10 More Video Game Secrets That Were A Waste Of Time
6. Pendant - Faxanadu
The trope of describing any hard game as “the Dark Souls” of its genre might well be a tired one but Faxanadu perhaps has a good shot at being the real thing. In this NES action-adventure, the player ascends a tree in a dark mediaeval fantasy world that is surely designed to make you cry.
There’s “NES hard” and then there’s Faxanadu which demands players try to power level against its roster of irritating enemies and laughs when they fall and lose every ounce of progress. The game demands the purchase of keys to unlock its dungeons but these are one-time use only so if you die and are booted back into the overworld you’ll need to farm coins to re-unlock the same dungeon.
The Pendant is located at the end of the game’s Tower of Suffer (a woefully accurate name) and spawns in the corner of the boss room. As such, it’s easily missable and is a completely optional pick-up that was designed to increase the hero’s overall attack power. However, thanks to a coding error, it actually does the complete reverse.
One small line of code means that instead of buffing the player, they will instead do less damage than before. Not only is this a waste of time, it's actually a hinderance.
“Congratulations, you conquered this dungeon! Here’s a slap in the face.”