Extra Lives: An Obsolete Game Mechanic
Death is inevitable in video games. Perhaps your health ran down to zero after failing to dodge one attack too many. Perhaps you missed a jump and fell into a bottomless pit. Or perhaps you ran out of time or failed some other objective that caused you to lose without your character dying. So how do games punish you for failure while also giving you a chance to try again? I will look at this trope through the Super Mario Bros. franchise to show how extra lives gradually fell out of favor.
For much of gaming history, extra lives were the way to give you a limited number of chances to beat the game. Every time you died, you lost a life, and if you lost all of them, the game would end(unless you had a continue, which would enable you to resume play with a few extra lives). Many games would offer the chance to obtain extra lives or continues, whether by obtaining rare items (e.g.1-Up Mushrooms), many common items (e.g. coins) or a certain amount of points.
In Mario's first games- Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Mario Bros- the game lasted until your lives ran out. Even if you finished the game- by rescuing Pauline in Donkey Kong or rescuing Donkey Kong in the sequel- you would go back to the first level, with the game becoming harder, and the process would repeat until you inevitably ran out of lives. It was possible to gain extra lives through gaining points, but eventually, you would lose them more quickly than you gained them, and ultimately run out.
In Super Mario Bros. 1 and 2 (both the original version/The Lost Levels and the reskinned version of Doki Doki Panic), players had a goal to achieve, and a certain amount of lives with which to do it. While it was possible to get more lives by collecting 100 coins or a 1-Up Mushroom, it was relatively difficult, and if players started losing lives before World 7 or 8, they most likely wouldn't finish the game. Once again, they were expected to learn how to keep their lives for as long as possible, practicing and getting farther until they ultimately got to the end of the game. Reaching the end was a significant accomplishment, but it could be frustrating to have to go through the entire game in order to be able to work on the difficult parts of the endgame. Of course, such was life back in the days before saved games.
Super Mario Bros. 3 was where things started to change. Since the game was longer than Super Mario 1 and 2 (it had 90 levels, compared to SMB 1's 32 and SMB 2's 20), losing all your lives woul send you back to the start of the world, rather than the start of the game, although you had to be able to complete it in one sitting. The game was also more generous with 1-Ups than before, likely expecting the player to stockpile 1-Ups in early worlds and spend them in later ones.
Super Mario World introduced the concept of saving, which was granted by completing a Switch Palace, fortress, castle or Ghost House (the latter of which can be done repeatedly), as well as every other level in the Special World. Should you run out of lives, you will simply have to go back to your last save point. Of course, this is rather unlikely, given that obtaining 1-Ups is easier than ever in this case. The ability to save is a welcome feature consideirng that Super Mario World is longer than 3 once you consider the larger levels, multiple exits and other secrets, but it also means there is less use for 1-Ups.
The trend continued in Super Mario World, which I discussed in a previous entry, and Super Mario Sunshine and the Galaxy duology followed 64's example. The game had 120 unique stars, three unique caps and three battles against Bowser, making it all but impossible to complete in one sitting. You were given the opportunity to save whenever you wanted, and asked whether to do so after each star. Getting a Game Over would simply send you back to the title screen and force you to reload your save, so if you saved often, you would not lose much progress.
Super Mario Odyssey not only is even larger than 64, Sunshine or Galaxy game, but it also took a small but significant step by removing extra lives entirely. Dying simply cost Mario 10 coins and sent him back to the last checkpoint flag, or the entrance to the sub-area. Even the 10 coin fee was barely a slap on the wrist; it was posible for players to collect that many coins before dying, even in a relatively dangerous area. Since saving is done automatically whenever the player makes significant progress, the game can't even punish the players for being careless and forgetting to save.
Essentially, extra lives work well as long as they have meaning- a finite number of chances in a game in which players are unable to simply reload their game if they make a mistake. They also only work if making the player start over is a reasonable punishment for failure, which is only viable in an arcade-style contest of endurance, or a game that is short enough to be completed in one sitting. Unfortunately, such games can easily be completed in, at most, a few hours if one does not have to worry about losing extra lives, or has the ability to reload save states. As a result, modern games tend to eschew extra lives in favor of having players reload if they die, and rather than force players to practice until they can go through the game perfectly, they make players restart a given segment until they are able to successfully complete it.
Like many other obsolete ideas and bits of technology, extra lives once served a vital purpose, but as video games changed, they gradually lost their relevance and faded away. They do still have a purpose in retro-style games, but to many people, they are a relic of a time before saved games.
For much of gaming history, extra lives were the way to give you a limited number of chances to beat the game. Every time you died, you lost a life, and if you lost all of them, the game would end(unless you had a continue, which would enable you to resume play with a few extra lives). Many games would offer the chance to obtain extra lives or continues, whether by obtaining rare items (e.g.1-Up Mushrooms), many common items (e.g. coins) or a certain amount of points.
In Mario's first games- Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Mario Bros- the game lasted until your lives ran out. Even if you finished the game- by rescuing Pauline in Donkey Kong or rescuing Donkey Kong in the sequel- you would go back to the first level, with the game becoming harder, and the process would repeat until you inevitably ran out of lives. It was possible to gain extra lives through gaining points, but eventually, you would lose them more quickly than you gained them, and ultimately run out.
In Super Mario Bros. 1 and 2 (both the original version/The Lost Levels and the reskinned version of Doki Doki Panic), players had a goal to achieve, and a certain amount of lives with which to do it. While it was possible to get more lives by collecting 100 coins or a 1-Up Mushroom, it was relatively difficult, and if players started losing lives before World 7 or 8, they most likely wouldn't finish the game. Once again, they were expected to learn how to keep their lives for as long as possible, practicing and getting farther until they ultimately got to the end of the game. Reaching the end was a significant accomplishment, but it could be frustrating to have to go through the entire game in order to be able to work on the difficult parts of the endgame. Of course, such was life back in the days before saved games.
Super Mario Bros. 3 was where things started to change. Since the game was longer than Super Mario 1 and 2 (it had 90 levels, compared to SMB 1's 32 and SMB 2's 20), losing all your lives woul send you back to the start of the world, rather than the start of the game, although you had to be able to complete it in one sitting. The game was also more generous with 1-Ups than before, likely expecting the player to stockpile 1-Ups in early worlds and spend them in later ones.
Super Mario World introduced the concept of saving, which was granted by completing a Switch Palace, fortress, castle or Ghost House (the latter of which can be done repeatedly), as well as every other level in the Special World. Should you run out of lives, you will simply have to go back to your last save point. Of course, this is rather unlikely, given that obtaining 1-Ups is easier than ever in this case. The ability to save is a welcome feature consideirng that Super Mario World is longer than 3 once you consider the larger levels, multiple exits and other secrets, but it also means there is less use for 1-Ups.
The trend continued in Super Mario World, which I discussed in a previous entry, and Super Mario Sunshine and the Galaxy duology followed 64's example. The game had 120 unique stars, three unique caps and three battles against Bowser, making it all but impossible to complete in one sitting. You were given the opportunity to save whenever you wanted, and asked whether to do so after each star. Getting a Game Over would simply send you back to the title screen and force you to reload your save, so if you saved often, you would not lose much progress.
Super Mario Odyssey not only is even larger than 64, Sunshine or Galaxy game, but it also took a small but significant step by removing extra lives entirely. Dying simply cost Mario 10 coins and sent him back to the last checkpoint flag, or the entrance to the sub-area. Even the 10 coin fee was barely a slap on the wrist; it was posible for players to collect that many coins before dying, even in a relatively dangerous area. Since saving is done automatically whenever the player makes significant progress, the game can't even punish the players for being careless and forgetting to save.
Essentially, extra lives work well as long as they have meaning- a finite number of chances in a game in which players are unable to simply reload their game if they make a mistake. They also only work if making the player start over is a reasonable punishment for failure, which is only viable in an arcade-style contest of endurance, or a game that is short enough to be completed in one sitting. Unfortunately, such games can easily be completed in, at most, a few hours if one does not have to worry about losing extra lives, or has the ability to reload save states. As a result, modern games tend to eschew extra lives in favor of having players reload if they die, and rather than force players to practice until they can go through the game perfectly, they make players restart a given segment until they are able to successfully complete it.
Like many other obsolete ideas and bits of technology, extra lives once served a vital purpose, but as video games changed, they gradually lost their relevance and faded away. They do still have a purpose in retro-style games, but to many people, they are a relic of a time before saved games.
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