Masocore is a video game subgenre with a focus on intense difficulty, often featuring complex or unfair mechanics. The name is a

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

of "

masochism Sadism () and masochism (), known collectively as sadomasochism ( ) or S&M, is the derivation of pleasure from acts of respectively inflicting or receiving pain or humiliation. The term is named after the Marquis de Sade, a French author known ...

" and "hardcore", suggesting that players of the genre are hardcore

gamer A gamer is someone who plays interactive games, either video games, tabletop role-playing games, skill-based card games, or any combination thereof, and who often plays for extended periods of time. Originally a hobby, gaming has evolved in ...

s who find pleasure in the aggravation required to beat the games and the feeling of reward afterwards for having surpassed a seemingly insurmountable challenge. Masocore games are mostly 2D sidescrollers, harkening back to retro

Nintendo hard "Nintendo hard" is an informal term used to describe extreme difficulty in video games. It often refers to games with trial-and-error gameplay and limited or nonexistent saving of progress. The enduring term originated with Nintendo Entertainment S ...

platformers, although the definition can also be taken to encompass fully 3D games of high difficulty such as

soulslike A Soulslike (also spelled Souls-like) is a subgenre of action role-playing games known for high difficulty level, large worlds filled with enemies and emphasis on environmental storytelling, typically in a dark fantasy setting. Japanese video ga ...

Concepts

Masocore games are mostly platformers, and are specifically designed to frustrate players. Unlike classic games, masocore titles often offer infinite

lives Lives may refer to: * The plural form of a ''life'' * Lives, Iran, a village in Khuzestan Province, Iran * The number of lives in a video game * ''Parallel Lives'', aka ''Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans'', a series of biographies of famous m ...

, encouraging the player to try over and over again with little friction. Games of the subgenre are popular with

speedrunners ''SpeedRunners'' is a multiplayer side-scrolling racing game developed by DoubleDutch Games and published by tinyBuild. Originally a free web browser game titled ''SpeedRunner'' and later an Xbox 360 game by the name ''SpeedRunner HD'' on Xbox ...

, who spend thousands of hours mastering the games completely and then compete to be at the top of the leaderboards.

History

Some of the first masocore games were created out of nostalgia for classic titles, such as ''

Castlevania ''Castlevania'' (), known in Japan as is a gothic horror action-adventure video game series and media franchise created by Konami. The series is largely set in the castle of Count Dracula, the arch-enemy of the Belmont clan of vampire hunters. ...

'', ''

Mega Man ''Mega Man'' (known as in Japan) is a video game franchise developed and published by Capcom, featuring the Mega Man (character), protagonist of the same name. The Mega Man (1987 video game), original game was released for the Nintendo Enter ...

'', and '' Ghosts n' Goblins''. Fans wanted to recreate the feeling of euphoria after beating a difficult game, and therefore created similar

indie game An indie video game or indie game (short for independent video game) is a video game created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A ...

s themselves. Before the genre itself was established, numerous

Kaizo is a philosophy of Video game design, game design, specifically platform game, platforming games, distinguished by a high degree of strictness placed upon the player's intended actions and movements through a level. This emphasis on precision, ...

Mario hacks were created that greatly increased the game's difficulty. The term was popularized by the gaming blog '' Auntie Pixelante'', there attributed to an unknown SelectButton forum member. Examples of masocore games include ''

Spelunky ''Spelunky'' is a 2008 platform video game created by independent developer Derek Yu and released as source-available freeware for Microsoft Windows. It was remade for the Xbox 360 in 2012, with ports of the new version following for various ...

'' (2008) and ''

Super Meat Boy ''Super Meat Boy'' is a 2010 platform game designed by Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes under the collective name of "Team Meat". It was self-published as the successor to ''Meat Boy'', a 2008 Flash game designed by McMillen and Jonathan McEnte ...

'' (2010). Other notoriously hard titles include ''

I Wanna Be the Guy ''I Wanna Be the Guy: The Movie: The Game'', commonly called ''I Wanna Be the Guy'' and abbreviated to ''IWBTG'', is a freeware platform game created by Michael "Kayin" O'Reilly for Microsoft Windows using Multimedia Fusion 2. First released o ...

'' (2007), '' Dustforce'' (2012), ''

Geometry Dash ''Geometry Dash'' is a side-scrolling platformer mobile game created by Swedish game developer Robert Topala. It was released on 13 August 2013 for iOS and Android, with versions for Windows and macOS following on 22 December 2014. The player ...

'' (2013), ''

1001 Spikes ''1001 Spikes'' is a platform game developed by 8bits Fanatics and Nicalis, and published by Nicalis. Originally named ''Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes'', the game's objective is to escape a vast terrain and struggle to reach for victory withou ...

'' (2014), and ''

Celeste Celeste may refer to: Geography * Mount Celeste, unofficial name of a mountain on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada * Celeste, Texas, a rural city in North Texas ** Celeste High School, public high school located in the city of Celes ...

'' (2018). The game director of ''

Nioh is a 2017 action role-playing game developed by Team Ninja and published by Koei Tecmo for the PlayStation 4. Sony Interactive Entertainment published the game outside Japan on PlayStation consoles. A port to Windows including all downloadabl ...

'' (2017) stated that he intended the game to be masocore, and the development team therefore "consciously avoided making the game easy". Due to its pick-up-and-play portability and library of challenging indie games, the

Nintendo Switch The is a video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. Released in the middle of the Eighth generation of video game consoles, eighth generation of home consoles, the Switch succeeded the ...

has been called "a perfect platform for masocore games".

References

{{Reflist Video game genres