Problems With Old Games: Being Nintendo Hard
If you’ve seen this screen before, you probably used the Konami code.
If you’ve played games like Shinobi on PS2, or the Ninja Gaiden series on the 360 (ninjas, why’s it always gotta be ninjas?), you know what hard feels like. The margin for error is slim. The game is unforgiving. The difficulty level goes from ‘hard’ to ‘harder’ to ‘rock hard’ to ‘Superman’s dick’, and will never auto-adjust – you need to get better, the game won’t make itself easier for you.
These games stand out now largely because they’re so rare. Sure, many games on the top difficulty setting(s) are hard, but if you want to get through the game and see the sights, you have a choice. WHEN I WERE A LAD, walking 10 miles a day to and from school, uphill both ways, in the snow, barefoot, these type of games didn’t stand out: they were the norm. They were Nintendo Hard.
Bottomless pits. Limited lives. Limited continues. No regenerating health. No pointers to guide you to where you need to go – only lots of guesswork – “What the hell do I do now?” instead of “Hmm, what should I do next?” – Like Simon’s Quest with its completely obtuse ‘select the right crystal and then kneel in the right spot’ mechanic. Obtuse is okay in an adventure game where the point of the game is to solve puzzles, not in an action-adventure game where the point of the game is ACTION and ADVENTURE.
Possibly the ultimate Nintendo Hard game is Contra/Probotector. Everything that isn’t a powerup wants to kill you, inadvertantly grabbing a powerup can turn a good gun into a crappy one, and unless you’ve played it so much you could do it in your sleep, good luck trying to beat it without the Konami code.
Some other examples? A Boy and his Blob. Instant death drops, guesswork on how to use items to affect things that are screens away, limited jellybeans, and having no explanation of what each jellybean does until you use them. The worst part is, David Crane said he originally wanted to make it harder and only give you the exact number of jellybeans needed to complete the game.
Battletoads. A friend and I used to play this at least 2 weekends a month for about 2 years. I think the furthest we ever got was level 5, and as far as I know that wasn’t even halfway through the game.
Bionic Commando warms you up nicely with a reasonable difficulty curve, then SKULLFUCKS you towards the end of the game. Double Dragon with no continues and no way to get more lives (being able to beat up on your mate to win the affections of the girl was awesome, though), and Double Dragon III, which looked more ‘modern’ (at the time), but was even harder and a lot less fun. Double Dragon II was at least relatively merciful.
Metroid – what’s a map? Shadowgate, where instant death is the norm and you can be killed just by looking at things. Any of the Simpsons NES games, particularly Bart vs. The Space Mutants, with their floaty controls combined with the need for pixel-perfect jumps. Mega Man, especially if you don’t know the ‘right’ order in which to do the levels. Castlevania. (The original) Super Mario Bros. 2/The Lost Levels. The original Ninja Gaiden series. Zelda II. Milon’s Secret Castle. Robowarrior. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Punch-out. Gradius. And these are just the most famous examples – there’s plenty more Nintendo Hard NES games.
There’s often very little separating the best of these type of games from the worst of these type of games. Really, the only difference is that the best of these games don’t feel arbitrary. When you die, it’s because you made a mistake that you could recognise, not because the random number generator made a bullet fly at you in such a way that avoiding it was impossible. Playing these games does feel good in a certain way, though. Some might call it a feeling of accomplishment, I call it a similar feeling to when you beat your head against a wall repeatedly and then stop.
If you’re silly enough to still like Nintendo Hard games, a modern version of them worth a try is I Wanna Be The Guy. Image ripped from from Games Radar and tweaked to my satisfaction.
I have to say, you missed a game on there, hard-wise, that’s worth mentioning. It remains the hardest game I have ever played, before or since. Not “oh my god, this is stacked against me,” but “this is very, very difficult and unforgiving, but DOABLE.”
That was the Adventures of Bayou Billy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Bayou_Billy) which, to succeed at it, required the elemental opposite of facerolling. You had to get in touch with the alchemical quintessence of skill in order to win that fucker. It was less forgiving than Ayn Rand.
I never beat it. I only got to the last stage ONCE, in what, in retrospect, was likely a monk-like zen session of power playing over several hours. The game was so hard, it was obscene and perfect at once.
@OldManG
Yeah, I owned Bayou Billy, and I originally had it in my list (and left it in my tags), but it’s a little bit more obscure than some of the others. I mean, so is Milon’s Secret Castle as a -game-, but Milon is often remembered for having a “Getting Started” section in Nintendo Power where other games had an ‘advanced tips and tricks’ or similar. It needed it’s own damn guide just to figure out how to -start-.
PS. The Konami Code probably works – give it another try with 30 extra lives?