/vr/ - Retro Games

>>9953557
The castles mid way through worlds are a prime example of the difficulty spikes, and the next level(s) are that are usually easier. The first 1 level of a world is also usually a breather.
But the most glaring example is probably the level with the Sun enemy in world 2, which filtered everyone but also served as a lesson to dodge well and aim well with the turtle shells.

and the get good philosophy is not an invention, pic related or even games directly telling you to get good like Battletoads & Double Dragon telling you not to use warps, or Cranky telling you to "play better" in Donkey Kong Country. What I said about the 3 dogs in Wood Man stage isn't just how I feel about it, it was explained in an interview. But once you realize that, you realize it's everywhere (at least everywhere in games that were considered great at the time). Difficulty spikes being by default "bad design" is a modern take (though of course it was always possible for devs to misjudge a difficulty spike at the time and make it harder than intended, not every game is a masterpiece of design, but that doesn't mean the difficulty spike itself was unintended)

>>9910747
Challenge was all over western marketing and magazines from the 80's to the mid 90's. Games would get worse reviews if too easy and better reviews if challenging: "this game would score higher if it wasn't so easy" (actual review quote).
People wanted the challenge.

Meanwhile there was not as much focus on that in Japan, reviews didn't give that much credit to challenge and it was much more rare to use it as a marketing tool. I had an interview of a dev explaining all that, the difference in mentality, but I lost it.
People have the idea that the general Japanese were good at video games, but that only due to rare extreme cases like score runners. Now, have a look at what was said about literally most popular famicom RPG: DQ2, DQ3, Mother, Final Fantasy 2 and 3: all of those and more: the players complained that they were too hard.

Daily reminder that people wanted the challenge no matter how hard you try to rewrite history through 21st century mindset

>>9897481
The average player in the west was seeking challenge, and reviews would say things like "this game would score higher if it wasn't so easy!" (actual quote). Meanwhile the average player in Japan complained that even the JRPGs were too hard (DQ2, DQ3, Mother, FF2, FF3, etc etc pretty much all of them had complains like this). Shinji Mikami claims that the change of difficulty in Resident Evil was due to rentals, in biohazard archives, but in a magazine interview he claims it was because of this difference in mentality I just explained.

This is hard to imagine for people these days because there was a complete shift of paradigm and now people rewrite history just to tell themselves challenge was bad design so they don't have to get good. But the industry in the west wanted the challenge.

>>9897489
Games rental were not nearly as popular in Europe (even banned in some countries) and yet the PAL version of CV3 is still harder than the Japanese version, while being its own distinct version from the NTSC-U version.

>>9887907
Now the truth

players and reviewers then
>This game is good but it would have rated higher if it wasn't that easy!

players and reviews now
>artificial difficulty! how were you supposed to know?! This is bad design because I am entitled to see all the Content without effort!

The west praised challenge, it was all over marketing and magazines, magazines having scores dependant on a game's difficulty (difficult = good score, too easy = "this game would have scored higher if it was harder"). The older the game, the more true this is, and with each generation it became a little less true (though you can still find magazines doing that in the 5th gen, even Nintendo ones) until it started becoming untrue during the 7th gen.

People don't know this or have forgotten it because they've been used to a completely different paradigm since then. When a game was difficult, the average western player didn't mind (they didn't come crying about it), or he was glad, it was a good purchase with a good bang for its buck.

Now, while this mentality was proeminent in the western markets, it wasn't in Japan: you will not find magazines and marketing praising difficulty that easily.

>>9875561
>Devs were good at the games

According to an interview by Mikami, Resident Evil devs couldn't even beat the prototype versions of RE1 and were struggling with the controls. They made it harder anyway for the final release. And then they made it even harder for the western version.
There is an interview of the same person explaining the regional difficulty difference on rentals; and then there is another interview explaining it by what I just said (the difference of mentality between west and Japan), though admitedly I've lost the source to that one (I read so many back to back and I can't find it anymore).

>>9861273
>But the reason for this was basically a response to just that, video game rentals at the time. Companies didn't want games someone could beat in a short sitting just renting and never buying. But also didn't want to spend too much time and money making long quality games. So just make them too difficult to beat without lots of practice instead

Reminder that players wanted the challenge in the west. It was all over advertising, challenge was a selling point, and challenge was often part of a game's scoring in reviews: the harder the game, the better the score; and easy games would get review phrases like "it would score higher if it wasn't so easy!"

You make it sound like it's all a plan to fuck the players over, bad practices, from publishers; but that is far from the truth. The truth is that the industry in the west praised challenge, and that aspect only gradually slowly decreased with time thanks to turning games into movies, but it's only the Wii and it's full on casualalization that was the final nail. If you were /v/ at that time you should remember the "CAAASUUUAAALS" meme, implying casuals were ruining video games, difficulty included, which shows it was a change in paradigm.

"Rentals" were a thing but bad players these days cope themselves into claiming all difficulty was "because of rentals", but that's ignorance or revisionism.
Most of the difficulty in Lion King comes from poor hit detection and bad design choices which has nothing to do with it.

>>9831979
>Sure it was made harder in the US because of rentals

You don't know that. In the west players wanted a challenge, and games would get better score if they were more difficult. Meanwhile in Japan people complained that even the RPGs were too hard.

SEGA's motto used to be "the challenge will always be there"

All games were more challenging, because the player wanted them to be challenging. Difficulty as a whole decreased with each generation.

With that said "NES hard" has always been a meme spewn by people who can't even beat Super Mario Bros without crying about it. There are hard games on NES but they're not the ones people complain about, they're the ones those people have never played.

>>9793280

>>9782032
>implying Contra was supposed to have a life bar

More like it was made easier for the casual Japanese players

Neither is cheating, but if you're one of those people who play the easier Japanese version and call it the "only intended version" or that the American versions were made harder "to fuck with the players", or that "Contra was supposed to have a life bar", or also "every single ounce of challenge was because of rentals", you're full of cope and lying to yourself.

There are two versions because there were two different audiances, as a whole players in the west liked the challenge and wanted challenging games, meanwhile in Japan people just wanted to go through the game not unlike how everyone is these days. That doesn't mean there weren't hardcore shmup and fighting games players in Japan, just that they weren't the majority.

There are a lot of proof to this, from magazines in the website giving higher score to a game for being more challenging, while no such thing was done in Japan; to devs explaining in interviews what I just said.

tl;dr play whatever version you want, just stop lying to yourself if you're playing the easier version

>>9772184
Because players wanted hard games

>>9757597
>examples of games that were designed to make you buy them instead of rent them

This meme is overblown. Yeah, there *were* changes made for rentals but they were marginal. Meanwhile zoomies and other bad players like to pretend like ANY ounce of challenge was "bad design on purpose to fuck with players so they wouldn't rent the game" as an excuse for themselves to use savestates and cheats.

The reason why action games were more challenging in the west was because the playerbase WANTED the challenge, while the average player in Japan didn't. Basically the RPG/Action games situation was reversed between Japan and the west.

Old games were more challenging because the playerbase in the west wanted the challenge. There are many proofs of this. Challenge was used for marketing everywhere, and the harder the game was, the better the score in reviews, thus the more chance the game will be bought over another one that can be beaten more quickly.

Then as the playerbase grew bigger and bigger with each generation and with technological advancements and games become more cinematic, difficulty gradually decreased. By the 6th gen, challenge was hardly sought after anymore, and by the 7th gen and casualizaion it was over.

As a result these days it's hard to imagine for people, EVEN for people who were actually there, that things were ever differently. So, despite the great amount of things that prove that players used to seek challenge, they pretend like it wasn't there or if it was indeed there they cling onto excuses so they don't have to feel bad about games who dare to make them die, excuses like
>akktshully they fucked with the players on PURPOSE because RENTALS
>devs didn't know better because little testing
>it was all ARTIFICIAL difficulty anyway