What are games that have been great challenges (but addictive) for the gaming community?

[GPX | 1,369]

It’s pretty amazing how it’s been nearly 35 years for someone to “beat” Tetris on the NES. Imagine how many players have tried it, then multiply it by the number of attempts at playing it over and over again. The total attempts must be in the billions over the decades!

So by an extension to the thought above, I wonder what would be other game(s) that’s taken years to be completed by the gaming community? Would have to be both addictive and challenging, I’d imagine. Addictive enough to make you want to endure the lengthy process. Challenging enough to last the months/years to complete it, but not overly impossible so as to not put you off entirely as a gamer. A real balancing act!

[Sumez | 2,951]

1 hour ago, GPX said:

It’s pretty amazing how it’s been nearly 35 years for someone to “beat” Tetris on the NES.

While the achievement is definitely a new milestone for NES Tetris, the terminology of "beating" the game is super misleading, and is really more a question of moving the goalpost.

A decade or so ago, "beating" NEStris involved reaching what was previously considered the killscreen.
Eventually, enough people were able to max out the score at 999,999 points that this became the accepted standard for "beating" the game, but even then a higher challenge existed for doing the same thing but on a level 19 start.

The goal post started moving once kids started using special techniques to mash buttons faster than possible by any of the other old fogeys still playing the game, and it's at least interesting to consider that if autofire were allowed in the game's competitive scene, this recent milestone would likely have been reached years if not decades ago - basically, the limitation of your sideways movement is the primary challenge in NES Tetris moreso than just the stacking.

But even now, with this kid reaching the point where the game just crashes, that doesn't mean you still can't take the challenge further. Depending on how you play it's possible to delay this crash and rack up more lines, more levels, and more points before it happens. So once that happens, that person will be the next person to "beat Tetris for the first time". Again.

[GPX | 1,369]

10 minutes ago, Sumez said:

While the achievement is definitely a new milestone for NES Tetris, the terminology of "beating" the game is super misleading, and is really more a question of moving the goalpost.

A decade or so ago, "beating" NEStris involved reaching what was previously considered the killscreen.
Eventually, enough people were able to max out the score at 999,999 points that this became the accepted standard for "beating" the game, but even then a higher challenge existed for doing the same thing but on a level 19 start.

The goal post started moving once kids started using special techniques to mash buttons faster than possible by any of the other old fogeys still playing the game, and it's at least interesting to consider that if autofire were allowed in the game's competitive scene, this recent milestone would likely have been reached years if not decades ago - basically, the limitation of your sideways movement is the primary challenge in NES Tetris moreso than just the stacking.

But even now, with this kid reaching the point where the game just crashes, that doesn't mean you still can't take the challenge further. Depending on how you play it's possible to delay this crash and rack up more lines, more levels, and more points before it happens. So once that happens, that person will be the next person to "beat Tetris for the first time". Again.

I wasn’t trying to mislead, but probably more to do with me not appreciating the nuances of Tetris’ layers of challenges. I never really got into playing the NES so never thought too much of Tetris until the recent record breaking news. 

Nevertheless, this topic is still relevant because it takes a special kind of game for many players to persist with it, over many tries and decades with the aim to reach the pinnacle of what the game has to offer. Even if I haven’t touched Tetris for probably 30 years, I can still appreciate it as a historic piece of work. The question I’m posing, is how many games are similar to the effect of what Tetris has on the gaming community?

[Sumez | 2,951]

1 hour ago, GPX said:

I wasn’t trying to mislead

Of course not  All the media reports blowing up the achievement are misleading. None of them even know what "beating Tetris" involves  

[Rhuno | 107]

The first thing that came to mind was Peter Molyneux's Curiosity game where players just clicked cubes to whittle away the layers. I know it didn't take nearly as long as they had thought to reach the middle, but it was something that had players working together towards a common goal of "beating" the game. 

[Sumez | 2,951]

I think the "final puzzle" of Fez also comes to mind. To my knowledge it's only been solved via community-driven brute forcing, and I don't think anyone yet knows if there was even an "intended way" to figure it out!

[mbd39 | 2,020]

Speedrunning is very competitive for classic games such as Super Mario Bros. and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, and they keep coming up with new strats.

Check out Summoning Salt's Youtube channel if you haven't already.

 

[mbd39 | 2,020]

This is probably my favorite Summoning video and a wonderful introduction to him.

 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,528]

Anything @peg is working on, probably 

[T-Pac | 7,544]

I love seeing what the competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee scene is up to every once in a while. Top tier players have been dissecting that game for years and finding techniques the developers never would've imagined.

Plus, I think there's been a shakeup fairly recently in the roster of which characters are considered "best for high-level play".

[T-Pac]

[DarkTone | 984]

Does PT count? 

I still can't believe you had to plug in DDR mat and do the konami code to beat it. Kojima is crazy. 

 

[final fight cd | 186]

6 hours ago, mbd39 said:

Speedrunning is very competitive for classic games such as Super Mario Bros. and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, and they keep coming up with new strats.

Check out Summoning Salt's Youtube channel if you haven't already.

 

somebody with the passion and drive could easily come in and overtake him as the "history of speedrun..." guy.  i have no idea how he gets the views that he does and his subscriber count.  his videos are way too long.  his commentary is garbage and even laughable at times.  and i find the way he overly dramatizes things to be annoying.  

Edited January 15 by final fight cd

[mbd39 | 2,020]

9 minutes ago, final fight cd said:

somebody with the passion and drive could easily come in and overtake him as the "history of speedrun..." guy.  i have no idea how he gets the views that he does and his subscriber count.  his videos are way too long.  his commentary is garbage and even laughable at times.  and i find the way he overly dramatizes things to be annoying.  

Interesting. What is an example of "garbage commentary" from Summoning Salt?

 

[final fight cd | 186]

4 minutes ago, mbd39 said:

Interesting. What is an example of "garbage commentary" from Summoning Salt?

 

i just went to latest video and randomly swiped the scroll bar.  took about 2 seconds haha.

"...could finish him off in the 1:20s.  that had MASSIVE implications.  it could turn a bad pace into a good pace. it could turn a great pace into an AMAZING  pace!"

i think this is awful.  so awful.  in my opinion, the quality of content does not match his subscriber count and his video views.  his videos could probably be cut in half if he didn't feel the need to explicitly explain everything.

 

[mbd39 | 2,020]

4 minutes ago, final fight cd said:

i just went to latest video and randomly swiped the scroll bar.  took about 2 seconds haha.

"...could finish him off in the 1:20s.  that had MASSIVE implications.  it could turn a bad pace into a good pace. it could turn a great pace into an AMAZING  pace!"

i think this is awful.  so awful.  in my opinion, the quality of content does not match his subscriber count and his video views.  his videos could probably be cut in half if he didn't feel the need to explicitly explain everything.

 

As long as his commentary isn't full of factual errors then that's just a matter of preference.

 

[final fight cd | 186]

5 minutes ago, mbd39 said:

As long as his commentary isn't full of factual errors then that's just a matter of preference.

 

when i said "garbage" content i was not referring to him give bad or false info.  i'm assuming that is all correct.  it's how he presents the info  but, it's just my opinion of course.    

[DefaultGen | 5,405]

Don’t you take my overdramatic beat-dropping speedrun guy away from me

 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,528]

Man, I'm such a pleb. I don't even know what a Summoning Salt is.  I'm like the Gloves of Youtuber debate threads.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

8 hours ago, final fight cd said:

his videos could probably be cut in half if he didn't feel the need to explicitly explain everything.

I agree with the overly long part.  His videos have been getting so ridiculously long that the last one to drop (another Punch Out one) was over two hours... TWO FREAKING HOURS!!!! (like 2:14 or something).  I don't mind watching maybe a 30 minute youtube video if it's really entertaining, but I'm not watching Hollywood movie-length videos on the speedrunning history of a single game.

The rest of youtube is moving toward "shorts" to match the thirty second attention span of the Tik Tok generation, meanwhile Summoning Salt is like, "fuck that!  I'm going to top the run time of Lawrence of Arabia..."

[Link | 2,712]

Seems to me that Youtube encourages longer videos. Yes they do "reel"-type stuff, but good luck finding much videogaming related stuff under 10 minutes; most of it runs about 20 if my algorithmic feed is any indication - and I rarely click on any such things. 

To say nothing of the ads, many of which I've been noticing are 5 to 30 (!) minutes now. 

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

17 hours ago, Link said:

Seems to me that Youtube encourages longer videos. Yes they do "reel"-type stuff, but good luck finding much videogaming related stuff under 10 minutes; most of it runs about 20 if my algorithmic feed is any indication - and I rarely click on any such things. 

To say nothing of the ads, many of which I've been noticing are 5 to 30 (!) minutes now. 

I'm seeing the opposite; I didn't even know that youtube had shorts until maybe a year ago, and now half the shit I see are these stupid vertical videos made for cell phone users who just want to be entertained for a few seconds before their next finger swipe...

Also, I haven't seen an ad on youtube in literally years...

Edited January 17 by Dr. Morbis

[Gloves | 11,778]

12 minutes ago, Dr. Morbis said:

Also, I haven't seen an ad on youtube in literally years...

I saw ads for like a few days a month or two ago when they did that ridiculous "turn off your ad blocker" stunt, but that was sure short lived lmao. Idiots. 

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

3 minutes ago, Gloves said:

I saw ads for like a few days a month or two ago when they did that ridiculous "turn off your ad blocker" stunt, but that was sure short lived lmao. Idiots. 

I've heard it's a lot tougher to dodge the ads if you're using a cellphone, but on a pc there's no reason to ever see an ad on youtube, notwithstanding the ones that are inserted into the runtime of the video by the creator, though they can be skipped easily enough with the bar at the bottom of the video...

[Richardhead | 2,813]

21 minutes ago, Dr. Morbis said:

I've heard it's a lot tougher to dodge the ads if you're using a cellphone, but on a pc there's no reason to ever see an ad on youtube, notwithstanding the ones that are inserted into the runtime of the video by the creator, though they can be skipped easily enough with the bar at the bottom of the video...

I just hit refresh when an add pops up while watching on my phone. Add stops and the video continues. 

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

47 minutes ago, Richardhead said:

I just hit refresh when an add pops up while watching on my phone. Add stops and the video continues. 

Well there's a tip I'm gonna have to try