It seems like they don’t make video games as hard as they used to. There are difficulty levels on video games today that seem impossible to beat, but they’re always optional. Back in the day of the NES, though, it was like they would make games and then never even play test them — as if they never even thought the question “Can anyone realistically play this?” was worth asking. There were games so hard and that I couldn’t even imagine beating them — yet somehow they were popular and widely played. One was Ghost ‘n Goblins where I only ever made it to the third level no matter how hard I tried. Two hits and you die, and the game is constantly throwing everything at you. And you’re expected to beat the whole game twice to get the full ending. Did anyone do that without cheating? Maybe it was possible if you made playing that game your life’s work, but I don’t see a casual gamer getting anywhere in it.
Another one was Battletoads made near the end of the NES life cycle when they should have knew better. The first level was the perfect balance of fun and difficulty. The second level was quite a bit more difficult but still doable. But, by the middle of the third level, the difficulty is suddenly ramped up to eleven and never relents for the next nine or so levels (not that I got much farther without cheating).
How did these games get through testing? Who were they made for? Can any of you think of any video games nearly as hard as those (that didn’t come with easier difficulty levels)?
BTW, while researching my Fred Thompson fact today (yes, sometimes I do research) to see if everyone considered Ghost ‘n Goblins as difficult as I did, I ran into Mushihimesama. It’s a Japan only game, but my understanding is that this is the final boss of the first game when played on Ultra (it’s hardest difficulty):
And this is the final boss of the sequel:
I run into something like that, I’m not putting more quarters into the machine.
Oh, as long as I’m talking about video games for no reason, I have to give props to this Fred Thompson fact from a commenter who left himself anonymous:
Fred Thompson’s Princess is NOT in another castle.
Hats off. That was better than mine today.
I did beat Super Ghouls and Ghosts for SNES, and didn’t know about the beat it twice thing. I nearly had a stroke when I was on level 1 again.
Castlevanias were the perfect balance of fun and tricky. Check GamePRO SWAT from like, 1992, and I have a submission when I was 9 about the hidden dracula powerup platform.
Double Dragon… many a sleepless night with friends, soda pop, and oreos.
[In Double Dragon, I never knew I was supposed to enter the mountain where the two big guys came out and thus kept playing that level over and over. DD2 was fun, but DD3 was impossible. I forget if I even made it past the first level. -Ed]
I’ve hooked up my old NES a while ago, and while, yeah, some older games are frickin’ hard, there were a lot that needed battery-backup or passwords, but didn’t have them.
Bionic Commando, the original TMNT, all three Super Mario NES games…
(As far as I’m concerned, that jetski stage of Battletoads was impossible– games are supposed to be fun.)
Oh, and sometimes the controls weren’t very good, either.
Back to your point, though, the SNES rpg The Seventh Saga was really hard. Also, to get the “full experience” you had to beat it with all seven characters, and even beating it with one is only barely worth it.
Also, to get all old-school like an old fool, the Atari 2600 games Adventure and E.T. had three difficulty settings– Easy and Boring, Impossible and Not Fun, and Why Am I Playing This?.
Also also, I think there were levels on Tetris that were impossible with actual human reflexes, though obviously you had to start at an easier level and the game just got faster and faster until you can’t deal with it anymore.
Good times.
Hardest game that I’m pretty sure no one played; Mission Impossible. I never beat a level. Got into NES mode about four years ago and busted out the system but still couldn’t beat a level.
A friend of mine gave me 2 CDs a couple of years ago that he’d burned NES & SNES emulators as well as ROMs for pretty much every game made for both systems on. I have a lot of fun going back and enjoying some old school fun from time to time on my PC.
Back to the topic; ‘Bayou Billy’ sucked hardcore. If I remembered correctly you only got 1 life to start with and all of the bad guys were really freaking difficult to knock out permanently, not to mention that most of them were armed whereas you were not. I know I didn’t make it past the first level.
Another hard one was Metal Gear II: Solid Snake. You could get save codes if I remember correctly, but they were few and far between and if you died, you had to start way back in the game.
Mike Tyson’s Punchout. ’nuff said.
Do a YouTube search for Angry Nintendo Nerd. You are not alone.
I didn’t have video games as a child (though I did have PC games… Doom, FTW), but I’ve just recently started playing Final Fantasy III on SNES (thanks be to my brother-in-law-to-be). Needless to say, it’s kicking my butt. I just figured that was because I’m just a noob… which probably is the reason, but I’ll do my best to blame it on the fact that older video games are uber hard from now on. 😀
BTW, is it just me, or did anyone else notice that in the second video, the lady seemed to keep yelling “neko-chan”? I’m probably mis-hearing and trying to pick out something that I recognize, but still… screaming “cat” repeatedly during a battle is kinda random.
Speaking of old NES games, do check this out:
http://tasvideos.org/
They do Tool-Assisted Speedruns. They use every tool possible (slo-mo, frame advance, luck manipulation, decompilers, input bots…) except actual cheat codes or modifications to the original cartridge to release runs that are often spectacular to behold.
If you want to see some old games pwned in ways that sometimes defy all rules of logic, there’s some really cool stuff there, including a run of Bayou Billy that makes the game look easy, several runs of Battletoads and Mega Man that are just ludicrous. How about Mega Man X and Mega Man X2 beat at the SAME TIME using the SAME INPUTS?
BONUS FACT: all of Fred Thompson’s TAS were rejected because while significantly better than the ones on the site, none of his runs are actually tool-assisted.
I am proud to say I beat the original Battletoads and Battletoads in Battlemaniacs on the the SNES without cheating. I think I had more patience when I was a kid, able to play the same game over and over to just make it one obstacle further until I finally beat the damn thing. Many levels were impossible to beat by simply reacting to what you saw on the screen (especially the hover-bikes). You had to learn the entire sequence through trial and error and then execute it flawlessly.
I guess there may be one harder but decidedly less fun game – Federal Income Tax Extreme Edition where you have to find every possible deduction to keep from getting screwed out of your money while not setting off any flags causing you to get audited and spend an inordinate amount of time and money even if you are 100% in the right.
Megaman 1, after dedicating more then a month to playing it I finally got to the last boss… who was impossible… I beat him… turns out he wasn’t the last boss.. Never beat that game….
On Atari 2600 that Space Invaders that the enemy was invisible, the walls were invisible and moved and the game moved at a faster speed that was hard.
Landing on Top Gun — not the game as a whole, but just landing your plane
I actually miss the hard games. Growing up you could buy a game and have a decent chance of not finishing it till the end of summer. Now you can beat most so quickly, what’s the point? (That’s probably good for my productivity, but it still leaves me up at night occasionally playing games that I’ve downloaded from the 1980s.)
Two more recent titles that are inexplicably hard. Ninja Gaiden for the orignal Xbox, and Ikaruga for the Gamecube. However Ikaruga did have an “easy” setting but it still took me three months to beat it… Think the game you showed in the video, but you have to worry about color patterns, you can change your color and absorb one type of attack but the other would kill you. Crazy hard
Don’t forget about the games that didn’t have an ending such as Gauntlet II. Me and my little brother once spent an entire day playing it and got to level 200+ and there was no end in sight.
AWESOME!!! My fact was mentioned!
Seriously, this makes my day on so many levels.
You have obviously never heard of Touhou. These are modern games like that. I’ve beaten the easiest of the shoot-em-up games (there are a couple of fighters in there, too) a couple of times…on easy…after many, many failures.
Game companies are beginning to realize that there a lot more money to be made attracting the casual gamer than the hardcore gamer. The former will buy a game regardless, the latter must be coaxed a bit. Making a game that is difficult, without the option of making it easier, causes most casual gamers to look the other way. They don’t have the time/skill/energy/desire or whatever to dedicate to such a title so they look elsewhere.
As the casual/non-gamer market is a whole lot larger than the hardcore gamer market it makes good business sense to attract those customers. Besides, as you yourself note, Frank, games still have that hard setting.
I know that as I’ve gotten older I’ve found myself drawn to the easier settings just because I don’t have the time I used to be able to dedicate to gaming in general. I get an hour or so a day, at most, and then I have to go. I really don’t like dropping $50-$60 on a title only to get stuck for hours on end because I simply can’t dedicate the time needed to get past something stupidly hard.
A friend of mine told me that he has approached games, as he’s gotten older, as one might television. It’s something he wants to sit down with for a few hours after work, feel like he’s accomplished something, then move on until the next day. The same way one might watch a episode of their favorite television series.
That’s where I’m at. I simply cannot decicate 8, 10, or 12 hours a day to a game like I used to. Yet I still like mature titles that are typically harder than other games. So, I’m grateful for the easier settings.
Am I hardcore anymore? Maybe not. But I’m not a kid any more either. Things change. I still play games, a lot of games, but I need to have those few hours I spend with them be more productive then they were 15 years ago. Otherwise, I feel like I wasted my money.
But, that’s just me.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta beat “Metroid Prime 3” before “Eternal Sonata” comes out on Monday.
Why they persist in trying to make FPS games harder and harder is beyond me. The joy of endlessly blasting monsters in Doom with your RPG, turning them to bloody mush, has been replaced by games like “Black” (PS2), where just shooting your gun once brings the entire Soviet arsenal down upon your one dude.
And it brought me to this realization: FPS’s suck ASS on consoles. Until the console people realize that the best way to play an FPS is a keyboard and mouse, PC’s will always be better for that genre.
Otcconan,
I’m a PC FPS lover but if you want FPS goodness for the console, get the Nintendo Wii. “Metroid Prime 3” plays like a dream and is as close as any console is ever going to get the PC’s mouse and keyboard. It plays nearly identical to a PC FPS.
I can’t speak highly enough about it. The Nintendo Wii is the place for PC FPS fans to go. Check it out.
Retro did their homework and got the controls right. Forget about the “Call of Duty” port. It’s a mess. “Resident Evil 4” for the Wii is better but “Metroid Prime 3” schooled them all.
[As soon as I have some spare time, I’m definitely getting Metroid 3. -Ed.]
I also recommend metroid prime 3, it’s pretty sweet and the only FPS I play on the console.
Just wish nintendo would buckle and give us a good multi-player setup like x-box live for it’s games…
I used to play SMASH TV in the arcade when I was younger. I probably spent about $100 over the course of 3 years playing it, but never beat it. At the time, it seemed, beating that game was impossible.
Then a couple years ago a few friends and I went over to his house to play HALO on his new XBOX. While we were waiting for one of our friends to show up, we threw in a disc that had a re-hash compilation of a bunch of 80’s arcade games, and SMASH TV was one of them. A couple of us recognized it, others had never seen it, but we were all hooked. In the space of about an hour and a half and 20 or so deaths later, we had the game licked.
I think these games just seemed impossible to us when we were kids. Being a little older, a little smarter, and still having your reflexes makes these games a lot easier than they used to be.
I admit that I have been won over by the “dumbing-down” crowd. I just started Metroid Prime 3 two days ago, and I only paused a moment before selecting “Normal” difficulty — I could go through on Hard, and probably beat it, but I have so little time to game these days that I want to go through the “die-restart-die again in the same place” cycle as little as possible, thank you very much.
I played through Bioshock on Normal as well, and was going to start in on Hard, but only made it through two levels before I bought Metroid. Not that it matters, anyway — there’s no such thing as “Hard” when you have unlimited lives…
Brief follow-up: if Take2 would release a tiny little patch for Bioshock adding a “Hardcore” mode, which is Hard but without Vita-chambers (or whatever they were called), I would love them forever and ever.
Ah Battletoads, after the original Zelda it’s easily my favorite game of all time. I remember back when I was younger, every day after school my friends would come over (my mom ran a 12 kid daycare out of our house and they were daycare kids) and we’d play Battletoads. None of us ever got past level 3 back then. I think the farthest any of us got was the 2nd checkpoint after you start the cart part of the level. I never thought levels 1 or 2 were hard though.
I remember hearing someone say about Battletoads that you should never play it with a significant other. The 2-player mode makes it impossible unless you both know exactly what you’re doing the entire way through.
I grew up with the game Red Alert for the PC and the game, for me anyway, was extremely difficult. I was however, six years old. Now as games are getting more and more beautiful, the difficulty waned. However, even if it is easier, I’ll still buy them. I mean, Has anyone heard of World in Conflict? Beautiful and creative.