Hopelessly obscure Amiga space-adventure/flight-sim-'em-up Exodus 3010 is almost entirely impossible to win.
E3010 is similar to Milennium 2.2 and Deuteros: you're in command of the Starlight, a space ship ferrying the last of the human race to a distant, but habitable, planet. You encounter alien races and can attempt to negotiate trades with them, or simply blow them out of the skies. There are more tactical levels where you can retrieve valuable cargo from derelict spacecraft by manually piloting a ship through rotating minefields, or by tractor beaming asteroids out the way so they don't crash into the cargo and blow it up before you can retrieve it.
The problem is, if you somehow ever make the game unwinnable, the Starlight INSTANTLY SELF DESTRUCTS AND KILLS THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE. This can happen in the following ways:
Quote:
* If you run out of fighter ships.
* If you run out of materials to build one.
* You start with exactly the correct amount of resources to build ONE ship. It is possible, as your very first action, to waste these starting resources to build a useful-sounding 'Energy Changer'. You get no warning that building this cause you to run out of resources. The Starlight simply self-destructs.
* Attempting to repair the ship's engine with nuclear or explosive items heavily damages the ship. You are not told which of your many inventory items repair which parts of the ship (you're supposed to guess!).
* Most aliens, robots and space blobs you encounter are hostile. Many will become highly agressive and attack the Starlight simply for contacting them. The game will not progress until you attempt contact with them, which guarantees them the first strike.
* Your fighters are made of paper, more or less. Crashing into any spaceborne object results in the instant destruction of your craft.
* To progress, you have to recover items surrounded by very sensitive space-mines. Early levels have dozens of mines in concentric circles around the loot. Later levels have many more circles of moving mines in three dimensions. Triggering the mines sets off a chain reaction that destroys your craft, the loot and all other nearby craft.
* Your ship's tractor beam holds items above the rear of your craft while in use. If the item is below and in front of you when you activate it, the item is pulled directly through your craft, destroying it.
* The fighter AI 'RETURN' command causes all your ships to return to the mothership simultaneously. If you have more than one ship deployed at once, it is more than likely that they will crash into each other while attempting to return.
* A late encounter has the Starlight threatened by a meteor shower. A game bug prevents the player from averting a near-fatal collision. You simply have to endure it.
* A phenomenon called 'Null K Space' can cause your fighters to inexplicably freeze in space. If you don't find the source of the Null K Space fast, all of your craft become frozen. As you can't return to the Starlight until all your craft are returned or destroyed, you have to reset the game.
And that's only the in-game ways to lose.
The game is similar to X-Com in that you can build a series of fighters, unfreeze a number of pilots, and send out your wings on missions to salvage derelict craft and other booty you find lying around, and destroy hostile aliens. Like X-Com, it has three phases: 'Outfit your craft before launch', 'The mission itself' and the 'Mission report'. Unfortunately, there's a bug in the 'mission report' where the pilots reported about tend not to match up with the ones you sent out: you can send out James Smith and receive a report that John Brown was K.I.A. This effect is magnified the more fighters you send out (you can send out a maximum of ten).
The final mission is a non-avoidable confrontation against an 'invincible fleet of invincible ships'. Your only hope is to send out a full complement of your most capable craft and hope they win. And then, if they win, you have to hope they don't all crash into each other trying to get back to the Starlight. And then, if they make it back, you have to hope that the game doesn't go all Guru Meditiation when it mixes up the pilot names.
And for a final insult, the planet you're going to appears on the radar in the same way as any other hostile encounter. To win the game, you have to send out a fighter wing to 'confront' it. (If all your craft were lost in the previous fight, but you managed to defeat the enemy nevertheless, you instantly lose because you haven't got any ships.)
If you leave it too long, you will lose anyway, because apparently the Starlight was programmed to CRASH INTO THE DESTINATION instead of land on it.
This video contains graphics and audio that I never wish to experience again.Also, in the Dreamcast version of Headhunter, you cannot complete the New Game+.
To progress in HH, you occasionally need to return to the LEILA facility and complete some license tests: virtual reality sneaking, shooting, accuracy challenges. Unfortunately, one of opponents in one of the sneaking challenges doesn't respond to the 'decoy bullet casing' distraction item correctly. He's supposed to walk up to where you threw it and look around for a moment. Instead, he only turns his head for a fraction of a second while standing on the spot. As a result, you can't sneak past him.
For reading this far, you win a prize:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Unwinnable
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