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

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsmasochism Sadomasochism ( ) is the giving and receiving of pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual pleasure from their acts. While the terms sadist and masochist refer ...

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

gamer A gamer is a proactive hobbyist who plays interactive games, especially video games, tabletop role-playing games, and skill-based card games, and who plays for usually long periods of time. Some gamers are competitive, meaning they routinely ...

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 ''SideScrollers'' is a graphic novel by Matthew Loux, published by Oni Press Oni Press is an American independent comic book and graphic novel publisher based in Portland, Oregon. In 2019, it became an imprint label following the company's mer ...

, harkening back to retro Nintendo hard 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 and action-adventure games known for high levels of difficulty and emphasis on environmental storytelling, typically in a dark fantasy setting. It had its origin in ''Dem ...

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 Speedrunning is the act of playing a video game, or section of a video game, with the goal of completing it as fast as possible. Speedrunning often involves following planned routes, which may incorporate sequence breaking and can exploit glit ...

, 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 about Dracula (Castlevania), Dracula, created and developed by Konami. It has been released on various platforms, from early system ...

'', ''

Mega Man ''Mega Man'', known as in Japan, is a Japanese science fiction video game franchise created by Capcom, starring a series of robot characters each known by the moniker "Mega Man (character), Mega Man". Mega Man (video game), The original game w ...

'', 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 game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically 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) games. ...

s themselves. Before the genre itself was established, numerous

Kaizo ''Kaizo'' (, "kaizō", meaning "modification", "rebuild" or "reconfiguration") is a philosophy of game design, specifically platforming games, distinguished by a high degree of strictness placed upon the player's intended actions and movements ...

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 source-available 2D platform game created by independent developer Derek Yu and released as freeware for Microsoft Windows. It was remade for the Xbox 360 in 2012, with ports of the new version following for various platfo ...

'' (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'' (''IWBTG'') is a freeware platform game created by Michael "Kayin" O'Reilly for Microsoft Windows using Multimedia Fusion 2. First released on October 5, 2007, the game is no longer in active development, though the game's s ...

'' (2007), ''

Dustforce ''Dustforce'' is a platform game, platform video game developed by Hitbox Team. The game was released in January 2012 for Microsoft Windows via Steam (service), Steam, and Mac OS X through Steam in May 2012. A Linux port was released as part of th ...

'' (2012), ''

1001 Spikes ''1001 Spikes'' is a platform game developed by 8bits Fanatics and Nicalis, and published by Nicalis. Originally named ''Aban Hawkins & the 1001 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 Celeste, ...

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

Nioh is an action role-playing video game developed by Team Ninja. It was released for PlayStation 4 in February 2017, and was published by Sony Interactive Entertainment internationally, and by Koei Tecmo in Japan. An edition for PlayStation 4 and ...

'' (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 hybrid video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. The console itself is a Tablet computer#Gaming tablet, tablet that can either be docking station, docked for use as a home video ...

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

References

{{Reflist Video game genres Video game slang