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Not dying from touching an enemy blew my mind.

Odoul

Member
Which was the first game to do this, Devil May Cry?*

It was a revelation back then. The first spider/scorpion boss was putting his foot in me, I then read you could get on his back and deal damage. Blew me the fuck away.

It's so simple, and yet so against games at the time.

I also don't know how widespread it is, seeing as I still instinctually try to kill/avoid everything that moves in videogames.
 
Devil May Cry was the first to do this? What? Do you mean instant-death on touch? Because I remember that stuff from as far back as C64/NES/Apple2 games.
 
Zelda and Metroid had this mechanic long before DMC

If you're talking about attacking and intercepting enemies while they're attacking, Sonic has had quite a few bosses like this.
 
Well, Legend of Zelda was well before DMC, reppin' 1987...

Around DMC time, how about Dark Cloud? Hell, Super Mario 64?

So I actually have no clue what you're talking about.
 
He's referring to actually landing on a boss and not having it do damage to you. In the case of SMB, you're attacking it.
 
lol the OP seems a little weird here, are you implying DMC was the first game to do it or the first one YOU played that did it? Cos that shit's been around for Donkey's years
 
Anyone else freak out when you realize you can stand on enemies in mario 2 usa?

Of course. It's mario, you just run to the right and....oh wait, I'm falling? I'll DIE!? Oh, that's weird there's another area down here. I guess I'll just go in this door. Ok, enemies, just jump on their heads and.....stand on top of this guy while he keeps walking? Wtf is this game?

As for the topic, my biggest annoyance in a game was that moment where you had to find out whether you could touch enemies or not.
 
Final Fight. You grabbed the character when you touched them.

I'm still paranoid about dying when touching water in games. Remember how water droplets from the ceiling or a drainpipe could kill your character?
 
The OP is simply talking about dying from only touching an enemy and not being attacked by it. That shit would piss me off. Especially if there was a recoil animation that threw you backwards after being hit.
 
Pretty sure he's talking about enemies not hurting you just by touching you.

But yes, quite a few FPSs, especially the multiplayer kind, did this long before DMC.
 
Final Fight. You grabbed the character when you touched them.

I'm still paranoid about dying when touching water in games. Remember how water droplets from the ceiling or a drainpipe could kill your character?


Belmonts are famous vampire killers, but they fucking hate water
 
The opposite is frustrating; when you're not even close to an enemy/spike whatever and you still take damage. Dat collision detection...
 
I played DMC for the first time last year and I just assumed I couldn't touch enemies. Made the spider boss way harder than it needed to be.
 
The OP is simply talking about dying from only touching an enemy and not being attacked by it. That shit would piss me off. Especially if there was a recoil animation that threw you backwards after being hit.
That's what I'm talking about.

And people mentioning Mario, Metroid and Zelda? What?

All the Goombas and Zoomers and miscallaneous shit that kills you on the NES.


And the DMC really was a question, as it's the first game I can remember doing it.

I also meant console games. I meant to put that as an asterisk in the OP.
 
For me it's weird there was ever a time when this happened. We asumed you were being attacked, even though we couldn't see it hapening our minds filled in the blanks.

So it's even weirder when in, say, Mario 64, a goomba still touched you and you get hurt, since it doesn't actually make sense.

My-body-is-dangerous type of enemies come from that era though. Electrified body? Sorrounded with spikes? Too hot to be touched? Thank you, earlier gaming generations.
 
Shinobi for arcade and MegaDrive. You can bump into enemies and not die or lost life, unless they hit you with any weapon.
 
I'm sure it happened before then (Mario 2 is a good example), but the first place it really gave me that "wait, what? That didn't kill me?" reaction was in Mars Matrix for the Dreamcast. Not having to dodge enemy ships in a shmup was unheard of.
 
TripWorld for the GameBoy had this. You could bump enemies. you could bump them into traps. They only hurt you if their attacks hit you, or if they were trying to attack you.
 
Super Mario 2. You could ride around on shyguys and various other enemies. It was pretty mind-blowing at the time because you were making this weird direct contact with an enemy. Previously, if you had jumped on top of an enemy, that was how you'd take them out.
 
That's what I'm talking about.

And people mentioning Mario, Metroid and Zelda? What?

All the Goombas and Zoomers and miscallaneous shit that kills you on the NES.


And the DMC really was a question, as it's the first game I can remember doing it.

I also meant console games. I meant to put that as an asterisk in the OP.

Just to clarify, are you talking about touching not causing insta-death or touching not causing damage? If it's the former, then there are probably many hundreds of games before the one you cite that applies. If the latter, then fewer apply.

And to clarify in the other direction, people talking Mario are talking about Super Mario Bros 2 (US version), where you could jump on top of most creatures and just sort of hang out while they walked around. Only touching from the sides hurt you.


Super Mario 2. You could ride around on shyguys and various other enemies. It was pretty mind-blowing at the time because you were making this weird direct contact with an enemy. Previously, if you had jumped on top of an enemy, that was how you'd take them out.

Just saying, but there were a ton of Mario games before SMB2, and most of them did NOT have jumping on top of enemies to kill them as a mechanic.
 
Yeah, Wolfenstein 3D had no collision damage back in 1992. You only got hit if the enemy shot you, or in the case of dogs, scratched you. You could run right up to them with impunity, ignoring that this makes the odds of their attacks landing much more likely.
 
Spacewar! (1962).

I may be mistaken, as I've only played later variants of the game, but I think that in the original you used missiles to kill the opponent ship, and collisions wouldn't cause damage. Could somebody way older than me clarify?


edit: Did some reading, and whether or not touching an enemy causes death was actually a feature that you could toggle on or off.
 
That's what I'm talking about.

And people mentioning Mario, Metroid and Zelda? What?

All the Goombas and Zoomers and miscallaneous shit that kills you on the NES.


And the DMC really was a question, as it's the first game I can remember doing it.

I also meant console games. I meant to put that as an asterisk in the OP.

In the NES era, touching enemies often did damage to you, but you could walk right up to enemies in beat em up games like Double Dragon. You only took damage if they specifically used an attack against you.
 
I'm sure it happened before then (Mario 2 is a good example), but the first place it really gave me that "wait, what? That didn't kill me?" reaction was in Mars Matrix for the Dreamcast. Not having to dodge enemy ships in a shmup was unheard of.

Soukyugurentai did it before Mars Matrix
 
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