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[GooeyHeat]

The thought of "well I completed this particular challenge, why do I have to do it again?" is slightly saddening to me. A game that limits your lives and causes you to lose more progress when you run out isn't just testing your ability to complete each in-game task, but to complete a set of them consistently. This is especially true in games where you have a health bar before you die and are sent backwards; you may have made it through a specific obstacle, but you'll have to make it through with less mistakes if you want more attempts at the next obstacle.

Super Meat Boy isn't be-all end-all proof that infinite lives are superior, because the challenge it offers is quite different to the challenge offered in Mega Man 3, which in turn is quite different to the challenge offered in Donkey Kong Country Returns.

I will agree that some games used lives badly, though, specifically Super Mario 64, because the only task it will ever force you to repeat when you see Game Over is leisurely strolling through the castle again (with the exception of losing on a Bowser boss fight).

 

[Ranger X]

Lives are meaningless. If you lose all your lives, what happens? You might be set back a level or two, which is kind of pointless since you probably won't lose your lives gradually, but probably on one specific part you can't overcome. What's the point of making you do level 1 and 2 again when you are only losing your lives on level 3?

Actually, even if its not the subject of this thread, the point of lives is easy to explain. It was a tool for making the player naturally practice his skill and therefore help him progress. In theory, in a perfect game design (read where difficulty truly has an intelligent progression and where the gameplay of the game isn't all laid out in the first level lol) lives are making sense because if you die level 3, you have played level 1 and 2 too fast or didn't grasp the gameplay progression enough to have the skill to beat level 3.

Now why lives almost never worked is because in theory lives are having a purpose that works but as most games don't have the corresponding and mostly perfect design for this idea to work, "lives" became a pain and a crotch in most games.

 

[balohna]

Nintendo's platformers might as well have infinite lives. They still use 1ups as a "reward" but you'll have like 150 or something and it barely matters. It helps to have that many if you're on a tough stage and end up dying like 30 times, but you still probably won't see Game Over.

 

[IdreamofHIME]

Hold A and press start.

Youre kidding...right?

 

[ViewtifulJC]

They might as well have infinite lives. Tropical Freeze certainly has its challenges, but I still ended up with 70+ lives by the end, and I'm talking about 100% completion, all the secret/difficult levels.

But they can't, because their whole reward system is tied up in the classic Mario 100 items = lives, putting extra lives in out of the way places for you to grab, showing you with five banana bunches or ten if you're daring in a certain spot. They would have to rethink their entire game design, and its probably not worth the hassle. It just means never, ever seeing the game over screen cuz you got so many of the damn things.

 

[chertipros]

Nintendo's platformers might as well have infinite lives. They still use 1ups as a "reward" but you'll have like 150 or something and it barely matters. It helps to have that many if you're on a tough stage and end up dying like 30 times, but you still probably won't see Game Over.

Play in multi player with inexperienced friends and the game over screen will be burned into your brain

 

[mclem]

Earliest example I can think of (ignoring the likes of Pitfall and Impossible Mission which just effectively shifted the penalty for loss into another mechanic) could easily be Livingstone, I Presume. It's an interesting one, though.

An oddity of the early Spectrum era is that Spain made a lot of games that were significantly tougher than games from the UK. Such was the case with Livingstone Supongo, which became Livingstone, I Presume when it crossed the channel. Alligata - the UK publishers - recognised that this was a problem, so what did they do? In the cassette inlay, they explicitly outlined the an infinite lives cheat.

So... not *exactly* a game built around infinite lives, but a game that was adapted to have (optional) infinite lives for a more mass-market audience. I think it's fair to consider it as a prototypical example, even if it's not quite what the OP is after.

 

[A Black Falcon]

Hold A and press start.

That does still send you back to the beginning of the world, though, so beating the game is still quite tough -- getting through world 8 on just a few lives isn't easy!

That post made me think of Another World.

Oh yeah, good point, that's another one with infinite lives. It's also from 1991, too, just like those Apogee games. Huh.

Earliest example I can think of (ignoring the likes of Pitfall and Impossible Mission which just effectively shifted the penalty for loss into another mechanic) could easily be Livingstone, I Presume. It's an interesting one, though.

On the note of Pitfall... this reminds me, Pitfall 2: The Lost Caverns! When you die, you go back to the last checkpoint, and you have infinite continues.

 

[mclem]

Oh yeah, good point, that's another one with infinite lives. It's also from 1991, too, just like those Apogee games. Huh.

At what point do you draw the line between "Infinite lives" and "Infinite Continues"? I always regarded Another World as having one life, but infinite continues around it. Partially because there's that one level that would send you back a *long* way when you die - but if you instead take it as infinite lives, and continues being an irrelevance, then it is indeed an example of infinite lives.

 

[joezombie]

I don't know if lives are necessary, but any action game where I feel like I'm going to win no matter what through sheer attrition is one I'm not that interested in. Lives are definitely a way to do that, even if a bit heavy handed

 

[Neff]

Or it could be because it was a cheap death. It's difficult to paint a broad brush with this, but most games simply don't need lives anymore because of their scope.

Also, yes, being moved back is a penalty. I'm not inherently opposed to that depending on the game, but again, why have lives? You die. You go back to a checkpoint or the beginning of a level. With lives you do this X amount of times...and then what?

Lives are cool because they're a flexible safety net that shrinks and grows depending on how you play. Play badly and your window for error narrows. Play well and you keep the lives you have and possibly stockpile more for difficult sections later. You might as well call an energy bar or a timer you can add bonuses to gimmicks for the same reason.

They might have gone out of fashion lately, and you're right in that it's mostly tied to design, but they're still a valid mechanic when used appropriately.

 

[Shotgun Kiss]

It's a tricky balance.

On the one hand, losing all your lives, and having to then go back and replay an earlier part of the game that you've already proven you can clear is tedious, especially if you get multiple Game Overs, and therefore have to do it multiple times.

But on the other hand, many games would suffer if there were no consequences for failure. It's those consequences that result in tension and immersion. The fear of failure makes you more invested. And therefore success means a lot more.

 

[Htown]

The only reason "lives are pointless" is that games that still use that system hand out extra ones too freely.

 

[Onaco]

Jason Rubin from Naughty Dog said something like games with lives only punish the bad players and make them want to quit. A player who is good will never need to use the lives he/she racks up. It's a useless, archaic mechanic that only works for games that want your money, like an app or an arcade machine.

 

[GamerJM]

I think lives can be a good thing if the game is designed around them well, but far too often I feel like games aren't and the lives should just be infinite.