Retro games are often known for being more difficult than their modern brethren. Every now and then though you run into a game that is actually too easy. Which game would you prefer to have more of a challenge?

  • mozz
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    105 months ago

    Super Mario World

    It had by far the best tech and it finally opened up the format to the real potential and then the actual gameplay was for the first time in the series basically just a guided walking tour of all these different areas you could visit and then you got handed a trophy. Pure crap

    Super Mario 64 had somewhat the same problem although with somewhat of a challenge from time to time, and with the added excuse that they were breaking new ground on the format and so it made sense for the difficulty curve not to be perfectly tuned and polished. SMW had no such reasons

    • @[email protected]
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      75 months ago

      Mario World probably was a bit too easy, but I think SM64 difficulty was good especially if you wanted to get all 120 stars

      • mozz
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        55 months ago

        Yeah. SM64 you could say was just a normal game, after the exercise in deliberate punishment that was a lot of the NES library.

        I greatly enjoyed James and Mike Mondays showing Metroid; in part 2 around 9:00 in, you can see the part where the real NES begins to set in. It’s a kind of unapologetic unbalanced hardness you don’t really see in mainstream games anymore; now it’s like a niche phenomenon if the game is just deliberately un-fun in sections to help you build character.

    • @[email protected]
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      45 months ago

      I played a randomized version of World a couple years ago and it kicked my ass lol. I don’t know if I can ever recover from it.

    • ditty
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      25 months ago

      Super Mario World is my fave video game ever, but I agree it would be awesome to have a slightly harder version. I explored several challenging ROM hacks of it a few years ago and they were impossible to play, like I had to use save states to get through the first level. Celeste is basically my favorite difficult platformer now

      • mozz
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        35 months ago

        Haha I had exactly the same result. I tried kaizo Mario and couldn’t make it past the first 10-15 seconds.

        This GDC talk about the level design for Celeste is a pretty fascinating look at how were the nuts and bolts of making it come out so polished + good