Masocore platformer

Masocore platformers are deliberately made unfair and incredibly challenging to the extent that the developers are perceptibly trolling their audience. They often require precise timing and trial and error to avoid tricks and traps that may appear completely unexpected; the designer's objective is often to surprise and frustrate players. Furthermore, they often have merciless consequences for mistakes and few checkpoints. Many masocore platformers deliberately ignore or parody game design conventions to mislead and confuse players. In contrast, games designed to be simply 'difficult' often have 'tells' to indicate where danger may be present and reasonable means to reacting and adapting to them, or otherwise may be difficult purely by accident or poor design choices.

For example, the giant cherries in I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game at first appear to be seemingly innocuous decorations but, in reality, are lethal traps. After their first interaction with a cherry falling from the tree, most players would naturally expect cherries to continue to follow the laws of nature only to fall victim to a second cherry that instead falls upwards. Avoiding these and other traps requires memorization, fast reflexes, and an understanding of the developer's absurdist sense of humor.

The term 'masocore' was popularized in the late 2000s as a way to describe the growing popularity of masocore platformers such as Syobon Action and the Super Kaizo Mario hack of Super Mario World [スーパーマリオワールド], although the methodology can be applied to all varieties of action games. In the case of emulated masocore game hacks, players often take advantage of emulation save states as a means of reducing the extreme difficulty of these games or as a method to practice difficult techniques before attempting to play the game without tool assistance.