These old school NES games are hard!!!!

[Shoemaker]

Well she specifically asked for one. I'll definitely be playing it more though lol

haha my first thought was

 

[Shoemaker]

Adventures of Link and Megaman series were hard. Original Legend of Zelda wasn't so hard, especially if you unlocked the various weapons, swords, bombs, arrow, etc.

I think the hardest thing about The Legend of Zelda was not having the internet, not having the right copy of Nintendo Power and trying to figure out where everything was just by adventuring or asking friends if they found X,Y or Z. The clues you get in that game are pretty cryptic. But just being able to save helped a lot.

 

[Shoemaker]

Back in those days they had to toughen kids up in case nuclear war broke out

To the shelter! Quick kids, jump over that pit and kick the turtles out of your way.

 

[ModernMatt]

Just bought the NES classic for my gfs bday and these games are all incredibly difficult. From Mario, Zelda, Punch out....etc. I don't remember hen being so difficult. Can't get passed the first stage in a lot of them. Not sure how I played these as a kid lol

There was no internet back then, so we just played video games. Mesmerizer all the habits in Punch Out on all the fighters. It was time consuming but when you figured it out then beat the game then it was satisfying.

Plus a bunch of the games would have enemies respawning as soon as you left the screen and did a bit of backtracking.

 

[ModernMatt]

Yeah the NES had some ridiculously difficult games.

Ghosts N Goblins was the only game I played but didn't beat, that shit was absurd.

Metroid, Kid Icarus, Battletoads, Contra, and a few of the Mega Mans were also really hard.

Man, Ghosts N Goblins was ridiculous!

Wish I was able to beat Battletoads as a kid though, tried so many times and was utterly annoying. It probably gave me anger problems as a kid, hahaha

 

[Rygu]

Man, Ghosts N Goblins was ridiculous!

Wish I was able to beat Battletoads as a kid though, tried so many times and was utterly annoying. It probably gave me anger problems as a kid, hahaha

Haha yeah I'm the only one I ever knew who could beat that one part with the super fast moving platforms. GNG though was the only game I put full effort into that I didn't beat. Kid Icarus was insanely hard as well.

 

[Shoemaker]

Anyone remember the Ghostbusters game for NES? What a ridiculous piece of shit. It was quite literally unbeatable in some situations, iirc. The ghosts on the last level are randomized and can appear in ways that make it impossible to actually finish the game.

That's something that I remind myself when I beat a game, "Don't get too excited, this thing was designed to be beaten." But that's not the case with Ghostbusters. If you beat that, pack yourself on the back.

 

[GSP_37]

I think the hardest thing about The Legend of Zelda was not having the internet, not having the right copy of Nintendo Power and trying to figure out where everything was just by adventuring or asking friends if they found X,Y or Z. The clues you get in that game are pretty cryptic. But just being able to save helped a lot.

I think what I did with a bunch of these NES/GBC games was save the jpeg of the stitched together screenshot maps to a USB flashdrive and plug that into the HDTV as needed.

Search "DEngel" Zelda world map.

The in-game clues for Simon's Quest were crap, but thanks to YouTube short clips, I finished that game.

 

[the muntjac]

Old games being hard is probably a contributing factor to why gaming was more of a niche market back in this day because they used to be so unforgiving and required much patience, dedication, and trial and error to get through. All so kids could see an end screen that most likely had spelling errors.

 

[Raider Nation]

They didn't make games for punk bitches back in the day. Now it's all about the punk bitches that want the dumbest shit from their video games.

 

[Dizzy]

You can say that again.

 

[Patrick Jane]

The reason the games were so hard back then was not to make them more fun and challenging but because the game rental market was very important. Because of that, they didn't want you to beat the game in a weekend and never rent it again but rent it over and over to make more money. Some people remember the difficulty from back then as positive but it was basically just a financial exploitation tactic, similar to quarter-munching arcade games that weren't supposed to be beaten without dying a lot.

 

[rob mafia]

iirc, ghostbusters for the nes was pretty easy. i recall borrowing it from a friend and beating it within a couple hours. maybe even less. i was familiar with the c64 game, though... iirc, the worst part was climbing stairs at the end. haha.

but +1 for ghosts n goblins being motherfucking damn near impossible. i loved that game, though. same for ninja gaiden, to a lesser extent.

funny enough, i thought most/all of the games listed on page 1 were pretty easy/normalish.

 

[Halge]

Any game using game controllers (joysticks etc) are instantly harder, at least to me. I just don't have the coordination for them. I've played a couple of old nes/snes/c64 games on the pc using emulators, and the keyboard+mouse combo instantly made them easier.

 

[Jumpy]

They upped the difficulty because they couldn't make games with 50 to 100 hours of content like now.

Growing up in the NES era I do find a lot of stuff too easy these days.

I mean, to be fair, how many games these days have 50 to 100 hours of content? Multiplayer doesn't really count in this context, right? The only games you see even close to 50 hours are single player RPGs.
Last of Us: 20 hours
God of War: 25-35 hours, previous games 10-15
Any FPS campaign lasts 6-12 hours
Far Cry 5: 25 hours

 

[Mike]

I mean, to be fair, how many games these days have 50 to 100 hours of content? Multiplayer doesn't really count in this context, right? The only games you see even close to 50 hours are single player RPGs.
Last of Us: 20 hours
God of War: 25-35 hours, previous games 10-15
Any FPS campaign lasts 6-12 hours
Far Cry 5: 25 hours

Rpgs, open world games of all kinds, anything with strong replay value, new game pluses and the like. Quite a lot of games really.

There are a number of games on my steam library that I have hundreds of hours on.

 

[Jumpy]

Rpgs, open world games of all kinds, anything with strong replay value, new game pluses and the like. Quite a lot of games really.

There are a number of games on my steam library that I have hundreds of hours on.

Yeah but, I just named several popular AAA titles that are sub 30 hours and you named nothing. Again, I already said multiplayer doesn't count and single player RPGs are the only games that consistently have tons of hours of content. I too have hundreds of hours in Rust and Overwatch, or Fallout and Elder Scrolls. Any game with a NG+ is going to be an RPG 99.9% of the time. Middle Earth, Witcher, FO, TES, all single player RPGs which better fucking have a ton of content.

Anyway, this whole 50+ hour content argument is kind of invalid when you consider people have beaten most if not all "difficult" NES/SNES games in like an hour, these days,

 

[Mike]

Yeah but, I just named several popular AAA titles that are sub 30 hours and you named nothing. Again, I already said multiplayer doesn't count and single player RPGs are the only games that consistently have tons of hours of content. I too have hundreds of hours in Rust and Overwatch, or Fallout and Elder Scrolls. Any game with a NG+ is going to be an RPG 99.9% of the time. Middle Earth, Witcher, FO, TES, all single player RPGs which better fucking have a ton of content.

Anyway, this whole 50+ hour content argument is kind of invalid when you consider people have beaten most if not all "difficult" NES/SNES games in like an hour, these days,

Was I supposed to type out my entire steam library? I'm on my phone man. And the point was the old school games were difficult to extend length thru replay, not that those games are impossible to beat quickly. Especially with the internet. Back in the day you stayed stuck until you figured it out or met someone that had.

Anyway some games with potentially 50+ hours:


Fallout 3, new vegas, and 4. Bioshock 1 and 2, darkest dungeon, Kotor series, FTL, Eternal, Divinity, Diablo 3, Warframe, Mass effect series, GTA series, Batman series, Wasteland 2, Binding of Isaac, Dark Souls series, Dungeon of the endless, XCOM series, any 4x game like civilization, most turn based rpgs, etc.

 

[Jumpy]

Was I supposed to type out my entire steam library? I'm on my phone man. And the point was the old school games were difficult to extend length thru replay, not that those games are impossible to beat quickly. Especially with the internet. Back in the day you stayed stuck until you figured it out or met someone that had.

Anyway some games with potentially 50+ hours:


Fallout 3, new vegas, and 4. Bioshock 1 and 2, darkest dungeon, Kotor series, FTL, Eternal, Divinity, Diablo 3, Warframe, Mass effect series, GTA series, Batman series, Wasteland 2, Binding of Isaac, Dark Souls series, Dungeon of the endless, XCOM series, any 4x game like civilization, most turn based rpgs, etc.

lul my point was that OTHER THAN RPGS and multiplayer games, triple A titles rarely exceed 20 hours. You just named all RPGs and a couple roguelikes. Rogue likes and randomly generated games exceed those hours artificially. And sure, you could exceed 50 hours on old NES/SNES games due to difficulty, but that didn't really mean they actually contained that much content. You were gated by difficulty in games that can be defeated in 5-10 hours.

The only thing I wanted to point out to you was that games really weren't long back in the day, and that games today also are not very long either. With the exceptions mentioned earlier, aka RPGs and multiplayer experiences... and even multiplayer games only have that much content due to playing hundreds or thousands of rounds.

 

[Mike]

lul my point was that OTHER THAN RPGS and multiplayer games, triple A titles rarely exceed 20 hours. You just named all RPGs and a couple roguelikes. Rogue likes and randomly generated games exceed those hours artificially. And sure, you could exceed 50 hours on old NES/SNES games due to difficulty, but that didn't really mean they actually contained that much content. You were gated by difficulty in games that can be defeated in 5-10 hours.

The only thing I wanted to point out to you was that games really weren't long back in the day, and that games today also are not very long either. With the exceptions mentioned earlier, aka RPGs and multiplayer experiences... and even multiplayer games only have that much content due to playing hundreds or thousands of rounds.

I don't get the point in excluding genres known for long playtime, if were talking about games with a lot of hours of gameplay. I also personally wouldn't classify open world games like gta or the batman games as rpgs. Is XCOM an rpg? I wouldn't say so. How about sim city, civilization, heroes of might and magic? Real and turn based strategy games aren't necessarily rpgs.
Roguelikes are similar to old school games difficulty wise, but typically you unlock new characters and scenarios as you go so it's not just the same gameplay over and over.

The second part of your post seems to show you missed the original point I was making. Old school games were hard precisely because they didn't have the tools to put in enough content for long playthroughs.

Anyway your point that most games dont have lengthy gameplay because it's limited to certain genres (and not just rpgs unless you have a very expansive definition of what an rpg is) doesn't really counter my point. I have roughly a couple hundred games, and easily 70℅ of my library is games you could put that kind of time into.