I really like lives systems as a way to give players temporary checkpoints by rewarding them with lives as it can make a section easier without being too overpowered like a powerup or an E-tank. Importantly, it’s a type of reward that can be benefit a player who is able to reach it, but doesn’t ruin the challenge as it only provides more attempts. This solves a big issue a lot of games have where good players get rewarded with powerups for being good at the game and end up making the game too easy for their skill level. However, it still keeps the reward as meaningful, rather than some pointless token.
That's an interesting point, since I would argue that E-Tanks are more valuable than lives, since they're like an extra try you can use during the same life. Luckily, there's normally some that aren't too hard for newer players to reach.
Every time someone talks about lives in video games these days, it's always, *ALWAYS* in the context of how they make games harder, when that's not always necessarily the case, in some games lives actually makes them *Easier!* For example, and this is a niche one, but in Bonk's Adventure, when you lose, so long as you have lives, you get to continue right then and there, you just get up and keep going, but if you're out of lives, Only Then do you get kicked back to the beginning of the stage. And in that game, a lot of the stages are big and full of little secrets and hidden minigames, find the secrets and do well in the minigames, and the game rewards you with more lives, as well as other things like health upgrades and powerups. Take out the lives in Bonk's Adventure and you're left with only two choices, either you Always start right at the beginning of the stage, Every Time You Die, which is too harsh for a game with big stages like that, or you always just get right back up and keep going every time you die, in which case you're effectively immortal... Not that those two things can't work either, but lives bring what I perceive as the best possible balance for that particular game. This is also how Beat'em ups and Shmups often work as well, you die, you pick right back up right where you are, and you're rewarded with extra lives for scoring loads of points, so if you play well you get to keep going longer, some of those also hide extra lives in out-of-the-way places for you to find, lose all your lives though, and it's back to the beginning of the stage with you! It's a very similar situation as with Bonk's Adventure, get set back every time you die and it's too hard, keep geting back up and continuing every time you die and then you're effectively invincible and the game has no challenge... The lives balance it out and make it much more reasonable, while also rewarding competent play and poking around in the right places. In some other games there are things that are basically 'lives' but in disguise, think bottled fairies in the Zelda series, get one of those, and the moment you die, you get to pick right back up right then and there! Have no fairies? It's back to the beginning of the dungeon with you! THAT'S LITERALLY JUST LIVES! And they're there to make the game *EASIER!* Heck, in my own game, Kira Kira Magical Stars, there are no bespoke "lives", when you die you get taken to a game over screen where you can switch character, use an item, or go back to town to heal. So long as you have a character who's not incapacitated, or a heart potion to revive one of your KO'd characters, you get to keep going from the same section where you left off, otherwise you go back to town, heal, and then from there you can pick any stage you want to try from the start. The heart potions are basically just lives in disguise, as are the extra playable characters, heck, Bloodstained Curse of the Moon also did that, your extra characters in that game are basically extra lives on top of the lives system! In the end, Lives are just one of many tools a game developer can use to balance their game, they can make a game harder, sure, or they can make a game easier, it all depends on how the game in question was designed, and sometimes they're there but in disguise! Saying lives are "an antiquated system that should be gotten rid of" is, in my opinion as a game developer, a very narrow-minded way to think about them.
Must've had blinders on, because I completely forgot about the whole, lives as a secondary healthbar, deal. That I don't mind as much and someone else brought up Mega Man Network Transmission, where you have to choose whether to retreat when you're on your last life, or push on and possibly lose everything, which I like for the risk/reward factor. Most things can be done right, if you're clever enough, a lot of time, lives just feel like a way to drag things out, which I'm probably more sensitive to now, with a full time job, than I was as a kid. If you can make it work, and it's apparent that you have given this plenty of thought, more power to you.
One thing I love about the Game Over system in Crash Bandicoot 1 is that speedrunners actually take advantage of it. You can only save your level progress by finishing a Tawna Bonus Round, with some levels saving up to the following level since the Bonus Round is so close to the exit. When you get a Game Over, the game reverts to the status of your most recent save. The Any% route gets the Bonus in Sunset Vista and then immediately gets a Game Over to reload the save, skipping the final climb of the level.
As someone who plays retro games almost exclusively, if I had the option to make all of them have infinite lives, I'd do it without a second thought... good thing save states exist. I'd argue some games should REFRESH your resources infact, such as Megaman, since if you die at for example at a boss and you run out of their weakness weapon, it's gonna make the boss even harder than it needs to be (not that I'm bad at Megaman, I just think this option would ease in newer players). Also good content, keep making this kinda stuff (subbed!).
While I get why ammo management is a thing, I do admittedly hate going into a boss, running on all cylinders, die, then am expected to try again, with less resources.
@@varietychan ever heard of "arbitrary difficulty"? And I'm someone who loves hard games, but giving the player only a few attempts at a tough boss only to have to go through 5 minutes of content to try the boss again? this is not good difficulty, it's called padding.
I think also a big difference is that today games are way more accessible. Back in the day kids maybe had one or two games to play so you had no choice but to keep playing it even if it was annoying. But today the financial situation is better and Video Games are more accepted in society so the likelihood of parents saying yes to new games is higher and additionally free to play games and game subscriptions like Apple Arcade or Xbox game pass are available. So if a Game punishes the player too hard they would just quit it and get a new one which a developer don’t want the players to do.
I love the way the bloodstained games did it. Two difficulty options, one with infinite lives and no penalty for choosing the easier option. This allows both skilled and low level players to appreciate the design and encourages replays.
I prefer unlimited lives too. As an adult, I don't like my time being wasted with fake difficulty. I really appreciate RPGs that offer to refresh the battle if you die too. And for Fire Emblem, I really wish they added casual to the localization of the first one, because it's not a strategy game. All you can see before battle are your class and HP and the enemy's class and HP and you have to figure out how to keep people dying from that alone. There is a clunky way to pull up your stats so you can write them down, but you still can't judge the enemies' power. I don't know how the series even became a series.
There's a lot of series with First Game Syndrome, just look at Mega Man, and a few of the spin offs. There's probably a reason why Fire Emblem only really took off with Awakening, though, and saw another bump with Three Houses.
I remember being furious with Super Mario 2 when it first came out with having limited continues. Of course starting over and over let's you learn the levels and I just got better with every restart. Nowadays I hardly ever die, so I try to not get too many coins so I don't have to do the slot machine too much. Of course on the opposite end of the spectrum, Ninja Gaiden having unlimited continues never made the frustration any less. Don't remind me how many days I left my NES on non-stop, trying to kill the multistage final boss, only to die and go back several levels. But eventually I won, so I guess it was worth it in the end.😂
I'm not entirely sure if this'll help, but here's my idea. You can't get a Game Over from dying over n' over, you'll just warp back to your last checkpoint (visible or not). BUT! Extra lives stocked up can let you continue INSTANTLY from where you died, and you can earn/find more to cushion your room for error (and boost your ego for how LITTLE you died). Thoughts?
There is a mario sunshine hack called Mario Eclipse that has infinite lives. What does dying do? Why it completely resets your coin counter and stage progress of course. Ok but then whats the reward for getting 50 coins or a 1up mushroom? oh just something you absolutely need when platforming around mario sunshine, a full water restore
I don’t mind lives BUT my biggest pet peeve about them is when they’re taken away for restarting levels Looking at most older Sonic games when I say that, which are reset heavy games
This is one of those topics where it is easy to underthink or overthink it. Or, at least, to miss something significant. *Case in point:* throughout the video, when ExploDjinn was listing why a "Lives" system is bad, one could almost always respond with "What if that _specific_ issue was corrected?" You can argue that it would *still* be better to jettison the traditional "Lives" system instead, and thankfully the video does that by exploring full-on alternatives, *but* I believe that, in doing so, it misses much _simpler_ solutions. In the interest of time, both yours and mind, I'll resist the deep dive into the topic I was planning. I'll _hint_ at it by pointing out "The logical source for the mechanic of 'lives' would be *life* itself." After all, though it might be known by another name, the concept of "lives" exists in games that predate modern video games. *Instead,* just focusing on Mega Man... the games have come _close_ to what they need to do, though not all in the same title. Yeah, the Easiest Difficulty should just have "Infinite Lives". _Refining_ what was suggested in the video, make sure this difficulty *also* lets you Exit from a Stage by default. No need to find a special "Exit" Upgrade, or needing to have completed the Stage. That way, there's no worry about someone being "stuck" in a Stage because they'd cannot self-destruct to leave and try a different Stage. *Beyond that,* Lives still matter because they're a resource to manage. What we change is how they're managed. The traditional approach can still exist as an in-game Challenge or maybe as part of a specific Difficulty Level, but let's learn from _Mega Man Network Transmission_ ! I was going to cite _Mega Man X4_ but I'd say MMNT actually does it _better._ In this game, Mega Man's "Lives" are referred to as "Backups"; _anytime_ he leaves a Stage, for whatever reason, his available Backups reset. What's more, is in Stages you can collection "BckupChps" to *permanently* increase this amount by one (in addition to having an extra try this go around). I don't recall if you can get more traditional "1-Ups" in this game, and I _think_ an instance of a BckupChp *cannot* be collected more than once, but if what I said isn't good enough, one of the intermediary difficulties could make it so that "regular" 1-Ups coexist with this mechanic, but the point is for them to act as a mid-action "refresher" for your lives. *What about **_wanting_** to leave a Stage?* Exiting from a Stage should just be a default option. It makes sense from a game design standpoint, and even a worldbuilding standpoint in the games where Mega Man seems to "teleport in" wherever he respawns. *Make it so you can set your own checkpoint(s).* The easiest difficulty might let you immediately respawn after death, where you left off, and the hardest might have no check points, *but* some of the levels in between should have both "traditional checkpoints" and a mechanic where you can set a checkpoint yourself (maybe more than once). Personally, I'd make that Tango's new function, the way saving Mega Man from a falling into a pit is usually Beat's main function. You get "x" number of Tango Calls, and when you call him, he slinks in, takes a nap, and now Dr. Light can lock onto him so Mega Man can respawn into that location. *Even if my specifics are stupid,* I figure do-it-yourself checkpoints are just a more acceptable form of Save State. Which also makes managing extra lives easier, hence me bringing it up in the first place. *Yeah, wrote a lot again when trying to be concise.* As per usual, I have thought about this _a lot._ What's more, it has almost become a pet peeve, like when I need to explain how, just because we restrict access to content that contain Nudity, Sex, Language, or Violence doesn't mean those four things are interchangeable, equally objectionable, and off-limits for the exact same reasons. *Note:* Editrd due to embarrassing typos. Even an instance of "can" instead of "cannot" when discussing whether you could collect the same BckupChp more than once (you can't).
Network Transmission certainly had an interesting lives system, since I never needed to SD due to them refreshing between levels, and the way that you could push ahead when you were down to one or retreat to retain whatever loot you picked up. It might be my favorite example, oddly enough, since it adds a pretty clear risk/reward to the system. As for the making your own checkpoints thing, I think Ori did that. I would be interested in seeing more of that, because like I said, it's really annoying having to fight through the easy part of a level, only to die at the hard part and have to redo everything.
@@KamisamanoOtaku and I thought I wrote essays for comments, you still made a couple mistakes after your edit though lol And just so I don't sound like a douche, interesting point you made, I've only seen few games make a "make your own checkpoint" system, and to add onto this: maybe you can make it so the player has to finish a short challenge so that the check points aren't handed out like candy? Like a mini boss of some sort? I don't know, just a thought.
like every system, it depends on the game. Lives very much can still have a purpose in modern games. they serve as a means of granting chances before a more severe punishment would be felt. with games like platformers or beatemups, the lives let you continue the game from a checkpoint or from the same exact point, but make too many mistakes too quickly and you'll have to restart the level or run from the start. And the puropose of it is obvious. its to give you more experience to learn and get the hang of the gameplay or level design to figure out how to do better and better each time. and as you do, you'll be getting through them while keeping more of your lives if not gaining more. and just getting better at the game at that. making you more prepared for even tougher challenges further ahead. I think a lot of those that want to see lives systems completely done away with just don't like the idea of being punished for dying. and yeah dying isn't supposed to be fun, and sometimes the deaths can be cheap, but those instances don't make the system inherently flawed or outdated.
Ultimately it depends on the game, but the main issue is the possibility space. If the game is more of a sandbox with wide variety strategies or routes I don't mind the idea of infinite lives, but when problems are more rigid and require specific solutions (i.e most platformers) I think lives are a great way to gauge whether or not the challenge is fun or fair in the first place. Might be a hot take but I think the lenience in newer platformers like Celeste and Pizza Tower is poor design. If you're including the B and C sides more than half of Celeste is simply unreasonable for most players to clear. It's not that you missed out on a lesson or you need to try something different, the game actually expects you to nail several absurdly precise jumps in a row. It may be less punishing but that doesn't mean it's fun or fair for most players. Pizza Tower has the same issue in a different way. The thing about ranking systems is that they still ask demand mastery, just in a less direct way. If you never lose a life and get sent back to a checkpoint you never really get to improve on the segments you messed up on. I get that you're not expected to get a Perfect run on your first try. in fact you can't even attempt lap 2 on your first try, so it's outright impossible. But I think the game could benefit some punishments to prevent players from getting through levels without really learning anything. If you're getting D ranks you'd probably be better off replaying older stages anyway rather than face tanking through newer ones. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying lives are an unmitigated good, but the idea that they're outdated is just odd to me. You never hear people saying health bars are outdated and they're essentially the same concept with a different coat of paint.
lives on home consoles were made for the game to be longer, but now they are very outdated, maga man waas good because you only had to replay up to one stage so it was better than erasing all your progress, and it got kinda fixed in legacy collection because you can do a save state on the checkpoint, but overall lives are a cheap way to extend the game by making you play through the levels you already played, thankfully retro games can be easily emulated, and save states mostly remove the problem of lives
If the devs are going for a game that is supposed to feel like an arcade game, then yeah, but most games don't need them. Lives in video games are a carryover from the arcade days, and there they served the purpose of taking more of your money. In most games today, they aren't needed because the games are no longer in an arcade environment but at home. You don't need to continuously put Quarters into your Playstation Xbox or home computers, which makes lives in video games mostly not necessary.
Dk on the gba you don't even lose checkpoints in levels with a game over, Mario 64 you lose nothing from a game over, so lives in games like that are unless
what does having to redo an easy part before a hard section have anything to do with a life system? if you were a developer and your players were complaining about this, wouldn't the natural response be to remove that easy part, or make it actually challenging, instead of completely getting rid of lives altogether? what kind of absurd conclusion is that? lives are better than checkpoints because the latter leads to terrible design. a developer can make a stupid and unfair section, accidentally or intentionally, and it won't matter because a checkpoint will ensure there is no significant time loss, meaning players can just bash their heads in until they get lucky and stumble upon the right sequence of inputs. sure, that particular checkpoint will become infamous, but at least players won't be complaining about the entire game this is no longer the case however when a developer is forced to balance their game without checkpoints. suddenly that one section that was only an issue in isolation, is now the whole game's problem, which incentivises the developer to, you know, fix their own damn mess. being forced to do every section in a row means they all have to be designed properly or else the game falls apart, and i don't think i have to explain why a game requiring to be well designed is a good thing, besides the "downside" of "the developers have to spend time and effort into playing their own game and ensuring it actually plays well :(" it's why arcade games are still cherished, even to this day. if you could beat an arcade game on just one credit, you were seen as the man, not because you lucked your way out through the hardest or stupidest checkpoint, but because you strung together every single section and beat them all in a row, and you were naturally encouraged to aim for the 1cc, or at least beat the game with as few quarters as you could, so you could get further and further with less and less money spent. players going for 1cc meant arcade developers had to make their games "tough but fair", as game journalists would so eloquently put it i also find it bizarre that you claim to value replayability, and yet you view having to start from the beginning of the game as "punishment". wouldn't playing more of the game be, you know, a good thing for replayability? instead of checkpoints, just add good practice tools like replays, stage select and save states. maybe then all the stupid accessibility arguments will finally come to an end
Replayability is, I want to play Mega Man X for the millionth time, from the highway to Sigma, repetition would just be sitting down and playing through Armored Armadillo's level over and over again, for an hour or two. I enjoy the first, but would get bored with the second.
"lives are better than checkpoints because the latter leads to terrible design" I hear this stupid fucking claim all the goddamn time and no one ever brings receipts. You wanna look at me with a straight face and say that Celeste or Crash 4 are poorly designed? *I don't even like crash 4* and it's still a masterclass of how to make platformer levels (and how not to pad out runtime)
I think it should be a toggle that's up to the player unless their inclusion or exclusion is integral to the way the game is designed since it also depends on the game. The thing I'm not a fan of is forcing infinite lives onto older games. For example, Sonic Origins removes lives from all the Sonic games in the collection and this makes a lot of mechanics in those games pointless now because those mechanics were designed with lives in mind. This is a case where a toggle would have been much preferred over forcing infinite lives on the player.
I certainly didn't mind the infinite lives in Origins, but as someone who was complaining, just the other night, about Pokemon removing Set Style from the games, I can definitely get where you're coming from.
short answer; no game made after 2010 should have a lives/game over screen, they just waste the players time especially if no money is involved to continue playing However on the opposite end it makes perfect sense to at least tax a less skilled player with a short animation of losing a life or sending them back to a particular checkpoint because there’s no incentive to continue playing if you can just brute force your way through a game
the lives system is there for one reason, to punish you and turn you into a better player, either learn or die. We all went through it, those early NES games are what turned us into tigers.
I think lives *can* work if the game is built around them and they're there for a reason, but in a game where you can save and retry as much as you want anyway, they're a waste. This was really obvious to me last year when I played Super Mario Bros Wonder and Sonic Superstars back to back. I definitely ran into some challenging moments in both, but Superstars had no lives system, so it was never a frustration, but with Wonder, there were times I had to go back and grind purple coins when I was working on the final stage so I could buy a stack of 1ups and, while I really enjoyed Wonder, it back to back with the ease of unlimited retries in Sonic just made it feel even more unnecessary. That said, I think Megaman is one of the few series that still uses lives well. Since you can't ever permanently lose progress, being sent to the Stage Select/Continue screem after that third death gives you a chance to cool down and think if you want to keep going or try a different stage, and I think it gives it a really good rhythm that prevents things from getting too frustrating
If you're talking the final, final challenge, or whatever it was called in Wonder, yeah, struggling through that with limited tries was really stressful. Wasn't sure if even 99 was going to be enough.
Xenoblade came out to throw a wrench on what I thought was necessary for games, completely removing the Game Over screen. You lost a battle? Don't worry, the game will put you on the last landmark visited and no progress was lost! Losing the battle and the time you spent trying to kill that boss is the punishment for failure, so just get back into the game and decide if you want to try again, change your strategy and equipment or go somewhere else and grind or complete quests! With that knowledge in mind, looking back at Mega Man games made me realize how much better those titles would have been if lives weren't a thing and we could Escape from stages at will, not only after completing them. The Retry Chips from Zero 1 and X8 are even worse than traditional lives, the concept should have been tossed aside long before those titles came out.
that's an apples to oranges comparison. You're comparing a story driven RPG that ecourages exploration with a platformer thats focused on jumping and shooting through an obstacle course. Of course a lives system isn't gonna be useful in a game that encourages exploring and roaming large open areas. because those games generally don't want you discouraged from biting off more than you can chew. That idea isn't found in platformers like Megaman because the matter is not whether or not you can handle it. its that you're going to learn to handle it some way or another. platformers dont tend to have a means of changing a loadout like a rpg either so the only thing that can really make the difference is your skill. and the only way you're gonna get better is through repetition. which where the lives system shines. it gives you a number of changes to retry a section that may have gotten the better of you and allow you to learn it more. and if you make too many mistakes in a short time, you restart the level from the beginning, letting you further learn the level as a whole and as you get better, you'll keep more chances for future obstacles if not earning more and you're getting better at the game overall making you better equipped for even harder challenges later.
@@XBC3403 Mega Man X5 and X6 have different loadouts that allow you to decrease the difficulty of combat and platforming in the form of equippable Parts and X's Armor upgrades, and both titles have made Lives meaningless as getting the count to zero returns you to the last checkpoint nonetheless. The comparison is still relevant regarding exploration, as it is by exploring the levels and finding hidden paths that you find the items, rescuable Reploids and armor upgrades that allow for customization and player choice. And those secrets are often locked behind tricky combat and platforming sections that would deplete your lives, sending you back to the last checkpoint even after a supposed game over.
6:31 I don't care how hot the anime girls are... none could possibly be as pretty as Zero... 😔 Oh, and I know a game that insults you when you die- ADVENTURE SKETCHERS for the LEAPPAD. Yeah, a game for toddlers genuinely makes fun of players for being bad at it.
I always play games with life's and when i first played a modern game i was shocked that the game had unlimited lifes and i thought i will get a game over if i get 3 lifes down and i was shocked and said this game is too easy it was when i was 6
I'd argue that games that do have lives, but don't manage to make you game over, are more of a sign of something being easy. I replayed Kirby and the Crystal Shards the other night and was kind of surprised that I didn't even get one.
nah lives suck lol I don't know if I can think of any game were having it made it more fun. too punishing and disincentivizes the player from experimenting with what you can do because you don't want a game over. not to say that having lives ruins a game, a lot of my favorites have them, but I don't think it ever really adds much and if I like the game that much then it's probably not too punishing even with lives anyway. It can be satisfying getting a lot of them but I'd rather they not have it and find a why to reward the player with something else. That would also kinda force the developers to be more creative with designing the game, it feels like games having lives is just the default and when making a game and they don't really think about why all to much, that's how it feels anyway. The only kind of exception I can think of for me is the original pac man world weirdly, that game isn't too punishing with game overs generally but it's kinda tricky so getting lives was really satisfying and helped incentivize exploring the levels to find stuff because even if you didn't find everything finding a lot will give you points which will give you lives. But at the same time I would still rather it not have lives and they made it so getting a lot of points rewarded the player in a different way like getting enough points would give you a health increase cuz having more health in that game would be pretty nice, still really fun game though 6:27 and yeah the player shouldn't feel incentivized to die on purpose so they'd get more lives, that's dumb
@@davidthecommenter Wait, what? .................. So you can. That you're the first to mention this probably means I'm not the only one to not know this trick.
@@ExploDjinn i don't think it was even stated in the games' manual, you would have had to get word of mouth from the neighborhood back when the game hit shelves
A good life system is like this two games: infernax and sonic unleashed for nintendo wii/ps2, because you can't get them mid level, they are few and far between and as they work as a collectible items like a heart piece in zelda and they only recharge after you either got to a save point(infernax) or complete a gauntlet of and "act" level and their respective missions in daytime, or a sequence of acts in nighttime(sonic unwiished, only the fist time you get to them, after that you can freely choose between them and just need to complete that specific act/mission), they are the limit of times you can access your checkpoint before a game over and losing all your progress in that section of the game, you want to search for extra lives as they are the size of your safety net against errors and you just need to get them once.
I recently played and beaten Sonic Spinball. That game has a tendency to screw people over with its questionable physics and insta-kills, so extra lives really hurt that game's sense of progress. Heck, even the Game Gear version seems more beatable on default settings. I'm gonna bring up a different game with a different system: Shining Force, Sega's strategy RPG that nobody seems to talk about, but Sega keeps on porting. I've been playing it on the Switch, complete with rewind, to mess with and question that game's randomizer and cheapness. That game has a limited number of battles, and when they're done, they're done. The only way to level-grind is to retreat to reset the battle, which lets you keep your stats and cash. When a character gets KO'd, you can revive them the old Dragon Quest way of coughing up cash, but you still have to keep the leader alive at all times.
This is a very good analysis. In my opinion, yes, games should keep lives. It gives you an extra challenge as well as making deaths actually impactful. When playing with lives, you'll never intentionally die to get a refill, because every death puts you closer to a game over. However, I can see people wanting to have an easy time with some games. I think that an easy mode that removes lives from the equation can work. As a great example, Sonic.exe Tower of Millennium gives you 4 difficulty options. Ultra easy, easy, normal and hard. In case you don't know, this game is split into 3 parts. Ultra easy is the infinite lives mode of this game, but if you beat a part in it you will not unlock the next one, forcing you to use the expirience you gained from ultra easy and applying it to an actual run. I absolutely love this system. I feel very challenged when playing Tower of Millennium and this difficulty helps players practice before actually trying, while not rewarding anyone for picking an option designed for people who are bad at the game.
A game series I think doesn’t work without lives is touhou where lives are your only form of health and you are rewarded with more lives for playing better
I think if every single post-Super Mario Bros. 1 platformer either had the life system from Sonic Colors (die and restart at a checkpoint; Game Over and restart the whole level) or Sonic Unleashed on Wii/PS2 (start off with a set number of lives when starting a level; earn medals when beating a level and depending on how good you are at levels, the more medals you'll get; unlock additional lives by getting more medals), then people would be able to play platformers a lot more than if everyone has savestates or infinite lives. Think about what you're doing when restarting at checkpoints and getting Game Overs as a new player. You start over hopefully close to where you failed. Eventually you'll either find out what wrong thing was that you were doing or you'll get a Game Over. Then with a Game Over, you'll redo what you've done before but now you'll improve at the game in the previous sections that you've previously only played as a beginner. You'll improve because you've learned what's in the level and because you're getting more used to the controls and player physics of the game in a now-safer environment. And while getting better at that, you'll hopefully know what to do in the hard section you've failed at before. And if not, you probably didn't die in the previous sections as much as you did before. Now you'll have more tries at the hardest section because you got better at the game. The life system essentially is a hurdle for new players to not pass over until they've gotten better at the game by learning to play the game more. How do you get better? Repetition. How do you repeat? By the game making you start over the easy levels and then, if you're really good, you have more chances at the hard parts. Sonic Colors does that by just having a simple life system that doesn't have too many 1ups and only making you restart the level you've failed at if you Game Over. Sonic Unleashed Wii/PS2 does that by making players earn medals which unlock more lives, but you'll only get more medals (which give you a higher set amount of lives at the start of a level) if you improve at the game. Repetition and redoing parts you're good at really quickly and then redoing the bad parts more is how you learn to get better at the video games. Farming lives is how you destroy the learning process though, don't do that. Even if you're a pro, why would you farm lives if you're a pro already? Unless the game's just a badly made game, I guess. Then play a different game. I think modern games stopped understanding that the life system has a really good reason to exist as a learn-by-repetition tool. It's not outdated, it's either just not used correctly in a lot of games or players are too impatient.
Personally, I'd rather give the hard stuff another go, rather than repeat the stuff I already have down. Going from the super intense Wily Capsule back to the much slower Wily Machine 7 always throws me for a loop. We could be talking about a different threshold for easy, though and in general, I don't like to repeat stuff, until I'm in the mood to play through the full game again, but that's just me.
@@ExploDjinn I'm mostly just thinking of Sonic or, I guess, Mario games. Tons of ways to improve in them, I think. I dunno about Mega Man boss levels though...
@@ExploDjinn I noticed that in that section you didn't lose any lives. When I was a kid me and my brothers rented this game a few times, and we accidentally discovered an infinite lives glitch 😂 only way we made it through the game
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Short answer, no they're not necessary. But they're not invalid either. It depends on the game and what the devs are going for.
Fair enough. While I think difficulty options are a good thing, I'm not gonna pepper spray any devs that don't want to add them.
In Mega Man X5 & X6 they are almost useless because you always go back to the previous checkpoint instead of being sent all the way back.
I really like lives systems as a way to give players temporary checkpoints by rewarding them with lives as it can make a section easier without being too overpowered like a powerup or an E-tank.
Importantly, it’s a type of reward that can be benefit a player who is able to reach it, but doesn’t ruin the challenge as it only provides more attempts.
This solves a big issue a lot of games have where good players get rewarded with powerups for being good at the game and end up making the game too easy for their skill level. However, it still keeps the reward as meaningful, rather than some pointless token.
That's an interesting point, since I would argue that E-Tanks are more valuable than lives, since they're like an extra try you can use during the same life. Luckily, there's normally some that aren't too hard for newer players to reach.
And them there is shovel knight
Every time someone talks about lives in video games these days, it's always, *ALWAYS* in the context of how they make games harder, when that's not always necessarily the case, in some games lives actually makes them *Easier!*
For example, and this is a niche one, but in Bonk's Adventure, when you lose, so long as you have lives, you get to continue right then and there, you just get up and keep going, but if you're out of lives, Only Then do you get kicked back to the beginning of the stage. And in that game, a lot of the stages are big and full of little secrets and hidden minigames, find the secrets and do well in the minigames, and the game rewards you with more lives, as well as other things like health upgrades and powerups.
Take out the lives in Bonk's Adventure and you're left with only two choices, either you Always start right at the beginning of the stage, Every Time You Die, which is too harsh for a game with big stages like that, or you always just get right back up and keep going every time you die, in which case you're effectively immortal... Not that those two things can't work either, but lives bring what I perceive as the best possible balance for that particular game.
This is also how Beat'em ups and Shmups often work as well, you die, you pick right back up right where you are, and you're rewarded with extra lives for scoring loads of points, so if you play well you get to keep going longer, some of those also hide extra lives in out-of-the-way places for you to find, lose all your lives though, and it's back to the beginning of the stage with you! It's a very similar situation as with Bonk's Adventure, get set back every time you die and it's too hard, keep geting back up and continuing every time you die and then you're effectively invincible and the game has no challenge... The lives balance it out and make it much more reasonable, while also rewarding competent play and poking around in the right places.
In some other games there are things that are basically 'lives' but in disguise, think bottled fairies in the Zelda series, get one of those, and the moment you die, you get to pick right back up right then and there! Have no fairies? It's back to the beginning of the dungeon with you! THAT'S LITERALLY JUST LIVES! And they're there to make the game *EASIER!*
Heck, in my own game, Kira Kira Magical Stars, there are no bespoke "lives", when you die you get taken to a game over screen where you can switch character, use an item, or go back to town to heal. So long as you have a character who's not incapacitated, or a heart potion to revive one of your KO'd characters, you get to keep going from the same section where you left off, otherwise you go back to town, heal, and then from there you can pick any stage you want to try from the start. The heart potions are basically just lives in disguise, as are the extra playable characters, heck, Bloodstained Curse of the Moon also did that, your extra characters in that game are basically extra lives on top of the lives system!
In the end, Lives are just one of many tools a game developer can use to balance their game, they can make a game harder, sure, or they can make a game easier, it all depends on how the game in question was designed, and sometimes they're there but in disguise! Saying lives are "an antiquated system that should be gotten rid of" is, in my opinion as a game developer, a very narrow-minded way to think about them.
Must've had blinders on, because I completely forgot about the whole, lives as a secondary healthbar, deal. That I don't mind as much and someone else brought up Mega Man Network Transmission, where you have to choose whether to retreat when you're on your last life, or push on and possibly lose everything, which I like for the risk/reward factor. Most things can be done right, if you're clever enough, a lot of time, lives just feel like a way to drag things out, which I'm probably more sensitive to now, with a full time job, than I was as a kid. If you can make it work, and it's apparent that you have given this plenty of thought, more power to you.
One thing I love about the Game Over system in Crash Bandicoot 1 is that speedrunners actually take advantage of it. You can only save your level progress by finishing a Tawna Bonus Round, with some levels saving up to the following level since the Bonus Round is so close to the exit. When you get a Game Over, the game reverts to the status of your most recent save. The Any% route gets the Bonus in Sunset Vista and then immediately gets a Game Over to reload the save, skipping the final climb of the level.
Short answer: Yes but it must be designed around otherwise they feel redundant
As someone who plays retro games almost exclusively, if I had the option to make all of them have infinite lives, I'd do it without a second thought... good thing save states exist. I'd argue some games should REFRESH your resources infact, such as Megaman, since if you die at for example at a boss and you run out of their weakness weapon, it's gonna make the boss even harder than it needs to be (not that I'm bad at Megaman, I just think this option would ease in newer players). Also good content, keep making this kinda stuff (subbed!).
While I get why ammo management is a thing, I do admittedly hate going into a boss, running on all cylinders, die, then am expected to try again, with less resources.
Mega Man 8 refills all ammo after death and is pretty beginner friendly. Its a shame 9 & 10 didn’t bring that back.
SKILL ISSUEE
I disagree. If you're a newer player you must get through the toughness
@@varietychan ever heard of "arbitrary difficulty"? And I'm someone who loves hard games, but giving the player only a few attempts at a tough boss only to have to go through 5 minutes of content to try the boss again? this is not good difficulty, it's called padding.
I think also a big difference is that today games are way more accessible. Back in the day kids maybe had one or two games to play so you had no choice but to keep playing it even if it was annoying. But today the financial situation is better and Video Games are more accepted in society so the likelihood of parents saying yes to new games is higher and additionally free to play games and game subscriptions like Apple Arcade or Xbox game pass are available. So if a Game punishes the player too hard they would just quit it and get a new one which a developer don’t want the players to do.
Meanwhile Wario can’t even take damage
Wario land 4:
Rudy the Clown:
Only the 3rd game
I love the way the bloodstained games did it. Two difficulty options, one with infinite lives and no penalty for choosing the easier option. This allows both skilled and low level players to appreciate the design and encourages replays.
I prefer unlimited lives too. As an adult, I don't like my time being wasted with fake difficulty. I really appreciate RPGs that offer to refresh the battle if you die too.
And for Fire Emblem, I really wish they added casual to the localization of the first one, because it's not a strategy game. All you can see before battle are your class and HP and the enemy's class and HP and you have to figure out how to keep people dying from that alone. There is a clunky way to pull up your stats so you can write them down, but you still can't judge the enemies' power. I don't know how the series even became a series.
There's a lot of series with First Game Syndrome, just look at Mega Man, and a few of the spin offs. There's probably a reason why Fire Emblem only really took off with Awakening, though, and saw another bump with Three Houses.
I remember being furious with Super Mario 2 when it first came out with having limited continues. Of course starting over and over let's you learn the levels and I just got better with every restart. Nowadays I hardly ever die, so I try to not get too many coins so I don't have to do the slot machine too much.
Of course on the opposite end of the spectrum, Ninja Gaiden having unlimited continues never made the frustration any less. Don't remind me how many days I left my NES on non-stop, trying to kill the multistage final boss, only to die and go back several levels. But eventually I won, so I guess it was worth it in the end.😂
I'm not entirely sure if this'll help, but here's my idea.
You can't get a Game Over from dying over n' over, you'll just warp back to your last checkpoint (visible or not). BUT! Extra lives stocked up can let you continue INSTANTLY from where you died, and you can earn/find more to cushion your room for error (and boost your ego for how LITTLE you died).
Thoughts?
There is a mario sunshine hack called Mario Eclipse that has infinite lives. What does dying do? Why it completely resets your coin counter and stage progress of course. Ok but then whats the reward for getting 50 coins or a 1up mushroom? oh just something you absolutely need when platforming around mario sunshine, a full water restore
I don’t mind lives BUT my biggest pet peeve about them is when they’re taken away for restarting levels
Looking at most older Sonic games when I say that, which are reset heavy games
This is one of those topics where it is easy to underthink or overthink it. Or, at least, to miss something significant. *Case in point:* throughout the video, when ExploDjinn was listing why a "Lives" system is bad, one could almost always respond with "What if that _specific_ issue was corrected?" You can argue that it would *still* be better to jettison the traditional "Lives" system instead, and thankfully the video does that by exploring full-on alternatives, *but* I believe that, in doing so, it misses much _simpler_ solutions.
In the interest of time, both yours and mind, I'll resist the deep dive into the topic I was planning. I'll _hint_ at it by pointing out "The logical source for the mechanic of 'lives' would be *life* itself." After all, though it might be known by another name, the concept of "lives" exists in games that predate modern video games. *Instead,* just focusing on Mega Man... the games have come _close_ to what they need to do, though not all in the same title.
Yeah, the Easiest Difficulty should just have "Infinite Lives". _Refining_ what was suggested in the video, make sure this difficulty *also* lets you Exit from a Stage by default. No need to find a special "Exit" Upgrade, or needing to have completed the Stage. That way, there's no worry about someone being "stuck" in a Stage because they'd cannot self-destruct to leave and try a different Stage.
*Beyond that,* Lives still matter because they're a resource to manage. What we change is how they're managed. The traditional approach can still exist as an in-game Challenge or maybe as part of a specific Difficulty Level, but let's learn from _Mega Man Network Transmission_ !
I was going to cite _Mega Man X4_ but I'd say MMNT actually does it _better._ In this game, Mega Man's "Lives" are referred to as "Backups"; _anytime_ he leaves a Stage, for whatever reason, his available Backups reset. What's more, is in Stages you can collection "BckupChps" to *permanently* increase this amount by one (in addition to having an extra try this go around).
I don't recall if you can get more traditional "1-Ups" in this game, and I _think_ an instance of a BckupChp *cannot* be collected more than once, but if what I said isn't good enough, one of the intermediary difficulties could make it so that "regular" 1-Ups coexist with this mechanic, but the point is for them to act as a mid-action "refresher" for your lives.
*What about **_wanting_** to leave a Stage?* Exiting from a Stage should just be a default option. It makes sense from a game design standpoint, and even a worldbuilding standpoint in the games where Mega Man seems to "teleport in" wherever he respawns.
*Make it so you can set your own checkpoint(s).* The easiest difficulty might let you immediately respawn after death, where you left off, and the hardest might have no check points, *but* some of the levels in between should have both "traditional checkpoints" and a mechanic where you can set a checkpoint yourself (maybe more than once).
Personally, I'd make that Tango's new function, the way saving Mega Man from a falling into a pit is usually Beat's main function. You get "x" number of Tango Calls, and when you call him, he slinks in, takes a nap, and now Dr. Light can lock onto him so Mega Man can respawn into that location. *Even if my specifics are stupid,* I figure do-it-yourself checkpoints are just a more acceptable form of Save State. Which also makes managing extra lives easier, hence me bringing it up in the first place.
*Yeah, wrote a lot again when trying to be concise.* As per usual, I have thought about this _a lot._ What's more, it has almost become a pet peeve, like when I need to explain how, just because we restrict access to content that contain Nudity, Sex, Language, or Violence doesn't mean those four things are interchangeable, equally objectionable, and off-limits for the exact same reasons.
*Note:* Editrd due to embarrassing typos. Even an instance of "can" instead of "cannot" when discussing whether you could collect the same BckupChp more than once (you can't).
Network Transmission certainly had an interesting lives system, since I never needed to SD due to them refreshing between levels, and the way that you could push ahead when you were down to one or retreat to retain whatever loot you picked up. It might be my favorite example, oddly enough, since it adds a pretty clear risk/reward to the system. As for the making your own checkpoints thing, I think Ori did that. I would be interested in seeing more of that, because like I said, it's really annoying having to fight through the easy part of a level, only to die at the hard part and have to redo everything.
@@KamisamanoOtaku and I thought I wrote essays for comments, you still made a couple mistakes after your edit though lol
And just so I don't sound like a douche, interesting point you made, I've only seen few games make a "make your own checkpoint" system, and to add onto this: maybe you can make it so the player has to finish a short challenge so that the check points aren't handed out like candy? Like a mini boss of some sort? I don't know, just a thought.
like every system, it depends on the game. Lives very much can still have a purpose in modern games. they serve as a means of granting chances before a more severe punishment would be felt. with games like platformers or beatemups, the lives let you continue the game from a checkpoint or from the same exact point, but make too many mistakes too quickly and you'll have to restart the level or run from the start. And the puropose of it is obvious. its to give you more experience to learn and get the hang of the gameplay or level design to figure out how to do better and better each time. and as you do, you'll be getting through them while keeping more of your lives if not gaining more. and just getting better at the game at that. making you more prepared for even tougher challenges further ahead. I think a lot of those that want to see lives systems completely done away with just don't like the idea of being punished for dying. and yeah dying isn't supposed to be fun, and sometimes the deaths can be cheap, but those instances don't make the system inherently flawed or outdated.
Fun fact nova in gunvolt 1 in hard mode phase 2 everything is instant death including contact
Ultimately it depends on the game, but the main issue is the possibility space. If the game is more of a sandbox with wide variety strategies or routes I don't mind the idea of infinite lives, but when problems are more rigid and require specific solutions (i.e most platformers) I think lives are a great way to gauge whether or not the challenge is fun or fair in the first place.
Might be a hot take but I think the lenience in newer platformers like Celeste and Pizza Tower is poor design. If you're including the B and C sides more than half of Celeste is simply unreasonable for most players to clear. It's not that you missed out on a lesson or you need to try something different, the game actually expects you to nail several absurdly precise jumps in a row. It may be less punishing but that doesn't mean it's fun or fair for most players.
Pizza Tower has the same issue in a different way. The thing about ranking systems is that they still ask demand mastery, just in a less direct way. If you never lose a life and get sent back to a checkpoint you never really get to improve on the segments you messed up on. I get that you're not expected to get a Perfect run on your first try. in fact you can't even attempt lap 2 on your first try, so it's outright impossible. But I think the game could benefit some punishments to prevent players from getting through levels without really learning anything. If you're getting D ranks you'd probably be better off replaying older stages anyway rather than face tanking through newer ones.
Don't get me wrong I'm not saying lives are an unmitigated good, but the idea that they're outdated is just odd to me. You never hear people saying health bars are outdated and they're essentially the same concept with a different coat of paint.
lives on home consoles were made for the game to be longer, but now they are very outdated, maga man waas good because you only had to replay up to one stage so it was better than erasing all your progress, and it got kinda fixed in legacy collection because you can do a save state on the checkpoint, but overall lives are a cheap way to extend the game by making you play through the levels you already played, thankfully retro games can be easily emulated, and save states mostly remove the problem of lives
A lot of times, I'll abuse save states my first time through, then go for a replay without. Makes games a lot easier to pick up.
If the devs are going for a game that is supposed to feel like an arcade game, then yeah, but most games don't need them. Lives in video games are a carryover from the arcade days, and there they served the purpose of taking more of your money. In most games today, they aren't needed because the games are no longer in an arcade environment but at home. You don't need to continuously put Quarters into your Playstation Xbox or home computers, which makes lives in video games mostly not necessary.
Dk on the gba you don't even lose checkpoints in levels with a game over, Mario 64 you lose nothing from a game over, so lives in games like that are unless
Mario 64 you go back to the castle courtyard, which is just fucking annoying
what does having to redo an easy part before a hard section have anything to do with a life system? if you were a developer and your players were complaining about this, wouldn't the natural response be to remove that easy part, or make it actually challenging, instead of completely getting rid of lives altogether? what kind of absurd conclusion is that?
lives are better than checkpoints because the latter leads to terrible design. a developer can make a stupid and unfair section, accidentally or intentionally, and it won't matter because a checkpoint will ensure there is no significant time loss, meaning players can just bash their heads in until they get lucky and stumble upon the right sequence of inputs. sure, that particular checkpoint will become infamous, but at least players won't be complaining about the entire game
this is no longer the case however when a developer is forced to balance their game without checkpoints. suddenly that one section that was only an issue in isolation, is now the whole game's problem, which incentivises the developer to, you know, fix their own damn mess. being forced to do every section in a row means they all have to be designed properly or else the game falls apart, and i don't think i have to explain why a game requiring to be well designed is a good thing, besides the "downside" of "the developers have to spend time and effort into playing their own game and ensuring it actually plays well :("
it's why arcade games are still cherished, even to this day. if you could beat an arcade game on just one credit, you were seen as the man, not because you lucked your way out through the hardest or stupidest checkpoint, but because you strung together every single section and beat them all in a row, and you were naturally encouraged to aim for the 1cc, or at least beat the game with as few quarters as you could, so you could get further and further with less and less money spent. players going for 1cc meant arcade developers had to make their games "tough but fair", as game journalists would so eloquently put it
i also find it bizarre that you claim to value replayability, and yet you view having to start from the beginning of the game as "punishment". wouldn't playing more of the game be, you know, a good thing for replayability? instead of checkpoints, just add good practice tools like replays, stage select and save states. maybe then all the stupid accessibility arguments will finally come to an end
Replayability is, I want to play Mega Man X for the millionth time, from the highway to Sigma, repetition would just be sitting down and playing through Armored Armadillo's level over and over again, for an hour or two. I enjoy the first, but would get bored with the second.
"lives are better than checkpoints because the latter leads to terrible design" I hear this stupid fucking claim all the goddamn time and no one ever brings receipts. You wanna look at me with a straight face and say that Celeste or Crash 4 are poorly designed? *I don't even like crash 4* and it's still a masterclass of how to make platformer levels (and how not to pad out runtime)
I think it should be a toggle that's up to the player unless their inclusion or exclusion is integral to the way the game is designed since it also depends on the game. The thing I'm not a fan of is forcing infinite lives onto older games. For example, Sonic Origins removes lives from all the Sonic games in the collection and this makes a lot of mechanics in those games pointless now because those mechanics were designed with lives in mind. This is a case where a toggle would have been much preferred over forcing infinite lives on the player.
I certainly didn't mind the infinite lives in Origins, but as someone who was complaining, just the other night, about Pokemon removing Set Style from the games, I can definitely get where you're coming from.
short answer; no game made after 2010 should have a lives/game over screen, they just waste the players time especially if no money is involved to continue playing
However on the opposite end it makes perfect sense to at least tax a less skilled player with a short animation of losing a life or sending them back to a particular checkpoint because there’s no incentive to continue playing if you can just brute force your way through a game
the lives system is there for one reason, to punish you and turn you into a better player, either learn or die. We all went through it, those early NES games are what turned us into tigers.
I think lives *can* work if the game is built around them and they're there for a reason, but in a game where you can save and retry as much as you want anyway, they're a waste.
This was really obvious to me last year when I played Super Mario Bros Wonder and Sonic Superstars back to back. I definitely ran into some challenging moments in both, but Superstars had no lives system, so it was never a frustration, but with Wonder, there were times I had to go back and grind purple coins when I was working on the final stage so I could buy a stack of 1ups and, while I really enjoyed Wonder, it back to back with the ease of unlimited retries in Sonic just made it feel even more unnecessary.
That said, I think Megaman is one of the few series that still uses lives well. Since you can't ever permanently lose progress, being sent to the Stage Select/Continue screem after that third death gives you a chance to cool down and think if you want to keep going or try a different stage, and I think it gives it a really good rhythm that prevents things from getting too frustrating
If you're talking the final, final challenge, or whatever it was called in Wonder, yeah, struggling through that with limited tries was really stressful. Wasn't sure if even 99 was going to be enough.
@@ExploDjinn Yep, that's exactly the one xD
And I'm pretty sure I did take more than 99 tries to finally get it finished xD
Can anyone please tell me what game is 10:05?
Spark the Electric Jester 3.
@@ExploDjinn tysm
Xenoblade came out to throw a wrench on what I thought was necessary for games, completely removing the Game Over screen.
You lost a battle? Don't worry, the game will put you on the last landmark visited and no progress was lost! Losing the battle and the time you spent trying to kill that boss is the punishment for failure, so just get back into the game and decide if you want to try again, change your strategy and equipment or go somewhere else and grind or complete quests!
With that knowledge in mind, looking back at Mega Man games made me realize how much better those titles would have been if lives weren't a thing and we could Escape from stages at will, not only after completing them. The Retry Chips from Zero 1 and X8 are even worse than traditional lives, the concept should have been tossed aside long before those titles came out.
that's an apples to oranges comparison. You're comparing a story driven RPG that ecourages exploration with a platformer thats focused on jumping and shooting through an obstacle course. Of course a lives system isn't gonna be useful in a game that encourages exploring and roaming large open areas. because those games generally don't want you discouraged from biting off more than you can chew. That idea isn't found in platformers like Megaman because the matter is not whether or not you can handle it. its that you're going to learn to handle it some way or another. platformers dont tend to have a means of changing a loadout like a rpg either so the only thing that can really make the difference is your skill. and the only way you're gonna get better is through repetition. which where the lives system shines. it gives you a number of changes to retry a section that may have gotten the better of you and allow you to learn it more. and if you make too many mistakes in a short time, you restart the level from the beginning, letting you further learn the level as a whole and as you get better, you'll keep more chances for future obstacles if not earning more and you're getting better at the game overall making you better equipped for even harder challenges later.
@@XBC3403 Mega Man X5 and X6 have different loadouts that allow you to decrease the difficulty of combat and platforming in the form of equippable Parts and X's Armor upgrades, and both titles have made Lives meaningless as getting the count to zero returns you to the last checkpoint nonetheless.
The comparison is still relevant regarding exploration, as it is by exploring the levels and finding hidden paths that you find the items, rescuable Reploids and armor upgrades that allow for customization and player choice. And those secrets are often locked behind tricky combat and platforming sections that would deplete your lives, sending you back to the last checkpoint even after a supposed game over.
6:31 I don't care how hot the anime girls are... none could possibly be as pretty as Zero... 😔
Oh, and I know a game that insults you when you die- ADVENTURE SKETCHERS for the LEAPPAD. Yeah, a game for toddlers genuinely makes fun of players for being bad at it.
Wait, what? Insulted you how? Should I be advising my parents to stay away from Leappad if they want their kids to have confidence?
@@ExploDjinn Wasn't anything crazy, but I remember the wizard guy with the big nose saying *something* irritating...
yes and if you think otherwise you're not gonna make it. if something is poorly balanced it's the game fault, not lives
I always play games with life's and when i first played a modern game i was shocked that the game had unlimited lifes and i thought i will get a game over if i get 3 lifes down and i was shocked and said this game is too easy it was when i was 6
I'd argue that games that do have lives, but don't manage to make you game over, are more of a sign of something being easy. I replayed Kirby and the Crystal Shards the other night and was kind of surprised that I didn't even get one.
Yes get good
nah lives suck lol I don't know if I can think of any game were having it made it more fun. too punishing and disincentivizes the player from experimenting with what you can do because you don't want a game over. not to say that having lives ruins a game, a lot of my favorites have them, but I don't think it ever really adds much and if I like the game that much then it's probably not too punishing even with lives anyway. It can be satisfying getting a lot of them but I'd rather they not have it and find a why to reward the player with something else. That would also kinda force the developers to be more creative with designing the game, it feels like games having lives is just the default and when making a game and they don't really think about why all to much, that's how it feels anyway. The only kind of exception I can think of for me is the original pac man world weirdly, that game isn't too punishing with game overs generally but it's kinda tricky so getting lives was really satisfying and helped incentivize exploring the levels to find stuff because even if you didn't find everything finding a lot will give you points which will give you lives. But at the same time I would still rather it not have lives and they made it so getting a lot of points rewarded the player in a different way like getting enough points would give you a health increase cuz having more health in that game would be pretty nice, still really fun game though
6:27 and yeah the player shouldn't feel incentivized to die on purpose so they'd get more lives, that's dumb
Yeah, it definitely feels like a, 'because tradition,' in a lot of cases.
restarting the stage after losing all lifes is okay for me, but restarting the whole game is too much of a punishment
Yeah, while I know a lot of the 'rules' weren't established back then, there's still a part of me that can't believe that early Mario did that.
@@ExploDjinnthe fact that it was never stated that you could hold A while starting to continue the world you died on was egregious
@@davidthecommenter Wait, what?
.................. So you can. That you're the first to mention this probably means I'm not the only one to not know this trick.
@@ExploDjinn i don't think it was even stated in the games' manual, you would have had to get word of mouth from the neighborhood back when the game hit shelves
A good life system is like this two games: infernax and sonic unleashed for nintendo wii/ps2, because you can't get them mid level, they are few and far between and as they work as a collectible items like a heart piece in zelda and they only recharge after you either got to a save point(infernax) or complete a gauntlet of and "act" level and their respective missions in daytime, or a sequence of acts in nighttime(sonic unwiished, only the fist time you get to them, after that you can freely choose between them and just need to complete that specific act/mission), they are the limit of times you can access your checkpoint before a game over and losing all your progress in that section of the game, you want to search for extra lives as they are the size of your safety net against errors and you just need to get them once.
I recently played and beaten Sonic Spinball. That game has a tendency to screw people over with its questionable physics and insta-kills, so extra lives really hurt that game's sense of progress. Heck, even the Game Gear version seems more beatable on default settings.
I'm gonna bring up a different game with a different system: Shining Force, Sega's strategy RPG that nobody seems to talk about, but Sega keeps on porting. I've been playing it on the Switch, complete with rewind, to mess with and question that game's randomizer and cheapness. That game has a limited number of battles, and when they're done, they're done. The only way to level-grind is to retreat to reset the battle, which lets you keep your stats and cash. When a character gets KO'd, you can revive them the old Dragon Quest way of coughing up cash, but you still have to keep the leader alive at all times.
This is a very good analysis. In my opinion, yes, games should keep lives. It gives you an extra challenge as well as making deaths actually impactful. When playing with lives, you'll never intentionally die to get a refill, because every death puts you closer to a game over. However, I can see people wanting to have an easy time with some games. I think that an easy mode that removes lives from the equation can work. As a great example, Sonic.exe Tower of Millennium gives you 4 difficulty options. Ultra easy, easy, normal and hard. In case you don't know, this game is split into 3 parts. Ultra easy is the infinite lives mode of this game, but if you beat a part in it you will not unlock the next one, forcing you to use the expirience you gained from ultra easy and applying it to an actual run. I absolutely love this system. I feel very challenged when playing Tower of Millennium and this difficulty helps players practice before actually trying, while not rewarding anyone for picking an option designed for people who are bad at the game.
A game series I think doesn’t work without lives is touhou where lives are your only form of health and you are rewarded with more lives for playing better
I think if every single post-Super Mario Bros. 1 platformer either had the life system from Sonic Colors (die and restart at a checkpoint; Game Over and restart the whole level) or Sonic Unleashed on Wii/PS2 (start off with a set number of lives when starting a level; earn medals when beating a level and depending on how good you are at levels, the more medals you'll get; unlock additional lives by getting more medals), then people would be able to play platformers a lot more than if everyone has savestates or infinite lives.
Think about what you're doing when restarting at checkpoints and getting Game Overs as a new player.
You start over hopefully close to where you failed. Eventually you'll either find out what wrong thing was that you were doing or you'll get a Game Over. Then with a Game Over, you'll redo what you've done before but now you'll improve at the game in the previous sections that you've previously only played as a beginner. You'll improve because you've learned what's in the level and because you're getting more used to the controls and player physics of the game in a now-safer environment. And while getting better at that, you'll hopefully know what to do in the hard section you've failed at before. And if not, you probably didn't die in the previous sections as much as you did before. Now you'll have more tries at the hardest section because you got better at the game.
The life system essentially is a hurdle for new players to not pass over until they've gotten better at the game by learning to play the game more. How do you get better? Repetition. How do you repeat? By the game making you start over the easy levels and then, if you're really good, you have more chances at the hard parts.
Sonic Colors does that by just having a simple life system that doesn't have too many 1ups and only making you restart the level you've failed at if you Game Over.
Sonic Unleashed Wii/PS2 does that by making players earn medals which unlock more lives, but you'll only get more medals (which give you a higher set amount of lives at the start of a level) if you improve at the game.
Repetition and redoing parts you're good at really quickly and then redoing the bad parts more is how you learn to get better at the video games.
Farming lives is how you destroy the learning process though, don't do that. Even if you're a pro, why would you farm lives if you're a pro already? Unless the game's just a badly made game, I guess. Then play a different game.
I think modern games stopped understanding that the life system has a really good reason to exist as a learn-by-repetition tool. It's not outdated, it's either just not used correctly in a lot of games or players are too impatient.
Personally, I'd rather give the hard stuff another go, rather than repeat the stuff I already have down. Going from the super intense Wily Capsule back to the much slower Wily Machine 7 always throws me for a loop. We could be talking about a different threshold for easy, though and in general, I don't like to repeat stuff, until I'm in the mood to play through the full game again, but that's just me.
@@ExploDjinn I'm mostly just thinking of Sonic or, I guess, Mario games. Tons of ways to improve in them, I think.
I dunno about Mega Man boss levels though...
Playing Separation Anxiety with my brother was a good memory of mine too
Nice. Think that's the game that installed a love of Beat-Em-Ups in me.
@@ExploDjinn I noticed that in that section you didn't lose any lives. When I was a kid me and my brothers rented this game a few times, and we accidentally discovered an infinite lives glitch 😂 only way we made it through the game
Depending on the game yes
Infinite lives. If you die, you get sent back to either a checkpoint, or the start of the screen like Celeste. depending on the game.