NES games difficulty compared to modern standards

[BlackVega | 583]

Has anyone started this discussion before?? This is a very interesting aspect because a lot of NES games were tremendously hard to beat and many of them were exceptionally super unforgiving to the point you sometimes needed to glitch your way out in order to beat them. SNES still had some tough ones but it seems like things were slowing down back then. Now, compared to how much people complain on even putting the slightest bit of effort to even push buttons in modern games they completely obliterate NES games in reviews just for being hard. Granted, NES games were very hard but times were also different and I can sometimes agree some NES games were just too cheap or require too much of bullshit memorization but I'd say this judgement is a little unfair. Maybe it's a good idea to challenge it with the question- why? Why so many NES games were so hard to begin with? Was that in the purpose of keeping kids playing for a long time and not to disturb everyone's ass? Or maybe NES wasn't a super technologically advanced machine at the time so they tried to compensate for it with super hard difficulty? Or is there something else I'm missing?

[Sumez | 2,951]

I always thought that reputation is mostly undeserved. 

Yeah, there's some really tough NES games out there, including some that are borderline impossible. Often for all the wrong reasons, awkward controls, awful design etc. There's a few which are both enjoyable and really hard, but I don't think they dominate the platform - by far the majority of games on NES/Famicom are easily approachable and don't demand that much from the player. 

I think it's more a question of people of today not really being willing to dedicate that much effort in the first place, to a game that in their mind is already antiquated. 

If you browse through a larger selection, maybe on an emulator or everdrive, and try out a game for a few minutes to see what it's like, then yeah, it's probably gonna come across quite challenging, possibly a lot more than it really is. Especially if you're quick to resort to savestates the moment you encounter an obstacle.

Contra is a popular example of this, often being the straight up poster child for "hard" NES games even though it's really not that bad. What's a modern game that could be considered an equivalent? Doom Eternal? That game takes way, way more skill and effort to beat!

[Rhuno | 107]

I do think play time has something to do with it. They didn't want kids taking a game home and being done with it 20 minutes later. Also, these games were designed during the arcade era where the game's purpose was to eat as many quarters as possible. I think that difficulty carried over to home games of the time. 

Modern games can be challenging, but most feature a lot of quality of life improvements. Namely, frequent saves and regenerating health. It's one thing to spend 30 minutes or an hour on a game only to die and start all over, but spending several hours? I don't think many people would put up with that.

[mbd39 | 2,020]

1 hour ago, Sumez said:

I always thought that reputation is mostly undeserved. 

Yeah, there's some really tough NES games out there, including some that are borderline impossible. Often for all the wrong reasons, awkward controls, awful design etc. There's a few which are both enjoyable and really hard, but I don't think they dominate the platform - by far the majority of games on NES/Famicom are easily approachable and don't demand that much from the player. 

I think it's more a question of people of today not really being willing to dedicate that much effort in the first place, to a game that in their mind is already antiquated. 

If you browse through a larger selection, maybe on an emulator or everdrive, and try out a game for a few minutes to see what it's like, then yeah, it's probably gonna come across quite challenging, possibly a lot more than it really is. Especially if you're quick to resort to savestates the moment you encounter an obstacle.

Contra is a popular example of this, often being the straight up poster child for "hard" NES games even though it's really not that bad. What's a modern game that could be considered an equivalent? Doom Eternal? That game takes way, way more skill and effort to beat!

It's exactly this. The same people who say that they have no time to beat a 20 minute NES game legit will spend 100+ hours on a modern FPS or RPG. It has to do with not thinking that an old game is worth their time. Which is fine. We all have our own gaming preferences.

 

 

[Sumez | 2,951]

54 minutes ago, Rhuno said:

Modern games can be challenging, but most feature a lot of quality of life improvements. Namely, frequent saves and regenerating health.

That's a core game design aspect that changes gameplay completely. Has nothing to do with "quality of life"

Edited December 17, 2023 by Sumez

[Link | 2,712]

5 hours ago, BlackVega said:

Has anyone started this discussion before??

Yeah, it's a whole thing. Has its own name and everything.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard

5 hours ago, BlackVega said:

why?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_hard

Satoru Iwata said in an interview regarding how NES games were made: "Everyone involved in the production would spend all night playing it, and because they made games, they became good at them. So these expert gamers make the games, saying 'This is too easy'".

[G-type | 2,481]

I also think that it was an economic decision. there was a belief that a hard game would be perceived as having more value because you weren’t able to finish it as quickly.

[mbd39 | 2,020]

12 minutes ago, G-type said:

I also think that it was an economic decision. there was a belief that a hard game would be perceived as having more value because you weren’t able to finish it as quickly.

Not to mention the concern that kids would beat the game in a weekend rental rather than buy it. This is supposed to be why some games were made harder int he US than in Japan where game rentals weren't allowed.

 

[Estil | 1,265]

48 minutes ago, G-type said:

I also think that it was an economic decision. there was a belief that a hard game would be perceived as having more value because you weren’t able to finish it as quickly.

Indeed, adjusted for inflation those then $50 new games are more like ~$100 in today's money.

[Estil | 1,265]

1 hour ago, Link said:

Satoru Iwata said in an interview regarding how NES games were made: "Everyone involved in the production would spend all night playing it, and because they made games, they became good at them. So these expert gamers make the games, saying 'This is too easy'".

All in a day's work to make each game worthy of the Official Nintendo Seal of Quality.

Edited December 17, 2023 by Estil

[Estil | 1,265]

2 hours ago, Sumez said:

That's a core game design aspect that changes gameplay completely. Has nothing to do with "quality of life"

I think that's more to do with the quality of the life of your controller so you're not throwing it and (trying) to break it in frustration.  Not to mention you hopefully won't get caught by your mama swearing and cussing (perfect way to measure how hard or especially frustrating a game is!) nearly as often and thus you won't get nearly as many spankings or bars of soap in your mouth!  

I'd say it has everything to do with quality of life!

[Tulpa | 3,497]

4 minutes ago, Estil said:

All in a day's work to make each game worthy of the Official Nintendo Seal of Quality.

 

You have that image saved to your desktop to whip out at a moment's notice, don't you?

[JamesRobot | 5,800]

A lot of this type of difficulty comes from transition of video games from the arcade to the home.  Whereas gameplay was really designed around bilking kids out of as many quarters as possible.  Giving just enough progress to encourage the player to keep feeding coins to the machine.  Devs just used the existing arcade template in the early days of the home console market.

In the NES era we start to see some consideration for the home experience with more unlimited continues, progress saving via battery or codes, proper endings, and elimination of score as the primary goal of the proficient player.  It's super rare to see a score display on modern AAA titles.  Just crank the difficulty up a notch if the game is to easy.

[Estil | 1,265]

2 hours ago, mbd39 said:

It's exactly this. The same people who say that they have no time to beat a 20 minute NES game legit will spend 100+ hours on a modern FPS or RPG. It has to do with not thinking that an old game is worth their time. Which is fine. We all have our own gaming preferences.

Well JRPGs (there are actually other kinds?  Oh yeah those CRPGs or crap RPGs! ), even from the NES/SNES era can easily take 40-50 hours to fully complete, and some of the later ones it can take that long just to finish Story Mode (is that the proper name for a JRPG's main quest/ending, not counting sidequests?)!

[Estil | 1,265]

1 minute ago, Tulpa said:

You have that image saved to your desktop to whip out at a moment's notice, don't you?

Nope, just simple Google Image search my good man!

[Estil | 1,265]

2 minutes ago, JamesRobot said:

Just crank the difficulty up a notch if the game is to easy.

I'm usually perfectly content with normal mode.  Hard mode is for those who've gone through the game at least a few times, and even that's only if you actually get anything in return for it like a better ending or better item drops or trophies or whatnot.  Easy mode of course is for wusses!  

[Tulpa | 3,497]

2 minutes ago, Estil said:

Nope, just simple Google Image search my good man!

That seems like a lot of work. Why don't you just have it ready to go, since you post it every ten minutes. Heck, throw it in your signature and call it a day!

Edited December 17, 2023 by Tulpa

[Estil | 1,265]

1 minute ago, Tulpa said:

That seems like a lot of work. Why don't you just have it ready to go, since you post it every ten minutes. Heck, throw it in your signature and call it a day!

Nah; my sig needs to let everyone know in no uncertain terms the difference between real and make believe (as Mister Rogers would stress).  That just because something is called a "reality" show does not mean it's reality!  

[Tulpa | 3,497]

Oh, I have sigs turned off, so I have no idea what your sig was saying.

The Nintendo Seal of Quality one sounds better than what you described, though, so change it.

 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,528]

If anything it's just more refined now, and the extreme challenges can be optional.

Want to kill yourself over a game?  Do Mega Man 10's zero hits trophy, or Hollow Knight's zero death run.  Or do a level 1 run of Elden Ring.  Or a Hades run with every difficulty modifier enabled.

 

[guitarzombie | 924]

1 hour ago, G-type said:

I also think that it was an economic decision. there was a belief that a hard game would be perceived as having more value because you weren’t able to finish it as quickly.

I was gonna go with this.  You could only fit so much on the cart at the time, so value was replayability. The only way for that was to really force the player to memorize large portions of the game.  I feel the balance of that memorization to skill though was unbalanced.  Something like Mega Man needs some memorization but you can really rely on skill.  Something like Battletoads never struck me as skill-hard, like a SHMUP, but more about how much you have to where the enemies are, which come next, what powerups to use/save to make other later parts of the game easier etc.  That to me isn't so much, fun. 

[Brickman | 3,986]

I don’t have anything additional to say about NES games that hasn’t already been said above.

However I will say that by making modern games too easy most kids aren’t very good at games.

I had my nephew, who is 10, play SMB3 and DKC and he couldn’t even pass the first level of either. Lost about 15 lives on each and just gave up. He got frustrated that it was too hard. 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,528]

26 minutes ago, Brickman said:

I don’t have anything additional to say about NES games that hasn’t already been said above.

However I will say that by making modern games too easy most kids aren’t very good at games.

I had my nephew, who is 10, play SMB3 and DKC and he couldn’t even pass the first level of either. Lost about 15 lives on each and just gave up. He got frustrated that it was too hard. 

Which would you say is harder: DKC, or Tropical Freeze? 

[Brickman | 3,986]

51 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Which would you say is harder: DKC, or Tropical Freeze? 

Both are probably about the same difficulty. Not very difficult. I found DKC2 to be much harder than either of them.

I had other nephews play Tropical Freeze and they really struggled with that game unless it had funky mode on. Granted they are only 6 and 8.

[cartman | 195]

2 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

If anything it's just more refined now, and the extreme challenges can be optional.

Want to kill yourself over a game?  Do Mega Man 10's zero hits trophy, or Hollow Knight's zero death run.  Or do a level 1 run of Elden Ring.  Or a Hades run with every difficulty modifier enabled.

 

I don't think it's refined. Just a lot easier. Plenty of lives, checkpoints and and unlimited continues so that you'll finish the game even if you sloppied it through.