After reading in the thread "Most regrettable gaming moments?", I felt a little sad for them AND at the same time I wanted to hear more about them....in this case, The cheapest death they ever had!

My cheapest death was in a game called NetHack, I was a knight and after I descended into floor 4 in the Gnomes' Mines I saw no one (at least to my view) and when I stepped forward a dwarf appeared from that the right, so the dwarf spends his turn by reading a scroll of create monster and it spawned 7 monsters that all surrounded me and killed me before I even could act.....it was then I realized my luck was beyond horrible...First, humanoid monsters don't start with a scroll (maybe they do.....but very rarely), and out of all 22 scrolls.....he got scroll of create monster, BUT WAIT.....it's a cursed scroll of create monster which creates more monsters than usual, and only 1/8 of the scrolls in the whole dungeon is cursed....and the summoned monsters where higher level than me......

Now, I would like to hear your story.

oh hey, this subject actually brings up the reason I made my "enemies that always screw you over" thread. I was playing Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland and was gonna fight a boss with 2 hits left. I figured I'd go to the first level and get a maximum tomato, but i got hit by one of those flying guys and right as I was gonna get my tomato, a fire shooting guy shot a fireball at me. I jumped over an obstacle and was hit by the fireball before i could even SEE it. WHY make the enemies off-screen know where you are!? But yeah, wasn't the first time they did something like this, but it caused me to lose a life on the FIRST LEVEL. 

bomberman, I went to place a bomb and someone paused, making me trap myself and I died. very cheap.

Nid spear through the fog of war pre-nerf. If you ever played against an AP Nidalee before her kit change that needs no elaboration. But I shall tell of one particularly irritating spear death. You know what juking is? Faking out the enemy into thinking you go one way and they go the other? I was successful in doing that once when most of the other team was chasing me (I went a little to deep for a kill). So I was sitting in a bush waiting for recall to finish casting so I could heal when a ward drops into the bush I'm in, probably shouldn't have chose a commonly warded bush. My recall is about to finish casting so I decide to stand still and let it finish. That was a bad decision because a spear followed the ward and hit me... After some nice juking I get nuked lol. Before her kit change Nid's spears could decimate your health so people include it in the 'nuclear' abilities (others include an AP Annie's Tibbers drop or Nunu's ult at full damage). The spears still hurt like heck but the hitbox on them was adjusted so their harder to hit and they also had their ratios adjusted.

Most cheap death?

Months ago, it was this...

Wombo Combo'd in a Free For All in Smash 64! It was a Captain Falcon only 99 stock on dreamland. It happened when I had ~70 stocks and the CPUs at level 9 had under 35 stocks. 0-death. Started "berzerking" my controller the rest of the match spamming out of anger. (Philosoraptor time!) If the AI in Smash 64 can't combo well, how can you get 0-90 death in a Free For All?


Then, a few days ago, it is now...

...Ganondorf's u-tilt at 0% as Fox in the middle of Final Destination without knowing that could hit failing to punish the AI randomly trying to do so. Few hours later, had something even worse. It's in my "True melee rage quit" thread and its listed in #2. Back-to-Back competitive play killing moments.

I was at the beginning of Tall Tall Mountain in Super Mario 64. I went over to the 1-up mushroom that you can get -1up (lose a life) for trying to get. I tried to jump up so the wind could carry me close to the Chuck-ya, but I fell and the wind didn't carry me at all.

My cheapest deaths usually occur during local play, when pausing is allowed. People pause to ruin whatever I am doing, and then resume and destroy me. This happens in many different games. The other cheap deaths occur during online play. I will lag a little bit, and die due to to my lag. I never considered those fair, and I tend to lag a lot due to my unstable and poor Internet connection. No specific games, it just happens to me a lot.

I've had many times that I made the wrong move while I had no energy left or I just jumped or walked into ravines. In many rpg's I forgot to heal and I was beaten in no time. I also have trouble if people pause the game sometimes or start talking to me and I have to pause the game at a wrong moment. It can completely mess up your game and your rhythm.

I expected people to post about the cheap death that happens in an unfair single-player game, or an online game with constant lagging.

But Wow, half of the people's cheapest deaths here is about pausing the game at the worst moments, I know that pausing the game can be annoying, but not like this.....at least I never knew that pausing can be an effective weapon!

I've had so many. This is a hard question, but I recall dying to the very first Goomba in the original Super Mario Bros. I've seen somebody accidentally do this before, so I don't feel too bad, but still. The FIRST Goomba!

Dwarf Fortress. The very name should send chills down your spine. The game in which it's possible to be beaten to death with a feather. But that's not the cheapest death ever. Oh, no.

I took an interest in Dwarf Fortress's world generator, so I would frequently build worlds and create characters specifically to explore them without even getting involved in fights or adventures except with the occasional wild predator.

On this occasion, I was exploring a glacier and it got really dark, so I decided to sleep for the night. This is how I discovered that Dwarf Fortress doesn't keep track of the climate or temperature while the character is sleeping: When I woke up, the glacier was gone and my character was literally floating in mid-air above the water. As he woke up, the game's physics kicked in and he fell into the water, stunning him. Confused, I tried to swim for shore, but on my second turn the game remembered that I was exploring the freaking Arctic Circle and froze the water, trapping my character in the ice and killing him instantly.

I was killed not by monsters, not by a physics object, and not even by a cruel twist of fate, but by the programming.

@Crawldragon: Out of all the deaths so far...you sir got the best one in my opinion XD (btw, have you played NetHack?)

saldek : Yes, I have played NetHack, and yes I have suffered many humiliating defeats in NetHack. I briefly considered responding to your question with the time I died trying to kick a corpse out of my way (my horse had died and I wasn't able to pick her up, so I tried to move her via other means) but I thought the Dwarf Fortress death was much much more noteworthy.

I've beaten quite a few of the notoriously hard nes games such as Battle toads, The Castlevaniavania series, double dragon and the likes.  Needless to say I've encountered cheap deaths many times through my gaming career.  The difference btwn those and the newer cheap deaths is those deaths would just piss me off and make me more determined to complete the game.  Newer cheap deaths tend to envolve losing hours of progress and the like that can just make you feel hopeless and not want to play the game ever again.  With the newer generation I stick to a lot of racing games and fighting games where that kind of thing just doesn't happen so much so I haven't really experienced that hopeless feeling that comes with some of these newer cheap deaths.

Bomberman, opponent had a Yellow Louie (kangaroo). Those who play Bomberman know what I'm talking about. I got trapped between blocks so I had to suicide.

Stevie 764 : Haha, Wombo Combo in 64?

A couple months ago I was playing Minecraft and about 3 Zombies got into my house and chases me to my bed and killed me. I kept spawning there and they would keep killing me before I could even move. I died more than 30 times before I just turned the game off, it was terrible

Well, I was playing Dark Castle for the Mega Drive, which is one of the very worst games that I've ever played. The ways that you can die in that game are just outrageous. The most ridiculous of them is when you jump on stairs, you roll down and die. The stairs are about as high as the person himself, so it doesn't even make sense to die from simply just rolling down a few steps. That game is so frustrating.

If you ever played Ninja Gaiden for the NES, cheap death should be the subtitle for that game.

vanelan :
Oh I did play that, and got killed by that annoying *enter random curse here* eagle that re-spawns endlessly at stage 6-2.

In Skyward Sword, I kept dying trying to jump across or swing across a chasm in the Forest Temple before I realized that there was a bridge...