Ridiculously hard old games

Remembering the games of yesteryear.

Re: Ridiculously hard old games

Postby Wolf Bird » Fri Jan 24, '14, 4:58 am

I've watched some Youtube stuff of Ninja Gaiden. What gets me on that game are two things…there seem to be a couple of jumps that are almost impossible to do without a projectile (which I understand the game is stingy with) or triggering a glitch to get rid of the enemy that occupies a platform. And along with that, that game has a knockback mechanic similar to Castlevania, so if you hit something you will probably fall into a hole, making such jumps even worse. And then, sending you back to the beginning of world 6 if you die at the final boss, making actually practicing the final boss a chore at best.

I think a lot of it is about balance of design choices. And of course, some people are going to prefer some challenges/design choices over others.
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Re: Ridiculously hard old games

Postby Prince Rhys 83 » Fri Jan 24, '14, 10:17 am

I welcome someone to beat the SNES game Time Trax, even on easy difficulty. You get three lives for about 7 hard levels, and the only way you get one continue is if you find a journal in one of the levels. The only way I was able to beat it was making a code so I wouldn't run out of health. Even then, the last level was insane and I was nearly constantly getting hit.
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Re: Ridiculously hard old games

Postby myau56 » Fri Jan 24, '14, 12:57 pm

VistaBlade wrote:
myau56 wrote:And so what could be the frontier between hard and good and hard and bad games ? Impossible to tell for me but I'm sure that a lot of people here will be able to answer it soon :)


It's really dependant on peoples' tastes. People like different styles of difficulty. Some people like overbearing odds, some people like limited resources, and some people like deep and complex games that require lots of practice and knowledge of the game.

I like "difficult" games that give you all of the resources that you need to win, but expect you to use them. This is how I see the newer Ninja Gaiden games. They are tough as nails games, but once you get your grips on your moves, attacks, and abilities, you start to notice easy ways to take advantage of your enemies, which will usually lead to your victory.

As for old school games that were ridiculously hard, I will go with Smash TV as usual.

I understand what you say ! Tastes are very different frome people to people, and that is great and what makes possible debate like here :)
What you are saying : "I like "difficult" games that give you all of the resources that you need to win, but expect you to use them" I agree, even if "on me", it's not the case ^^
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Re: Ridiculously hard old games

Postby Hukos » Fri Jan 24, '14, 8:32 pm

Snorb wrote:
Hukos wrote:I'm going to have to bring out some controversial opinions here, but I honestly don't think Castlevania on the NES is all that difficult. Once a player has a decent amount of experience with the game under his/her belt, I think it's pretty tame in terms of difficulty.

All in all, it's a pretty unbalanced game. Holy Water absolutely wrecks any sense of challenge the game has, the dagger is worthless and the axe only is useful for one boss and that's it. The cross is the only other subweapon worth a damn, but the Holy Water is easily more broken (One can murder death before his scythes appear!)

Castlevania III on the other hand, is a much more difficult game. I'll elaborate more on that if anyone's interested in my thoughts on that game.


I believe you and I are going to have some interesting differences of opinions on the throwing dagger and the holy water in Castlevania, Hukos. =p

(Then again, I always thought the subweapons usefulness was, in order Boomerang > Throwing Dagger > Axe > Holy Water > Pocketwatch, but Castlevania IV is my favorite pre-SOTN Castlevania game, so make of that what you will.)

Oh don't get me wrong, CV4 is my favorite Castlevania game period. I'm just saying, once you realize how absurdly broken the Holy Water is, CV1's difficulty takes a significant blow.

The dagger to me doesn't really find a usefulness until Symphony and that's merely a niche it fills (It's cheap and spammable) than it being extremely useful. Subweapon spamming can't really be done in the classic CV games, so the dagger is obviously nowhere as good in the classic games. Though there IS the Wind Book + Dagger combination in Harmony of Dissonance that's practically broken beyond all belief, but Harmony of Dissonance kind of sucks so there's that.

CV3 is a different case from CV1 since the game is a lot more balanced. Holy Water essentially freezes any enemy it touches while dealing touch damage. CV3 includes a lot more flying enemies or ones that the holy water doesn't deal with very well. It's still useful in a lot of situations, just not EVERY situation like in CV1. CV3 also has the abilities of the extra partners to take into consideration with it's balance. CV3 is really hard, but it's the good kind of hard where the game expects you to think about what you're doing.

CV4 has the limp whip which does somewhat trivialize the use of subweapons, but they're still far from useless. Cross is undoubtedly the best subweapon in that game, however.

Rondo of Blood is kind of weird in it's design. It's got a lot more vertical sections and flying enemies than any other Castlevania game does (Most likely due to it's non-linear nature with extra paths and all), so the axe ends up being the best subweapon in that game.

Bloodlines, the dagger doesn't even exist (thankfully!) and the boomerang goes from a cross to well, a real boomerang! I find it's consistently the most useful but it does have more than enough vertical spots that the axe is pretty good too. Though the Holy Water is nerfed to hell and back in both Rondo/Bloodlines, for whatever reason. I guess they were trying to make up for it's brokenness in CV1.
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Re: Ridiculously hard old games

Postby Rylen » Sat Jan 25, '14, 3:04 am

Dragon Warrior (Quest) 2 for the NES.. out of the four games released.. that one was very hard for the most part. Lot of other games on that list as well but that one stands out for me.
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Re: Ridiculously hard old games

Postby Wolf Bird » Sat Apr 26, '14, 2:54 pm

Hi everyone,

This topic was a winner of the 2014 Muskies! So I've added a banner to this post and also to the first post of the topic. Thanks everyone for participating!

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Re: Ridiculously hard old games

Postby myau56 » Sat Apr 26, '14, 3:28 pm

Congratulations to the Creator of this topic...and the topic itself ! And to all the people who posted in it :) :clap:
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Re: Ridiculously hard old games

Postby Silver_Surfer1 » Sat Apr 26, '14, 11:06 pm

Congratulations on the Muskie Award win. :clap:
Happy St. Patrick's Day ~ March 17, 2024


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:rose: Happy 26th Anniversary Fringes Of Algo~Founded April 01, 1997 :rose:

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Re: Ridiculously hard old games

Postby PathfinderCS » Sat May 3, '14, 3:43 am

Well, for me, the most difficult game from the old days would be Solar Jetman. You're basically this astronaut mercenary tasked to recover the pieces of the so-called "Golden Warship." You travel to various planets with varying environments and travel around in this little pod.

This thing that makes this game SO DIFFICULT is the gravity; which is possible the most realistic gravity effects on the NES. By itself it can make flying around difficult, but when you have to tow fuel pods, upgrades for your mothership, and the warship pieces, it's mind-numblingly INSANE. Plus when you add in the various enemies either shooting at your or chasing you, then...yeah, 'nuff said.

And congrats on the thread!
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Re: Ridiculously hard old games

Postby Zio_Falz » Tue Nov 18, '14, 6:23 am

I lay claim to beating Ironsword for NES back in 1990, before the save-state was invented. Impressive lists, people.
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