Video Game Tropes/Logic

DCurrent

DCurrent

Site Owner, OpenBOR Project Leader
Staff member
Don't you just love video game logic? And for beat-em-ups especially. How we just accept some of the most ridiculous premises and ideas as the norm? The fate of the world somehow hinges on a fistfight? Gangs the size of minor rebellions (but with only about three-four guns shared among all of them). Eating from trash cans, phone booths, etc? And how about those plans? Kidnap the girl/child/ward of the biggest bad asses in town? When has this ever been a good idea? Imagine a certain planning conversation...

"Hey, I know how to bring the city back under our control, let's kidnap that Jessica Haggar girl. It's not like her dad the pro-wrestler mayor, her world class martial artist boyfriend or best buddy the f***ing NINJA are gonna do anything."

"That's perfect! Get Mr. Haggar's phone number too, we need to make sure they know what happened to her!"

Just a quick thought. But it's why we love those games so much, right?

DC
 
:D well, it looks pretty logical to me, when a group of people decide to commit an act such as taking control of a city, the first thing they do is make sure there is no problem with the law.

So they attack where it hurts most, in their loved ones regardless of anything else, just acting out of malice and cruelty.

The small gang BECOMING rebellion is credible because they use what little they have on hand to attack anyone they put in front.

In that situation if you become the hero must survive at all costs, his bare hands and eating garbage if necessary.

The most illogical is that your group of 3 people can with an almost endless legion of clones without a plan involved, carried away by impulses.

The bad guys always have plans and the good guys just improvised to reach them.
 
LOL :D I can see the point here

There are too many illogical game logic we had, just to name a few:
1. Isn't it a wonder to see heroes are able to fight continuously from slums to skyscraper (no rest, no going to rest room etc)?
2. And they must have steel arms and legs to endure beating baddies! oh don't forget about destroying cars and drums too :)
3. Those big bosses are either stupid or too confident to let heroes beat half or more of their henchmen then let them in for final fight
Really, they could send assassins to kill heroes right away or trap them somewhere

Ah yes, in Final Fight, an Andore could capture heroes so easily. If Belger sent more of this Andores, he could've won ;)

Well, all of these illogical game logic are for one purpose: SIMPLICITY. Games must be simple and easy to learn yet hard to master :)
 
If your the mayor of a city and someone kidnaps your daughter, naturally you don't use the resources at your disposal, like the police force, military or the handgun in your top drawer.  NO you take your shirt off and fight guys on the streets, like any former pro-wrestler gone mayor would.  Nothing speaks authority like a pile driver to the concrete.

Obviously Haggar is based off real life tough guys with a moustache, like Dan Severn, his protege Don Frye and most notably Jesse Ventura.  Who much like Mike Haggar, went on to politics and became Governor of Minnesota. 

haggar.png

Mike Haggar

Dan_Severn1.jpg

Dan Severn




image.png

Jess Ventura

don_frye.png

Don Frye

Tom Selleck 's Magnum, thou fictitious, cannot be ruled out.  Selleck was almost cast as Indiana Jones if not for limitations with his TV contract.  There is pre-production photos of Harrison Ford touting a mighty tash.  Thou he was deemed manly enough already and Speilberg wanted to keep the movie PG. 

Anyhow I digress...

ScrollBoss website has some funny stuff regarding this subject, in the MINUS WORLD section.

ScrollBoss
http://scrollboss.illmosis.net/mw_index.php
 
Bloodbane said:
Ah yes, in Final Fight, an Andore could capture heroes so easily. If Belger sent more of this Andores, he could've won ;)
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Yet any of the player characters can easily mop up the floor with Andore and all his kin, both in game and even more so in the story. In fact, the very first thing you do is smack down at least three of them in the very same arena it took just one to drag you into. Classic cut-scene incompetence trope.

Even more hilarious is what happens in a two player game. Andore rushes in and grabs the strangely comatose player 1. Does player 2 smash Andore's skull or do anything else to help? Is he magically paralyzed like player 1? Nope, he just follows along willingly. "Do de do de do... off the arena trap with us."  :o

DC
 
Lol, nice work.  I almost mentioned DD in my last post. 
Every game that girl is standing outside just waiting to be kidnapped.  Keep her inside the house dammit!
 
Nope, he just follows along willingly. "Do de do de do... off the arena trap with us."  :o
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LOL!

This is probably why the next beat'm ups solves it by using a more 'realistic' way: in Violent Storm, Red Freddy lures players to a kitchen before dropping player down to an underground cage with Drigger waiting inside.

Maybe I should share some hilarious and funny experience my and my sister had when playing Project Eden.
Somewhere in 1st map, 4 heroes (it's coop game FYI) are required to go to a path across gap. The only mean to go there is by walking through hanging giant pipe.
Problem is that pipe is too far and needs to be moved before heroes could walk to it. oh FYI none of them can jump
There was a console to be hacked which suggests that it would 'move' the pipe. That's what we imagined but after triggering it instead of moving pipe, we heard loud metallic screech as if a metal is bent somewhere  ???
And to our surprise, a huge broken pipe fell down from ceiling hitting hanging pipe and almost killing one of heroes  :o  :o. Surprisingly, that broken pipe 'managed' to 'move' that hanging pipe :o.

OMG of all way to 'move' a platform  :'(
 
Great topic!

The nonsense of Final Fight doesn't stop there. I mean, why don't the heroes just drive over to Beagle, Bagel, whatshisname's building and rescue Jessica? What's the deal with they taking their time to "clean" the whole city before rescuing her? It's like Haggar was thinking "Hmm, I've been meaning to fight all over the city for some time now, this looks like the perfect opportunity to do it".

FF2 is even more ridiculous because they even fly all over the world.

They also eat food found in garbage cans.

In the G.I.Joe arcade game the bosses are human just like all the other enemies, yet they require hundreds and hundreds of bullet hits to die. Because... they're bosses. Same with Sunset Riders (which I originally thought was called Sun Setriders :P )

What about when in many games the bosses are bigger than the heroes. Just because well... they're the bosses. The Joker being huge in the Batman game for the NES is a good example.

In Turtles in Time, Krang steals the Statue of Liberty. So logically the first thing the Turtles do is go to a construction site (???)

In the first level of the first TMNT arcade game, that fire sure takes its sweet time to consume that building.

jiam said:
So I did this curiosity.
No need to go all the way :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7LWmQBAQ50
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Brilliant, hahaha!
 
How about the simplest trope of them all?

The idea that one person has the strength, stamina, and skill; to single-handedly fight hundreds of people, conveniently grouped into lots of three-to-five; to walk hundreds or even thousands of miles. And all, presumably, without any sleep or rest?

Most people couldn't jog for an hour without having to sit down or rest for a minimum five minutes. Haggar, Cody, and Guy walk and battle through at least two full cities, during a presumably 24-hour period (stages go from day to night to day again).
 
nsw25 said:
Besides do you really want to see a beat em up game where player stops to take a toilet break or has a nap ? Isnt it presumed, like in movies.
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See, that's the interesting thing.

In movies and cartoons, there's evidence for that presumption. Characters change clothes between scenes. Maybe their hair is different. Maybe it actually showed them going to sleep or waking up.

In beat em ups--especially Final Fight--it doesn't work that way. The outro for each stage shows the guys walking to the right offscreen. The intro for each stage shows them walking onscreen from the left. That hints that the next stage begins immediately after the previous ends. This fits in logically, especially because the previous tropes you guys brought up; how they could have just taken a taxi to the final boss, or some other form of travel. But they walked and beat up thugs the whole way there. And for them to go home and sleep would--by the game's logic--also mean they have to wake up and fight their way back where they left off.

Think about the transition between stage 1 and 2 in Final Fight. Damnd was blocking the entrance to the subway. Once he's dispatched, you hop on the train and carry on. Haggar and company never stopped moving forward!
 
Most people couldn't jog for an hour without having to sit down or rest for a minimum five minutes. Haggar, Cody, and Guy walk and battle through at least two full cities, during a presumably 24-hour period (stages go from day to night to day again)
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It was the 80s and Haggar being the mayor, they probably had a lot of good cocaine....

 
There was something in Final Fight 3 which surprised me alot. Remember the bus stop sign in stage 3? if you leave it be, you'll ride a bus to junk yard and meet Caine but if you destroy it, you'll walk to docks and meet Drake  :o
I was really surprised when I accidentally did that on 2nd play of the game  8)

I don't know how far from that sign to junk yard nor to docks but if heroes could walk to docks, why don't they walk to junk yard too if the sign is gone?

Or they could just use brute force to stop a bus to get free ride anywhere  ::)

And there's some mystery in 5th stage of Final Fight 3. Stray is the boss there and he rides a crane before dropping in.
If you go to control room and destroy all computers there, 5th stage is ended after killing last enemy there . ??? What happened to Stray?
Did the crane go beserk and Stray somehow got killed or tossed below?  ???
 
While I find the eating food from trash-cans hilarious and it's part of the genre (homelessimulator), I want to point out one that I really hate. It's when the player dies and the new life falls from the sky or is tele-ported in another part of the screen, I don't understand it. I like it when after the hero dies, he gets up from that same place, so lives can be viewed as number of KOs that the fighter can stand before definitely dying or else (it gives the idea of the fighter striving till the end), rather than a miraculous zombish cheating. I am glad that Streets of Rage Remake has this realistic option available ( named as “type of death: remake).
So modders please , add this type of “death”, hehe.

BeasTie said:
ScrollBoss website has some funny stuff regarding this subject, in the MINUS WORLD section.

ScrollBoss
http://scrollboss.illmosis.net/mw_index.php
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I read it right now, looks funny.
 
Tull said:
So modders please , add this type of “death”, hehe.
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I agree and long since have - it's not even a complex script.

Another solution I like to use is simply giving the player a lot of hitpoints and only one life. The players characters are almost always much canonically tougher than any one boss - so why is it in the actual game you go down after ~8 mook hits and maybe ~4 from a boss, only to then invoke the silly trope drop in mentioned above?

This solution makes the game flow much better and gets rid of the silly "lives" concept all together, but it does make pits much more unforgiving - unless of course you script them not to be an instant kill.

DC
 
Besides do you really want to see a beat em up game where player stops to take a toilet break or has a nap ? Isnt it presumed, like in movies.
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Not every game has the heroes tough Muddering it through the full experience. Some have at least had the sense to try and rest. Between stages in Golden Axe, they would stop to make camp. They'd be inevitably interrupted by the bastardly elven thieves every time, But hey... They tried.
Streets of rage even had a police presence. Not only were they all cops themselves originally, but they could call for back-up. Although i will say, Adam kinda failed at life after the first one.
ADAM:"Oh, Mr. X is back and you need help. Tell you what, I can't right now because lolno , but you can take my malnourished kid brother. He's not a cop or anything, but he's got some wicked awesome breakdancin' skillz, and enjoys roller blading. Whaddaya say Skate, Are you EXTREME enough?!?"
SKATE: "Please love me."  :'(
It just got more absurd from there though. Remember Bad Dudes?
Ninjas (NINJAS!?!) kidnap the President of the United States. Now it's up to two guys in sweat pants to save America, but only if they're BAD enough Dudes! LMAO
 
I agree on everything and I always thought about this too : why not put all lives in one energy bar and upgrade it after a certain score is reached ( similarly to the 1up score). I read some reviews with games featuring this one life and players seem scared by it, but the unique large energy bar would make the game easier instead, and smoother.

Damon Caskey said:
unless of course you script them not to be an instant kill.
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And with a neat climb up animation on the platform as in a Streets of Rage ( maybe the 3rd, I'm not sure as I played only the recent remake).

Another flawed game logic not mentioned but common is when the assorted deathbringer and lifesaver equipment that the hero is wearing disappears while he is hit (maybe to protect it by damages? Farsighted! ): while on a console game is perhaps understandable, in an arcade game isn't very tolerable, I recall The King of The Dragons.

I agree about the hero never taking a break, but I can presume it has some by the change of the sky from morning to sunset and so on (crossing a city by feet can take a few hours, not all day).

SaintJudas said:
Now it's up to two guys in sweat pants to save America, but only if they're BAD enough Dudes! LMAO
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But with a Legendary Guest starring in the intro, Duke “I chewed a typewriter 'cause I'm all out of bubblegum ” Nukem.
 
And with a neat climb up animation on the platform as in a Streets of Rage ( maybe the 3rd, I'm not sure as I played only the recent remake).
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Blade Master has similar feature which automatically climbs out of hole with cost of HP

but the unique large energy bar would make the game easier instead, and smoother.
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It depends actually, if you have breakout move, it's okay when enemies mobbed you but if you don't have one, you'll be stuck in place with enemies beating you to death.

Well, each side has pros and cons, just need to balance it
 
Its Haggar, he can do everything, he is the most bad ass mayor I ever saw.
Think about MVC: To beat Galactus, he just took an iron pipe and go foward. I just love that scene.

There is a game which have many absrud things: X-Men Apocalypse (something).
You can beat the enemies easy but when it comes tables...you need to hit them many times!
How in the hell Colossus need to hit a table many times to break it? lol
 
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