game, the problem would have been discovered earlier; the game would have crashed, because a flag is looking for information missing from the DS cart. The way I've seen the same problem described on other TH-cam channels, the music is still playing fine, implying there was an error in the cutscene that spawns the boss; the data is on the cartridge, but the flag to make the boss appear was accidentally made impossible to flip, or permanently inactive.
@@elijahpadilla5083 Oof that's a finger slip.
@@elijahpadilla5083 so probably a similar fuck up to the one typo that fucked with the Xenomorph AI in one of the Alien games (I forget which one I just remember that being one hell of a story from when that game came out)
@@Triforce_of_Doom Yup!
For anyone else reading who doesn't know, the FPS "Aliens: Colonial Marines" had INFAMOUSLY bad AI on the Xenomorphs where they'd run facefirst into walls, or brutally attack empty air, or get stuck on corners.
Turns out, their AI was FANTASTICALLY programmed, brutally attacking and charging the player, scheming about when to attack, and being very hard to defeat, appropriate for a horror monster . . . but these actions were supposed to be pinned to the player, and a typo in the code had them trying to do all this to "olayer" instead, rendering them comedically stupid as their combat AI couldn't find the intended target and instead just ran around aimlessly.
@elijahpadilla5083 wasn't it mispelling tether as teather too? or am I thinking of another game?
I wasn't expecting it to be mentioned, but my personal experience with an unwinnable game (aside from Just Cause 2 completion) is Dexter's Lab Deesaster strikes. There's a machine in the house levels you cannot fix because to unlock the shelf blocking it, you need to fix the sink. Which due to a programming error (likely reusing the keycard programming) removes the wrench from your inventory. The machine requires all your tools to fix, and you need 100% to actually finish the game. That one damn machine makes the original printing of the game unbeatable, and because my mom refused to look up a walkthrough or even let me do it, I've ended up with unfinished business.
I heard that you could send it in to the publisher, but even THEN that wouldn't guarantee the bug was fixed. Like, why???
A patch you say to TXR3 you say? I'm glad you mentioned it. I was going to call that out because, well that's my patch.
Thanks for the call out and I hope everyone finally can enjoy the game the way it was meant to be. You'll are very welcome.
Been a long time subscriber of the channel and thrilled I can see my work in this video.
I looked at the comments early, I thought that was TXR3 in the thumbnail!
Glad to know he mentioned the patch, and glad as always you patched it for us!
Your patch made my week thank you
Big thanks for that btw. Just completed the game the other day. Had it back in the day and was pissed that I could never get Whirlwind Asshole to race me, that gold digging hoe. Enjoyed the retroachievements set too.
Ya'll. Not youll.
I died on the inside seeing it as a southerner lol
The TXR3 thing reminds me of the Persona 1 SQQ fuckup, where they did something similar, making all the shops and battle drops 1/100 of their original value, but forgetting to change the 10,000 yen for a mirror shard (KEY! ITEM!) trade.
"why do you play video games? For fu- NO"
Dr. Fun came out for a second there
Slave Zero, on the Dreamcast, is unwinnable on Hard difficulty because the boss had its HP increased so much that there literally isn't enough ammo on the arena to kill it, even if you land every shot.
Spider-Man not crashing through the window properly sounds like it would have been a gag the game used in the What-If mode it had where a lot of things changed to be sillier or weirder.
God, I can just imagine a scenario where some Joe Schmo is being mugged in a bank. But when Spider-Man swings in, he hits his head too hard on the way in and dies.
The funny thing about your Guitar Hero example...
It's not even the only ultra-hard H*R song in the series.
GH Encore: Rocks the 80's has the Limozeen song "Because It's Midnite" early in its setlist because Bow Wow Wow pulled their song "I Want Candy" out at the eleventh hour. And Midnite is infamous for the charted keyboard solo.
wait really? And here I thought it was only Trogdor that got in the series. thats cool
@@darthgamer9861 Well, Trogdor and Because It's Midnite are indeed the only two Homestar songs in the main franchise.
There's also Thunderhorse by Dethklok in GHII
Dethklok isn't homestar runner though...
Time to buy copies of Bubble Bobble Revolution and Tales of Eternia to fuel my gambling addiction!
LET'S GO GAMBLING
(bugged copy)
AW DANG IT
(bugged copy)
AW DANG IT
(bugged copy)
AW DANG IT
(bugged copy)
AW DANG IT
Bubble Bobble Revolution isn't a gamble though. The broken copies say USA on them, whereas the fixed copies say USA-1 on them. Same thing for WWF No Mercy for the N64.
@@StageRight123 It probably isn't gonna be easily noticeable for the buyer, though
7:45 Actually, Crave was the one who called it "Tokyo Xtreme Racer"
Its known in japan as "Shutokou Battle" after the highway system the game takes place on.
Its also known as "Kaido Battle" for the few entries we know as the "Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Drift" games that take place on mountain roads.
Honestly im just surprised that TXR3 even made this list.
16:49 VINDICATION!!! I played that on my dad's computer as a kid, and never understood why I couldn't continue from there.
I can't believe Strong Bad personally came to the house of every Guitar Hero 2 player just to punch them in the solar plexus and call them stinky losers.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the commodore 64 version of Robocop by Ocean. Basically, there was a game breaking bug on the 3rd or 4th level that wasn't patched. This bug was caught before release but they didn't have time to fix it. So they just made the previous level before the glitch basically impossible by shortening the time limit.
Imagine a publisher doing something like this today. The stuff you could get away with back then
Fixing a bug by making the entire game unbeatable has the same aura as realizing there’s a leak in the roof, so you burn the entire building down.
Speaking of Commodore 64 games, one game which I used to play back in the day was the Space Rogue for the Commodore 64 (with the C64 running actual vector graphics in the space flight portions!), I never got that far but allegedly the C64 version was accidentally unwinnable because there's a point in the game where you need to gamble to get a plot item but the item is missing from the item pool for the prizes.
Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat did something similar
Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 have unwinnable arcade modes. The AI gets to cheat more and more as you win, up to the point where the AI has 0-frame reversals with priority over every move you can make.
I've beaten MK1's arcade mode (og arcade and snes) but never MK2.
@@AnAverageGoblinMK1 still kicked my ass mainly just because I could never get Goro down lol, but I eventually beat it, MK2 however was made by Satan himself. How do you make your sequel a better game in almost every single aspect and then proceed to make it so the arcade mode is borderline unplayable lmao
@@funnyman2067 because money. tho i'm not sure why they felt the need to keep the input reading in the SNES/Genesis ports.
I can pretty consistently 1CC Mortal Kombat 2 after a lifetime of playing it. Certain moves and strategies cause the AI to react incorrectly, so you basically exploit the game's own button reading. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is the REAL nightmare to beat.
To be fair, the arcade mode being literally impossible, basically by design, feels appropriate for the time it was released during.
Remember when games just stopped you from playing the final level when you played on easy mode? Yeah I don’t miss that but that was better than a glitch in just cause 2 that stopped me from 100% it without a community patch
Imagine if in devil may cry 3, on easy difficulty, Vergil just picks Dante up and tosses him over the cliff in mission 20
Kid named SOR 3:
@@korhol2065 I always hated that. It's like why add the difficulty if you're gonna punish me for playing it?
touhou 6:
@@FubukiTheIcyKing if the game tells you ahead of time, then I’ll be happy, such as the game change where the game outright tells you you’ll only make it halfway on easy mode vs contra 4 waiting until you made it to the penultimate level to tell you that you aren’t beating the game until you switch to a higher difficulty
Completing the pokedex in gen 3 is _technically_ possible but it's so convoluted and expensive no sane person would it. You need every gen 3 game including in gamecube Pokemon games. Not only do you need to beat every game but you, need to complete their post games to even trade/transfer pokemon with each other and purify every shadow pokemon in the gamecube games. Oh and you'd need to have two GBAs, a gamecube with Pokemon Colosseum and XD, a link cable and a GBA adapter for the gamecube. That was expensive back when these games came out and their even MORE expensive now since these games have been out of print for 2 decades now.
I think all the mainline Pokémon games would fit the criteria, due to the event exclusives, version exclusives, trading and what not. Gen III is just the most extreme example
Hearing "Homestar was before my time" makes my knees hurt.
I can feel myself turning to dust
If we want to get technical, most pokemon games (especially older ones) are unable to be 100%ed since, without glitches, trading, and/or going to event distributions, some pokemon are simply unobtainable, you cannot catch them all
Theres certain shiny forms that have straight up never been distributed officially and are unobtainable without hacking
Platinum straight up never was outside of Japan, since the item needed to get Arceus was not distributed
@@segadoeswhatnintendont Actually it wasn't distributed anywhere in the world period as Junichi Masuda said he thought the item would be too confusing for players to use. You can still get it in-game but you need an Action Replay to do so.
Technically Gen 1 could be, if all event cartridges are found.
@@Flash33cAt least whit the Void Glitch you can still get the Arceus from the Hall of Origin, and then transfer it to a copy of Heart Gold/Soul Silver, go to the Sinjo Islands and play the event that gets you either a Palkia/Dialga/Giratina at level 1.
Time to prove them wrong
(I will never begin playing them)
Atelier Firis on the PSP for Europe/Oceania has a bug that will kill-crash the game in the middle of the post-exam cutscenes, before you can actually save. Which locks you out of the entire second half of the game. And you've probably already put about 60 hours in because Atelier Firis is long AF.
Jacky Boy, this is, by far, one of the most interesting videos you’ve ever made. That’s not sarcasm, it ranges from legitimately intriguing to downright comical how many different ways video games can become unbeatable.
I’d ask for a part two, but given you broke out Simon the Sorcerer 3D for this one, I’d imagine you’ve used everything applicable already
Right now my copy of Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 2 is unbeatable because the game won't load sword Trunks.
Not Kid Trunks, not melee Trunks, just the sword one. It did load a few times in the Overworld and in the pre battle cutseen but I can't battle him at all. I can't even view him in the model viewer.
I don't think this happens to ANYONE ELSE and I kinda hope so because I find it funny that the guy on the box art can't be used in the game
The same thing happened to my grandmother for Ape Escape 2, she got stuck in a cutscene load screen where she loads into a level and a cutscene starts on a beach but the cutscene never plays so she could never start the level. It took me finding a whole new copy of the game for the PS2 in order for her to finish the game.
Mine is stuck on the loading screen
Trogdor being the impossible song in Guitar Hero 2 is the funniest thing I have ever heard, and I will retain that fact for as long as I live.
Fun fact about the Silicon Valley entry: They corrected the programming for the faucet trophy in the PS1 version.
…The problem is that you would need to play the PS1 version. And if you know how vast the difference between the N64 and PS1 versions of Glover is, then you already know how not totally worth it PS1 Silicon Valley would be to play.
today I learned that silicon got a ps1 port. the second thing I learned is that someone else here is aware of the awful Glover port.
So what's the differences between the n64 and ps1 glover games, and what makes one worse then the other?
Among some nitpicks like jitteriness and a distracting list of changing moves popping up in the lower left corner, the major downside of the PS1 version is the physics.
To start, the ball can change into a variety of things, most notably the very slow and tough bowling ball and the much faster yet weaker ball bearing. Except they’re almost the same speed and feel in the PS1 version, so you never have a reason to use the ball bearing as it’s almost completely inferior to the bowling ball.
Easily the most egregious though is the jumping. You can jump so high in the PS1 version that you can very easily skip through a bunch of puzzles. No more cleverly getting to the switch on the other side to get the ball through, you can simply jump over the wall whose entire purpose is to force you to do the puzzle.
The PS1 version kills a lot of cleverness and creativity the N64 version did. I suggest looking at Nitro Rad’s video on Glover as that’s how I first learned of the PS1 version at all. It’s about in the final third of the video.
Wait it got a PS1 port? How different is it?
You ever played a game that you could beat, but developed a game breaking bug, or maybe the data got corrupted, to the point where you can't play the game ever again? I have, and was The Simpsons Hit & Run game for the PS2.
Many years ago, I used to play this game a lot. It was difficult, especially during the final level, but I managed to beat it. But then one day, my data got corrupted. Everything I worked on was permanently gone. So I had to delete the corrupted data and start anew. But for whatever reason, whenever I try to play the game, a nasty bug will happen as soon as I finish the first level of the first area. As soon as I finish the challenge, the audio will be completely cut off. After the cutscene ends and Homer leaves the school, everything is screwed up. The audio is still missing, and worst of all, at a certain point, the map will become a void of nothingness. Homer's house is completely missing, meaning I can't continue with the missions, meaning I was stuck in limbo. Interestingly though was that I could still walk on the void as if the roads still existed, but the moment I jumped, Homer falls endlessly, meaning the game is completely broken. To this day, Hit & Run is the only PS2 game I have that has this problem, and sure I have dealt with corrupted data from some of my other PS2 games, but it never got to the point where the games received a game breaking bug that made it unplayable and unwinnable, except for Simpsons Hit & Run.
Try a different memory card, or a different disc.
This almost happened to me with my PS1 copy of Castlevania Symphony of the Night. The disc was already scratched, audio skipping during certain music and cutscenes was common, but the game was consistently playable. Until one day it wasn't.
From that day on, the game's condition kept deteriorating every time I played it. The audio skipped more frequently, it would fail to load new areas more often, sometimes when it _did_ load all the tiles would be messed up and freaky. Then it couldn't get past the Konami screen. Then it corrupted the PS1 bootup screen itself, the Playstation logo was all stretched and glitchy, which I still don't understand how that happened. I was ready to admit defeat.
Then one day, the game magically reverted to how it was before. It started skipping only in the old spots, and never crashed or messed up the graphics again. To this day I'm stunned.
When I saw people in the comments mentioning that Trogdor was in the video, I thought it was gonna be about the bug that originally existed in TROGDOR! [sic] where Level 27 was nigh impossible due to its layout. I flat out forgot that Trogdor The Burninator was in Guitar Hero 2.
I have a story that marginally counts.
Jack, you mention undiagnosed bugs preventing completion? While it was more damage over time, my GameCube copy of Tak and the Power of Juju had a scratch so bad it would crash at the post-*final boss* cutscene and prevent me from getting the actual credit of finishing the game.
That happened to me with a few PS1 games that my brother and I tried to revisit, most notably Legend of Legaia, Xenogears, and FF7. I guess that could be chalked up to user error, since the games would've been completable had the disc been in better condition, but we tried just about everything we could to get past those sections where our games would freeze.
No matter how strong your guitar skills
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You cannot strum in consummate V’s
First thing that comes to mind is the SNES Lion King. While completable, it was made ungodly hard to make in store demos basically uncompletable so folks wouldn't beat it in store or from a rental, they had to buy it.
You mean like how in the second level where you ride an ostrich, you would likely bounce off the giraffe and be stuck and forced to quit out?
Made no sense and didn't work, hence why publishers stopped it. Who is going to play a game so frustratingly hard that they then go out and BUY it?
No. I will just return it and forget the game ever existed and move on to an actual fun game.
@@korhol2065Man without prior knowledge this sentence is borderline incomprehensible.
I’d prefer other versions of the game
@@korhol2065that’s on the genesis
I figured this video would be about games where you couldn’t “win” because the last level is an intentional forced loss for story purposes (like halo reach) but this is cool too
Well a game with a bad ending still has a finish line
@@MyLeg_Fred halo reach technically doesn’t have a finish line, since the final mission’s objective is impossible to complete.
@@jackhumphries1087 I can see your logic, but at that point you have beaten the game in that you have reached the end. In a story sense you don't win, of course, but you've completed the game's campaign.
@@MariktheGunslinger fine
Tales of Eternia mentioned and called by its actual name!
But yeah, to be specific, the game just freezes in a cutscene after beating a boss called Volt if you have the wrong version of the game.
Speaking of games that become unbeatable due to freezes in cutscenes, the PSN version of SMT 3 Nocturne, but *only* the PAL version. And that one is after beating the (on most routes) final boss, too. Weirdly enough, setting the game's language to French supposedly circumvents that issue, but playing in any other language makes you unable to see the credits. The PSN PAL version runs terrible in general, but this obviously takes the cake.
Devil Survivor Overclocked also had an issue with freezing in its PAL version. Thankfully it is a 3DS game, so there was a patch to fix this... buuut now with the eShop down, that kind of became a moot point.
EDIT: I've been made aware that another PAL-exclusive unwinnable game is Digimon World, unless you play the game in English. In German or French, however, a specific dialogue from Agumon will not trigger and without that you cannot progress, making basically the back half of the game inaccessible.
Apparently, according to another commenter, the Digimon World glitch happens on the Spanish version too
@@durandal_273 even better :'D
So you either knew English well enough to play the game, which is very unlikely at the target audience's age, or you're just getting half a game.
@@RuiTsuki The PAL Digimon World didn't have a language selection option, so the games released in PAL regions with non-English localizations were impossible to complete.
To add salt to injury, you could technically fulfill the requirements to access the final dungeon of the game without all the events locked behind that Agumon, but even then, there is a teleporter in the last dungeon that doesn't work, locking you in that screen until your Digimon loses a life.
And the post-credits FMV doesn't have any subtitles (unlike the introduction clip that had them), so it would look like the games were released knowingly in an incomplete state of localization, and their fix was... not having access to half of the game, including the final boss battle.
I had that glitch happen to me. And it's not a cutscene, more like dialogue. It was supposed to bring up a sort of slot machine, if I infer from the clues.
That last comment gave me an idea: release a game in an unusable state, release a day one patch for it, wait for people to get to an intentionally unbeatable part of the patch and have them figure out they have to temporarily downgrade the game to the unusable version that works in that section now to beat it
I think people would send actual pipe bombs if the joke wasn’t explained to them
Also I’m not sure how many people know how to downgrade back to previous versions anyway
@@korhol2065 it's not supposed to be a joke, rather a feature of the game used for the story
could always hide it in steam's beta branch feature... but what about every other storefront. better to just pull a Who's Lila and have a free dlc pack with a demon in it.
Justice for Bub and Bob, they didn’t deserve having one of their games become unbeatable.
I actually ran into the Spiderman issues when I was a kid and never knew why it was happening. I thought my copy was just corrupted or something, so I had to use the level select code to skip the impossible levels.
I will never get tired of the yugioh card transistions being on theme with the video.
There are only 2 games I can think of for this, specifically for 100 percent.
First is Monster Madness: Battle For Suburbia on Xbox 360.
Its original unpatched version is buggy out the ass and has issues with not only enemy spawns, but also item spawns on harder difficulties. As in Horror and Madness mode have multiple miniboss enemies in level 2 that, if you end up killing the wrong one, the key won't spawn because it was held by the first one you killed. It had to be held by the last one killed in order to continue!
Even after the bug patch, it has problems with the final level on any difficulty. In Madness Mode... almost impossible.
You need to gather tons of spare parts on floating platforms to get a part grade. Find either Carrie's secret sword or the nerd's secret hammer. If you tried to find either Andy or Jennifer's secret weapon to up the grade, it'd break the game and spawn inside tons of stairs out of your grasp respectively.
And the other? Harvest Moon DS's early copies
These versions are so buggy, they can either ruin your save file or prevent you from marrying the secret bachelorettes because of multiple issues.
For Witch Princess and Harvest Goddess, Buckwheet Rice is unobtainable, so you can't get their requirements. For Leia, if you return her to the ocean and accidentally let a storm happen, she'll be swept away and never appear again.
And for Hera, she'd either never wake up in her room in the mines, or she'd never accept any gifts.
But the best bug... everyone on the title screen will turn into variants of Leia the mermaid. This one funny video showed that each of them were different regional variants.
Ya got Galarian Leia, Hisuian Leia, Alolan, Paldean, even a corrupted Missingno Leia XD!
Technicality time!
Even tho Halo Reach has an ending, it’s made clear from the beginning there is no winning, you will die, and Reach will fall.
Only lasting as long as you can so hopefully others can escape.
I guess that shows the difference between "winning" and "getting to the end"
Extremely funny that this video came out the same day as AstralSpiff's video about FNAF in real time and how they physically didn't give you enough battery to win the 6 hour version, then when this was pointed out the team released an update which ALSO didn't have enough battery, then another update made it possible.
In terms of my experience with this, my Steam copy of Civilization III: Complete will crash on winning without fail. The culprit appears to be the transition between the "Here's all the civs that were in this game, look how much of a winner you are" and the actual scorecard. Is the scorecard the one after the civ heckling screen? I genuinely don't know anymore. I can get the "You Win!!" text box and proceed, but it won't ever be counted as a win. Just Sid Meier making sure we can't have nice things I guess.
the unwinnable game that will torture me forever is the monster high ghoul spirit wii port. no matter WHAT you do, HOW many people you help, you will NEVER be scream queen. it ENRAGED me, and im so close to buying the ds version just to beat cleo
My favorite uncompletable games happen to be Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 1 and 2 on the DS.
They have monsters that you mainly can only get by completing certain library milestones. _(All monsters for Prince of Thieves, all skills for Leopold, etc.)_ But those monsters and their unique skills count for the completion. So unless you already have them through ill-gotten means _(action Replay,)_ you're simply never gonna get them, meaning you're never gonna beat the game 100%.
Then there are some monsters you can only get through competing in online tournaments _(also required for 100% completion, obviously.)_ not only are the online servers dead and gone, they pretty much died not long after these games were localized and released to the west. in favor of the updated Professional versions, which _never_ made it to the west!
*_Being an American Dragon Quest Monsters fan is to know only suffering..._*
I like the sound effects, I gotta say.
Also I had a heart when you brought up September 2001
Oh then you'd love the Sega Dreamcast then. The sound effects come from the system menu.
31:05 I still get nervous every time I see a bridge, cars and a guy with weapons on it. Especially from this angle.
As a child of the 90s my sister and I would play og bubble bobble on the nes she made it all the way to level 60 something and she lost I will never forget seeing her play that game for hours mastering it to get to that level and being in awe of it all
I'm a huge Bubble Bobble fan, and I probably got Revolution sometime around its release date. I dug my cartridge out of my closet to confirm it was indeed the European version, so I never encountered that infamous bug. For what its worth, I remember actually enjoying that game for what it was.
Also I tried to remember where I was in life when I got that game but that was almost two decades ago and all of a sudden my back hurts
Last time I was this early, the Roman Empire hadn't fell yet
Hey Dio have you seen my dog?
The Roman empire falls? Do we not do spoiler warnings anymore?
@@EzPzLemnSqueezyI haven’t been this frustrated by a spoiler since finding out the Titanic sinks before watching!
"There is some dignity in a guy simply beating you to death" i mean, i gues youre right, kinda
Spectrobes mentioned: Depression activated
Response enabled: Mutually Assured Destruction
This is pretty much a common theme in ProjectMoon games since in Lobotomy Corporation, your quest is to get the Seed of Light germinated to 100% (spoilers) only for a rather embittered Angela to snuff it out at the last second because the character you're playing as was a real prick to her and didn't enjoy that.
There's also Library of Ruina where you literally cannot beat the final reception. This post-credits bonus battle is pretty much scripted to such a degree where even if by miraculous luck (or maybe a real thorough understanding of the game's mechanics) you manage to run the boss's health bar down to 0, she'll still teleport the entire Library away to the Outskirts of the City, it's the first of two unwinnable battles in the ProjectMoon universe where you kinda just have to survive long enough until something happens that allows the clearly scripted and unwinnable battle to be ended prematurely before your entire team gets clobbered.
Also honorable mention to Limbus Company for having two of these battles (I say honorable mention because these scripted fights don't necessarily take place at the end of the game on account of the game being a gacha), the first of these battles is in the tutorial (yes I am dead serious) where you have to fight these 3 bandits that try to rip open the prosthetic clock head of your character for... reasons and they always end up clobbering the crap out of your team, and also a certain boss in the middle of Canto 5 who is pretty much Limbus' version of the classic "vertical difficulty spike" that PMoon games are often known for, with him also doubling as a representation of how much more inferior the Limbus cast is compared to the bigwig Syndicates, or The Fingers as they are called in the game. (CENSORED FOR SPOILER REASONS) is a scripted unwinnable fight where you kinda have to rush his health bar down to half before he can spam his AoE so that you can trigger a special defeat cutscene that ends the boss prematurely.
Just like with the final reception, both the Limbus scripted battles while still treating the battle's outcome as a loss on your end are completely winnable, but it takes specific builds that I'm not at all well-versed to explain about.
Amusing to see the creators of Grand Theft Auto referred to as "The Lemmings Guys".
why do i play video games? for double yoshi exploshi!
21:49 I remember being stumped on this as a kid because my mom bought this from a garage sale in the mid-90s. I actually wrote to Nintendo, got a response and still have that letter to this day.
Yugioh tag force like, has at least one of these per game. Tag force 3 had a character you couldn't unlock, and 5 or 6 wouldn't have the Machine emperor cutscenes unlock in the gallery after seeing them
summon night swordcraft story 1 on GBA is technically unbeatable, the secret final boss has 9999 HP and all your weapons will break before he dies
Wait, I thought the Roger Rabbit phone sex line was a gag by AVGN! It was REAL? That bit is even funnier knowing that, now.
32:13 not calling DMA design as the developers of Kid Kirby was kinda strange
tbf, Kid Kirby never released.
"Computers haven't had disc drives for a while"
...my PC from 2017 definitely has a CD drive.
7 years is a bit of a while...
@@arrancummins6032 I just can't see something so ubiquitous being phased out so quickly. How do people with new computers watch their DVDs?
@RoninCatholic that's the thing, isn't it? They don't- everyone's expected to use streaming services now. Companies WANT people to use their streaming services over possessing physical media, because it gives them greater control over what "version" of the movie/show people get to see. Or it allows them to pull it from your laptop without a trace should someone decide to revoke your priviledge to see it.
@@arrancummins6032Most don’t
24:33
*Calls number.
Advertisement: "This game was brought to you by old spice full body deoderant."
35:55
I'd just like to point out that the song played here isn't just from Thunder Force 4, but a remix done by legendary game remix guitarist S.S.H.
This song is amazing. But sadly it's not the same song as on the Genesis.
I had to do a double take because I thought you were going to rip off Guru Larry's video on unwinnable games. Glad you didn't.
Something I want to point out, though, is that the glitch in Space Station Silicon Valley was fixed in the PS 1 port as shown by Nitro Rad in his video on the game.
the accidents and misadventures of the uncapped spiderman
Given how trogdor is cannonically unbeatable, i wonder if it's intentional if not at least poetic that his song can't be full cleared
I swear to god that I had the exact same issues with Spider-Man 2000, but it was the PlayStation version - though I played it using the PS2.
IS THAT WHY I COULD NEVER BEAT SPIDERMAN AS A KID??
Speaking of Trogdor: Guild Wars 1 has two skills named Rodgort's Invocation and Mark of Rodgort. Now reverse that name Rodgort.
Both are also extremely powerful skills. Gotta burninate everything.
Hooray a Spectrobes Origins reference :D
Also, personally I would find it far worse if the long RPG I was invested in was suddenly unbeatable 20 hours in, especially if it was a Tales game.
Had a bug with Skywalker Saga which made it so that I was bugged into a mission I already completed. From then I was completely unable to 100% since the entire save broke
I decided to play the Sands of Time trilogy for the first time since I was a kid this year. There's a glitch in the second game that happens randomly in the middle of your playthrough, but you won't find out if it happened until right before the final boss. If it happens, then you just can't beat the game. The only solution is to reload your save to before the glitch happened and hope it doesn't happen again. It was super frustrating.
Your coverage of Trogdor is good but you missed the minor detail of how Through the Fire and Flames has faster notes (26.6 Notes per second) that are HOPO’s (Hammer ons and Pull Offs) that don’t require strums. Therefore, Trogdor is not “faster” than Flames in “notes,” only in strum notes.
Man it sure is fun winning video games, I sure do hope there’s no games that I can’t win at.
WHAT?!?
The most heartbreaking part of this video has nothing to do with any of these games being unwinnable or uncompetable and is instead the knowledge that Bumbles is too young for Homestar. I thought we were kin, man! Plus, Homestar's sense of humor seems like it would _really_ appeal to him in particular.
I don't remember what the game was called, but it was for the N64. The concept you were a Computer Chip that could take control of the animals on a space station to accomplish goals.
One of the the collectibles that was required to 100% the game just would not complete. You could spawn the collectible, but you could not physically collect the thing, no matter how much you ran into it. It locked you out of getting to the final level and getting the true ending of the game.
Edit: Space Station: Silicon Valley. That was the game. I am glad it was included.
Tokyo street racing Gran Turismo? Sign. Me. Up!
A game with a title like that is something i'd usually automatically skip over when browsing used games, but you've sold me on it pretty well.
"Why do you play video games?"
"To have fu- No. To Win."
Me: To win and platinum. Finally I feel seen!
25:08 *DISCWORLD MENTIONED=NEURON ACTIVATION*
"Oh, wait, I never mentioned what GH2 song was unbeatable!"
Yeah, was just gonna check the comments--
"It's TROGDOR THE BURNINATOR!"
...wait. WHAT?! XD
Oh hey I love spectrobes origins. Didn't know they also made that racing game with the unwinnable currency glitch.
spiderman one was amazing cause bro just hitting the window and falling over and over is such a funny thing to happen
Neon White on Ps4/Ps5 has a game breaking glitch that blocks getting the good ending along with half of the level rushes so no 100%
And to trigger this glitch that the devs somehow didn't catch all you have to do is collect all the hidden gifts in level order
which if you're like me and played it at launch collecting everything in a level as you completed it before moving on means that you get a giant middle finger from the game for being diligent and have to redo the entire game from scratch to get the good ending and hell level rushes
You'd think that people would have learned to fix this kind of thing by now, but apparently not
How did they manage that? I've collected them in whatever order but didn't end up beating it, so I don't think I'll have this issue when I eventually get back to it
@@sirspookybones1118 as long as the final level wasn't the last gift you collected you're fine
An annoying one for completionists was Rayman Raving Rabbids where the game keeps track of your highest score of every minigame you played and you unlock new bonus stuff (like artwork or promotional material) by having a total score that goes over a certain threshold.
However, this system is broken, the maximum score of certain minigames just cannot be reached and the game had to be hacked so that people can view the last artwork video of the game
Are you winning, son?
You call old arcade games unbeatable after a certain point, I call it "The arcade game flipped the table in frustration". You just have to change your definition of "Win".
Ok the Trogdor reveal got me ngl.
Only you can put up a well structured video with an out of the box topic like this