Every game has one and it’s happened to every gamer. You’re playing your way through a game and everything is going well enough when suddenly it all goes to hell. An enemy pops up on the screen where you weren’t expecting it. A fireball flies out of a pit just as you’re committing to a jump. A bad guy rounds the corner with guns blazing just as you’re reloading. These are the Oh S*** Moments of gaming, and I’m going to start paying tribute to the best examples here at Insert Credits.
AquaSonic
Platformers in the late 80s and early 90s usually treated an encounter with water in one of two ways: swim or instant death. Sonic the Hedgehog, however, decided to treat water a little differently. Getting wet in places like Labyrinth Zone or Aquatic Ruin Zone didn’t kill you, and evidently hedgehogs and foxes can’t swim in Sonic’s world, so instead you were just slowed down slightly and given a marginally improved jump.
Labyrinth Zone, graveyard of a thousand thrown controllers.
Oh, and you died if you didn’t get air from the air bubbles conveniently placed throughout the underwater zones.
Anyone who played through the Sonic games in the early 90s remembers the feeling of panic setting in as the “you’re about to die” music replaced the normal music, accompanied by a countdown helpfully informing players that they only had five seconds to live if they didn’t find air soon. If other players were anything like me then this was usually followed by an “Oh S***” and a mad scramble forward trying to find any available air source. The truly insidious thing about underwater breathing panic was that it was more likely to kill a player as they powered through monsters and obstacles heedless of losing rings than by actually completing the countdown and drowning our hedgehog hero.
Other games have copied this underwater breath replenishment mechanic since Sonic, but none have done it with the same degree of panic-inducing flair as the original Sonic Team, making this a genuine “oh s***” moment in gaming.
