Guide Dang It/Platform Games

How am I supposed to move this thing? I know there's something under here...

• As seen to the right, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, That F-ing Barrel in Carnival Night Zone, also known as "Barrel of Doom" (solution: stand on the barrel and press UP and DOWN on the D-pad in sync with the barrel's bobbing motion to shift its weight). This was such a bad case of the trope that Yuji Naka publicly apologized for it in 2011 at Summer Of Sonic in London.
  • While the down key is used frequently in gameplay, the up key has little to no use in the game elsewhere. The up and down keys also appear to be non-functional while standing on a barrel. Pressing up or down does not make Sonic look up or duck down like he does elsewhere. If the barrel is stationary, pressing the up or down keys will do nothing. If you tap the up and down keys randomly, you're not likely to notice a change in the barrel's velocity.
  • Jumping on a barrel makes it move. In fact, it is the only thing a player can do to a barrel that is guaranteed to give instantaneous feedback. It doesn't help that carefully timed jumps on any other barrel in the zone will be enough to pass them.
    • It is only just possible to get past the Barrel of Doom by jumping on it until it falls low enough that you can spin-dash under it when it pops back up. Players that could almost make it would believe they were doing the right thing, just not well enough. Plus, this method would often leave you with not enough time to reach the next checkpoint.
  • That F-ing Barrel is the only barrel in the zone that cannot be skipped. You will run into it, unless you're playing as Knuckles.
    • And you can easily get into Sonic & Tails area with Knuckles if you feel like having Knuckles face the barrel.
  • If you read the manual, and saw the tip about how Sonic would sometimes run into traps that were completely inescapable except by waiting for time to run out or resetting the game, chances are you wouldn't realize that it was actually handwaving the rather large number of glitches that the player might encounter, and instead think it was referring to That F-ing Barrel.
  • At first, this wasn't even in the guides.
    • They seem to be hoping that pressing down and up like that would feel natural to the player, like how most people pressed A when they wanted to catch a Pokémon, or pressing B to run.
• To reach the Robotizer in Zone 1 of Wacky Workbench (in Sonic CD), you must stand on a block that looks like a crusher and let it slam you against the ceiling. Rather than crush you, it drops you into a secret area (although it looks very similar to the real Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom found later in Metallic Madness).
• The "Find the Lost Chao" missions in Sonic Adventure 2 are crafted from a vein of the purest Guide Dang It ever seen. Not only do you have to find a gimmicky, often hard to find powerup for each character to even think about beating them, you also have to find the shrine in each level, 99% of which are hidden in bizarre places that the player doesn't even think of going.
• The critically bashed |Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 also had its share of Guide Dang It moments. You're sometimes required to talk to specific people in the hub areas in order to advance further in the game. To be fair, the important people were marked as orange on the map, but the map itself was so confusing, and the hub levels were so large, that you could easily spend over half an hour wandering around trying to figure out where to go next if you didn't have a strategy guide.
  • The most frustrating part was due to one of the many omissions in the game manual; the game was severely rushed, so several of the things in the manual weren't actually in the game. In Shadow's Kingdom Valley, in one section you play as Rouge, and have to find 3 keys, 2 of which are relatively easy to find. One of them, however, is in a tower, which you can only get into by climbing the tower and breaking one of the stained glass windows by planting a bomb on it. Sounds simple, right? The problem is, Rouge's bomb-planting move isn't listed anywhere in the game manual, and the game itself doesn't even mention that specific move. Before this point, you most likely won't even realize that you even have that bomb-planting move, let alone know how to execute it.
• Like most Sonic games, Sonic Advance 2's true ending can only be seen if you collect all 7 Chaos Emeralds. However, to get to the Special Stage to even attempt to get a Chaos Emerald, you had to collect all 7 of the Special Rings hidden through a level. Unfortunately, as a later Sonic game, it wasn't really known for its exploration and most players would end up running right past them. It doesn't help that backtracking is pretty much impossible and players would either have to memorize an entire level to get them or get the game guide with the detailed maps. Guide Dang It indeed...
  • Sonic Advance 3 is similar in this respect, as you have to collect all of the Chao hidden throughout the three acts of the zone (and there are about ten of them), and then find a key that will let you in to the Special Stage.
    • And in Zone 3, they got one of the locations wrong. This tropes spent hours searching the map for Chao 10 before I found a walkthrough that told me it was actually in Act 1.
    • Notably, to get to the final bonus level, after getting all the chaos emeralds, you need to press some set of buttons on the main menu.
• Sonic Rush Series Adventure: As opposed to nearly every other hidden island that is hinted at where there is shallow water, there are two that you may have to scour the entire sea map for, as there is no sign that they're at the very top of the map, far away from any other island. Also, That One Boss Ghost Titan has one of the most absurd strategies behind it ever.
• In Sonic Heroes, there is at least one point (Extra Mission for BINGO Highway) with Team Chaotix where you have to use Leaf Swirl to turn Espio invisible so he can pass some lasers. At no point in the game is it mentioned that turning Espio invisible makes him able to pass through lasers.
• A strategy guide for Super Mario Bros.. 3 mentioned that one could get a whistle by dropping through a floating white block in stage 1-3 and then running behind the ending curtain. Only one problem: The guide didn't specify how to drop down... and holding down the 'down' button for several seconds isn't something that's immediately obvious.
  • ...unless you saw (or knew someone who saw) the movie The Wizard (film), which is basically a marketing movie for the game (and the Power Glove... it's so bad).
• In Super Mario Bros. Deluxe's Challenge Mode, some of the Yoshi Egg blocks are very well hidden. Did I mention they're invisible blocks?
• Super Mario Sunshine uses this trope in the form of Blue Coins, 10 of which equal 1 Shine Sprite in an exchange with an NPC. While they are not needed to beat the game, they will drive 100% completionists batty as they will search every nook and cranny, squirt water at anything that moves or doesn't move, and do all this for EVERY EPISODE IN EVERY LEVEL.
  • Also, to get one of the Shines, you have to stand at a certain point in one of the levels, look straight up, and spray water at the sun. After you spray it, a Shine will pop out.
  • In another mission in the same area, you need to find a certain point and spray water at the moon. Both of these are hinted at by villagers, but still.
  • At least two secret Shines can only be found by spraying normal looking SAND in apparently random places with water.
  • In addition, a secret Shine involves going into a remote corner, finding a tiny yellow bird and spraying it for several minutes (since it's moving and flying about constantly) before it transforms into a Shine. There is absolutely NO indication that you ever need to do this.
    • Once you've figured out the general pattern (spraying blue birds with water gets you Blue Coins, spraying yellow birds gets you Shines, and in one level, spraying a red bird gets you a Red Coin), you can find all of the related secrets pretty easily. It still counts as a Guide Dang It, however, because nowhere in the game is it ever indicated that spraying birds with water has any kind of point to it.
    • Other Blue Coin Guide Dang Its: Yoshi can eat the bees that emerge from the beehives in certain levels. This in itself is something that a player is likely to discover. However, to get a Blue Coin, you have to knock down the beehive with Yoshi juice and then have him eat all those bees as well, which is not something that's likely to occur to the average player.
• In Super Mario Galaxy 2, they barely mention Grandmaster Galaxy or how to unlock it. They also never hint at where any of the Green Stars are. For the ones that aren't sort of hidden in plain sight or just out of vision but still audible, good luck finding them.
  • Getting the first episode of Grandmaster simply requires getting all the other stars in the game, which is intuitive enough. Getting the second episode requires putting 9999 Star Bits in the bank, which is hardly hinted at all.
• In Prince of Persia 1 to kill your shadow, you have to very quickly sheathe your sword and then jump into it, too slow and it kills you, kill it and you die. Oh and after that you have to wait until you stop glowing and just run into the air. The GameFAQs guide states the writer used 5 years to beat the game, five years on two puzzles.
  • This is a good example of how bad this trope can get...that's not even correct! All you have to do is put your sword away, which causes the shadow to do so as well. (He's attacking you out of fear; once he sees that you mean him no harm, he's happy to return the favor.) Then simply walk or run toward him until you recombine. You do have to wait for the flashing to end, but you don't have to run off the platform; it's perfectly okay to jump (which might actually be more appropriate, since this is supposed to be a "leap of faith").
  • There's also a minor one at the end of Level 8, where you find yourself stuck behind a door, which can be opened only by a button on the other side. The solution this troper tried many times before giving up: Get in and out of that room before the door closes. The actual solution: Wait for a mouse to come and press the button. Fun...
• Prince of Persia 2 (the original DOS game, not Warrior Within) one of these: the player must die in a mundane way, killed by an easy-to-defeat Mook at a specific spot, while there are several, much more extravagant ways to die around (such as falling into this level's Bottomless Pits, which are unusual in Prince of Persia games) in order to obtain the titular Flame. A lot of people never figure this out and skip the level using cheats. Contrary to popular belief, the sword in the ruins isn't one of these: true, touching it appears to kill you, but it also immediately fades to a cutscene explaining more backstory.
  • This probably isn't any consolation, but the tipoff was supposed to be the huge sign you passed that said "He who would steal the flame must die". That was a double entendre (i.e. try to take the flame = you die, die willingly = you get the flame). If nothing else, getting burned to a crisp or falling to your death 30 times should've at least prompted you to try SOMETHING different (something a theme throughout this series).
  • Lets not forget the final level, where you need to turn into the flaming shadow in order to beat Jaffar, by turning left and right repeatedly. Most, if not all players discover this by accident while playing around with the prince in one of the last levels.
    • In fairness, this is mentioned in the instructions, and it even tells you the exact requirement. The hard part is remembering it at that point in the game. Oh, and meeting the requirement. And, quite possibly, getting killed by Jaffar a dozen times.
      • Also the fact that you only survive it if you have enough life; there are potions available on one screen to increase it sufficiently, but it's not exactly obvious that you can climb down to there off one platform when the ones slightly further along are Bottomless Pits.
• Some of the life upgrades in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within were nearly impossible to find. One is found early in the game through a hole in the ceiling. The box which can be used to access it is behind a breakable gate - except that you don't have the gate-breaking sword yet, and if you haven't played the previous game, you wouldn't know this gate might be breakable. Instead, you would have to backtrack to that part of the game when you get the sword. Another life upgrade can only be accessed by descending down a very deep chasm, which seems bottomless from above.
  • By the way, you need every life upgrade for the Good Ending.
    • Or at least to avoid fighting the bad ending boss.
  • There's also a Block Puzzle when you first enter the library which requires dragging one of the mirrors away from the wall to reveal a crack through which your companion can sneak to activate a lever later in the puzzle. The problem? The puzzle can be passed up to the point where the lever needs moving WITHOUT dragging the mirror out. Meaning that you get most of the way through and then can't figure out where on earth you went wrong, nor why your stupid companion is just standing there instead of pulling the damn lever. Guide Dang It. Heck, even some of the guides don't make it properly clear...
• In order to get to Rusty Bucket Bay in Banjo-Kazooie, you need to transform into a pumpkin and go under a gate in the graveyard room where you enter a building which results in other things happening, but the gate doesn't look like it has a hole.
• Banjo-Tooie has several unduly annoying Jiggies. The worst and most infamous of these is Canary Mary's race in the final level, Cloud Cuckooland. It's a button-mashing race. The Guide Dang It part? You're not actually supposed to mash the buttons. Canary Mary has Rubber Band AI, and if you speed up, she speeds up proportionally--meaning that if you get too fast, she becomes impossible to beat. Making this even more fun is that you raced her before in an earlier level, where you could mash your way to victory somewhat easily.
  • Although some people have managed to beat her through sheer mashing on the last race.
  • What may be worst about this is that Mary's finish line is actually before yours, meaning that if the race ends with you ahead of her, it's still entirely possible for you to have lost.
  • The Xbox Live Arcade port added a new Guide Dang It: Stop 'n' Swop II. The first four objectives are simple enough: hatch all of the original Stop 'n' Swop eggs and collect the Bronze, Silver, and Gold eggs. However, for the remaining three objectives, you need to beat every boss under a total of 15 minutes, become each and every one of Humba Wumba's transformations, and finally, kill yourself 40 times during boss battles.
  • Many players also have trouble with the Jinjo in Spiral Mountain under the waterfall. Most players wouldn't even think to look in Spiral Mountain for the final Jinjo.
  • Also, Grunty Industries is an entire world of this trope.
• Many of the Secret Bonus Points in Dynamite Headdy require you to perform extremely counterintuitive or un-obvious actions, and there are no hints anywhere.
• Many Mega Man bosses are weak to a particular weapon. The catch? You're not told the weakness, and new weapons are only acquired through beating bosses, so you have to beat the bosses in a particular order unless you want a (unnecessary) Self-Imposed Challenge. And then in 9, the first area of Dr. Wily's fortress has a room with three horizontal tubes that shoot instant-kill lava from one side of the screen to the other, and you need to get from bottom to top. You'll need to figure out how to get up there. There are several ways to do it though.
  • Mega Man make it so that every boss was weak to one of the weapons, in a recursive loop, and then balances so that all are theoretically beatable with the Mega Buster. In X, however, the question of "how do I know which weapon to get first?" is replaced with "How am I supposed to know that I'm supposed to beat Chill Penguin first?" (so you can get the leg attachment). The ability to dash was far more important than any weapon, even in some boss fights (particularly the Octopus). X2 learned from this mistake and gave the player the ability to dash from the start of the game.
    • Although the in-game canon is that X internalized the dash upgrade, seeing as how it's the only powerup that's right in your face. And back on the topic of X3, who the heck was supposed to guess that you had to get the Arm upgrade and use the charged Triad Thunder in order to drop the rocks in Tunnel Rhino's stage?
  • To acquire the most powerful armor in Mega Man X 5, you are required to drop X down what appears to be a bottomless pit in one of the final stages; if you're on the correct side of the shaft, you'll fall through a false wall into the room with the armor in it. The kicker is that the armor won't be there at all if you played through the stage with any of X's other armors, and there's nothing in-game to suggest this is the case. To be fair, the game will allow you to collect the armor with Zero regardless (although if you complete the stage with either character and neglect to pick up the armor, it's Lost Forever).
  • The hidden ultimate upgrades in X1-X3 (The Hadoken, Shoryuken, and Gold Armor) are all likewise obtuse. And except for the Hadoken, they are also Lost Forever once you complete that level.
  • There's a mini-Guide Dang It in regards to the boss weakness in 3; who knew that instead of one continuous loop, there were two, with Gemini Man, Snake Man, and Needle Man not being weak to any of the other Robot Master weapons?
    • Those that didn't just rely on the Game Breaker Metal Blades in 2 and figured out the two intended vulnerability circles in that game. For those that did complete this Self-Imposed Challenge, the problem became who knew that Air Man, Crash Man, and Wood Man were on a different circle from the others?
      • That isn't intended either. Wood Man was supposed to be weak to Atomic Fire, the charged version of which kills him in one hit. Crash Bomber just happens to be effective occassionally because it tends to explode on his Leaf Shield, which deals multiple hits on him, which each do good damage. At the same time, Crash Bomber was supposed to be effective against Quick Man and Flash Man, but this often goes unnoticed because Quick Man also has Time Stopper as a weakness and Crash Bomber is hard to hit him with, and Flash Man also has a weakness to Metal Blade. The intended weakness circle was probably supposed to be Air > Crash > Flash > Quick > Metal > Bubble > Heat > Wood > Air.
  • 8 also had the second set of Robot Masters have no weaknesses to the first set's weapons. Aqua Man and Sword Man could still be easily beaten with the Mega Buster, though.
• In Eversion, you'll have to everse from certain points between different dimensions to succeed. However, eversion points aren't visible, except background slightly changes and other music can be heard. That caused many players to get stuck on world 2 for a while.
  • It gets worse in world 8 where many players usually try to take the hardest route.
  • The Steam release has since made things easier since pressing the "Everse" key will reveal nearby eversion points.
• Lampshaded in Donkey Kong Country 3. One NPC will periodically give you hints as to the location of the game's Lost World. If you solve the riddle before he gives you any hints, however, he accuses you of using the player's guide (which is where he got his information in the first place).
  • Getting the Last Lousy Point for 102% completion in Donkey Kong Country 2. Made much worse when you actually play with a list of every bonus game and DK coin's location, because the last percent comes from visiting the colleges in each world that has one. Most people tear their hair out trying to speedrun 102% completion because their level-by-level guides turn out to only get them 101%.
  • ...and it goes all the way back to the original DKC. To get 101% completion, you must first access a well-hidden bonus room in Kremkroc Industries, beat a Bonus Round in the level "Oil Drum Alley" in a specific order (get three single bananas, which is considered the worst bonus combination in the game), which will then give you a barrel. You then have to break open a random wall to unlock a bonus room within a bonus room, which you must also win. Nowhere in the game is this alluded to or even mentioned. Besides this, many bonus rounds in the first game are found by taking leaps of faith into bottomless pits, or carrying a barrel and running into every wall in each level in the hopes of finding secret openings.
• The hidden stars in Braid, one of which specifically has to be obtained by making a star out of two of the puzzle pieces from World 3 and part of a star visible in the window above the puzzle frame in the house. And you assemble the puzzle before finding this out, you're boned and have to start the game over. And don't get me started on the one in World 2-2, where you have to go to a particular spot and just wait nearly 2 hours for a particularly slow-moving platform to get to a spot where you can climb up on it so you can get to the star. No, really. And these two are actually the easiest stars to get.
  • Of course, performing all tedious, time-consuming steps to acquire the hidden stars unlocks the bad ending. Since 'Braid' is an artsy game about the nature of obsession, this is strangely appropriate.
• The Jumpman games had a large number of these. Pretty impressive, considering there were only two games :
  • The Grand Puzzle levels(levels 7, 15, and 30 in the original game) nearly defined this trope. Each of these three stages would have four bonus bombs/items that were worth 5 times the normal pick-ups. However, going about getting these required a lot of experimentation to achieve. This is made worse as one mistake would likely prevent you from reaching any of the bonuses at all!
    • Grand Puzzle I would place a ladder piece on your back if you grabbed any of the bombs aside from four specific ones. You are then to place the piece by climbing to the top of the central ladder. Not only are there no hints aside from the ladder piece to allude to this, but should you die while holding a piece(given the bonus bombs position), the bonus bombs instantly become Lost Forever.
    • Grand Puzzle II was even more difficult to solve, but at least it wasn't an all-or-nothing gamble. The most difficult one to figure out, though, was how to obtain the treasure at the bottom of the level. Every time you got near the treasure, the doors would slam shut in your face. Solution? Collect one of the bombs and make yourself invisible, then using only sound and minor guessing, feel your way down the ladder and walk to the lamp. Oh, and that had better be the very last item you get, otherwise the gates will close and force you to suicide to escape.
    • Grand Puzzle III pushed obscure to the limit(in a way it fits, since this is the final level). Getting to the bonus bombs is simple enough. All you have to collect all but four bombs, then jump into the square that's been moving around, which teleports you to an alternate version of the level. Sounds easy enough to figure out...Until you factor in the knowledge that this square will kill you if you touch it at any other time! The only hint you are given is that the square turns yellow when you have enough bombs(hope you didn't have a black and white screen to play this on). Even then, if you don't touch the square at the right place in the level, you will fall to your death when the level restructures itself. Oh, but they saved the best tidbit for last. You have ONE life to get these four bombs with, no matter how many you saved to that point. Die at any time(including from that teleport), and you can kiss those bonuses goodbye! Oh yes, there are eight bombs in the alternate stage, with four of them being not just normal bombs, but instant death-traps...Have fun! On the plus side, when you die in the alternate stage, you instantly go to the end of the game.
  • Level 20 "Figurit" from the original game is one of the largest offenders on this list. Nearly every bomb you collect will change the layout of the stage, from breaking ladders to adding platforms to creating a deadly pitfall. Should you grab any of the bombs out of the correct order, you will either make the stage harder, force the loss of a life due to you now being in an inescapable trap, or even rendering the stage completely Unwinnable. This wasn't so bad if the player chose "Advanced", allowing them to start at level 19. Otherwise...
    • The sequel, Jumpman Junior, also made a sequel to Figurit on level 5, "Figurit's Revenge". While it was very hard to make the stage impossible, they increased the number of death-traps, making it very likely you'd lose any lives you had stockpiled to traps you wouldn't know existed until triggered.
  • Level 25, "Mystery Maze", was a level that was completely obscured in darkness. The only way to uncover the area was to move around, which fortunately would remain permanently revealed on that playthrough. The problem that made this hard is that a few of the bombs in that level were often in areas that required leaps of faith to reach...Not that you would know if the bombs were there or not to begin with, as they too were hidden in the shadows. Also, let's add the fact that there are THREE different versions of the level in this game, with it loading a random one each time you play.
    • Level 9 in the sequel, "Black Out", had the same idea. Fortunately though, there was only the one version.
  • Anyone who claims to have gotten the full bonus from the eighth level in the sequel("Spellbound") on their first couple tries AND without a guide is either incredibly lucky or an outright liar. Each of the twelve bombs in this stage puts a letter in the column at the center of the level. When all twelve are collected, you earn points for each letter placed in the correct order. There is no way to tell which bomb has which letter except with prior playthroughs, nor is there any way to tell exactly what you are spelling, likely leaving several players wondering just what the point of this level was.
• Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando: Damosel. At one point, the player is on a ledge and has to swing over to a large area, which has four Mook Makers spewing Protopets. Not only do they hit like a tank and have a knockback on Ratchet, but they can actually spawn more Protopets, and have an irritating habit of approaching from the direction the player isn't hosing with high-quality death if one stays still for about a second. The door to the next area will not open, period, until the machines are destroyed. You could swing down there and fight off the Protopets while trying to destroy the machines. Ooorrr you could just shoot them with your Vaporizer. In fact, if you're in the right spot, you can even damage two with a single shot.
• This Is the Only Level: All of the stages look virtually identical, but the solutions are vaguely hinted at by the stage title. Lampshaded in Too, where one of the stage solutions is to click the Walkthrough button.
• Milon's Secret Castle on the NES is so cryptic that Nintendo Power Magazine included an article for it in their cheats section (where normally, things like the famous Contra 32 lifes code get published)... The title of the article? "Getting Started"! The Angry Video Game Nerd made a video about it.
• The Chick Coins, and some of the rarer eggs in Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg. For example: The 'Super Recky' egg requires you to hatch either a particular item (the Booster), or a particular mount (Datch) in a particular level in Blizzard Castle, and then fly to a location which would not be thought of as acsessable (the second outer level of the Ice-Machine Castle). Another example would be where you have to jump around a gate, in order to get to a coin. This is never hinted at anywhere, and isn't that likely to be thought about, seeing as (a) gates are generally impassable until opened, and (b) it's in the second stage of the first level, whilst the game is still in 'Easing Into the Adventure' mode.