/vr/ - Retro Games

maybe you should...GETGUD

I'd like to see the credentials of the OP that makes him an authority on what constitutes good/bad level design.

Kaizo levels
best levels

>>1899775
Uh-uh. Bad player.

>>1900218

>>1899775
Even if Mario Land 2 is my favorite mario game, looking at that pic, I agree. I feel it should have been something like this instead.

>>1899775
>>1900262
What's going on here?

>>1900262
wait so you don't like the block being directly above the platform? seems like a really minor complaint to me

>>1900290
I'm not OP, read my damn post.

What is literally the problem here?

>>1900262
congrats you might be a bigger schmuck than OP

so this is how /vr/ trolls...

>>1900323
even if the platform falls and the leaves are moving it's like "well okay that's how platformers are"

>>1899775
Not even close son. Try doing it under water where the mechanics dont allow you to dodge spiked balls that are hidden behind the walls in reasonable time

>>1900415
All of Labyrinth Zone should have been like this.

It's more bad boss design, but considering if you fail you have to start over and grind to get your power back, it's simply bad level design in my eyes.

One of the only poorly designed classic Mega Man moments.

Young Merlin mine cart section and underwater bit. Terrible game!

The entirety of Tazmania.

>>1899775
There's a rabbit ears powerup hidden in that level. As long as you have those, it should be a breeze.

>>1900547
the whole game is a breeze as small mario

>>1900479
This is a great example of bad design, and MM2 is probably my favorite megaman game.

There's simply no way to beat this if you don't have your crash bombs saved up, and you have to learn through trial and error.

It's probably a good example of artificial difficulty, even though I hate that term.

>>1900585
Agreed, although I prefer 4 over 2.

I think it'll be hard to beat this one.

>>1900415
Labyrinth Zone is the only reason I don't replay Sonic 1.

>>1900585
The level is designed to force a repeat. Its not necessarily 'bad', just purposefully a dick move. The devs didn't make a mistake, they went out if their way to mess with the player. That's just difficulty.

>>1900619
It's a testament to Wily's prowess as an evil madman.

>>1900619
i feel the same way. the whole series is full of trial and error segments, come on.

>>1900619
Having to die to progress isn't legitimate difficulty though. It's tedious, annoying, and goes against everything the player was taught.
It wouldn't be as bad if it was consistent, but nowhere else in the game, or even in the series, are you forced to lose a life to beat a level.

>>1900415
Fuck that fucking piece of shit fucking level.

>>1900479
MM2 is one of my favorites, but this part does bug the shit out of me. It's basically set up so that you HAVE to die once (realistically speaking) because of the limited crash bombs. And then it requires you to go through a good portion of the level again.

I'd also like to nominate the moving platforms from MM1's gutsman stage. It wouldn't be nearly as annoying if the platforms didn't move just as fast horizontally as megaman does (good luck steering your jumps), if the platforms didn't have wonky hitboxes that don't match the sprites, and if the final jump didn't require you to be as far to the edge of the platform as humanly possible to make the jump

oh hi, what's going on in here

>>1900768
Them fucking mantoids, I swear to god

>>1900765
It takes 1 minute to go through the piss easy and short stage prior to the boss.
Yeah sucks to have a boss in a Megaman game that you can't just tank and spank within 5 seconds.

>>1900768
You just fucking suck.

I do too though, I always have trouble dodging medusa in pic related

Pretty much the whole first Wonder Boy.

>>1900613
I have TMNT 2,3, and Gameboy. I don't have this one.

>>1901049

PC port.

It... it broke the original level design which made it impossible to jump the platform to the right because of the adjusted vertical space that would've been there in the original game.

>>1901035
that's not bad level design at all. the enemy placement in WB is among the best in video games period. you just need to git gud

>>1900765
>It's basically set up so that you HAVE to die once (realistically speaking) because of the limited crash bombs
Your first time playing, yes.

>>1901117
clearly. same with 9/10 posters in these types of threads.

>old gaems are too hard fuck need to check the walkthrough one more time

>>1900765
>I'd also like to nominate the moving platforms from MM1's gutsman stage.

It's really not that bad once you get the hang of it and it's in the very beginning of the level so if you fail it's not like you got to trek that far to reach that point to try again. The rest of the level is easy cheese after that part.

FUCK

>>1901273
That's just a dick move.

>>1901273
>>1901279
>not using sanics ability to look down

>>1901273
>playing the gamegear version

>>1901323
>not being a Sonic master and playing all versions of each Sonic to further hone your skills

>>1899775
It's funny to me when I see presumable adults discussing level designs in retro games, because most of those were designed for and marketed to children when they were new. They were considered toys by the devs, the marketers and the kids themselves and were never meant to be torn apart and analyzed to the degree that you all have. Videogames are toys. I'm sorry.
It's kind of pathetic that you all put this much effort into analyzing a toy...

Anyway, there's a few simple factors to take into consideration when you consider "bad" level design (specifically cheap deaths):

>old games had no save systems and were very short. They were meant to be beaten in one shot, but not on the first try So a few total BS deaths that you learned from were needed by most games to keep kids from beating them in one sitting.
>BS deaths drove replay value way up. And back in the days before day one DLC and online MP, the act of literally replaying a game was really the only option when it came to replay value. And in my experience, trying forever to get past that one spot where you keep dying is half the fun anyway.
>older games give you multiple lives, but not infinite retries. Bullshit deaths were a way to force you to get better or be stuck playing the first 2 levels forever.

And there you have it kids.
When you look at say, NES games in terms decided by modern times and compare them to modern games. They can seem archaic and broken. However, tech was different then, as was the attitude of gamers. So they were amazing back then. And if you still think like an old gamer (to an extent anyway) then you can still enjoy those elements just fine.

Stay pleb /vr/

You know, I am not the best gamer in the world, far from it, but I seriously don't get how that 'Labyrinth Zone in Sonice 1 is too hard' thing inititally came from and I think its silly. Except maybe the end boss there is nothing particularly hard about this zone - and it IS close to the end. Maybe its because Sonic 1 is basically my first video game and I am just used to it.

A year ago or so after many many years of not playing it I just started gaming Sonic 1 casually 'for a few minutes' and basically accidentally played through the whole game in a few hours without much of a problem. I also heard people complaining about the endboss, whom I find to be incredibly easy.
I tried to do the same thing with Sonic 2 a few days later, and failed horribly. I find Sonic 2 to be the much harder game, it really does not fuck around. I had to put some effort into actually collecting lives and stuff and only by knowing what would come I was barely able to finish it.
So why is it that people have so much problems with Sonic 1 I think Sonic 2 is much harder.

>>1901365
>designed for and marketed to children

>>1901365
>It's funny to me when I see presumable adults discussing level designs in retro games, because most of those were designed for and marketed to children when they were new


Dude, the maybe marketed to kids but they are designed and programmed by adults. People study game design on universities these days, you know. Even fucking normal toy companies probably have departments analyzing toys in one way or the other, to see whats fun about them and whats not, what makes them work as toys and what not. I really don't see your point here. Someone made a conscious descison to design a game in certain way and to design a certain level in some specific way as opposed to virtually any other possible way. Of course it can be analyzed.

Now, if /v/ or /vr/ actually have the knowledge that is the basis for such analysis, of we are just a bunch retards pretening to know what we are talking about, well, thats a completely different matter...

>>1901380
Well obviously you'll find S1 easy if you played it 500 times as a kid. I have beat S2 but can't beat S1 myself. I think both are hard though.

The only problem I had with Super Mario Land 2 was that you move slow as HELL in water. Obviously water always slowed you down but its just ridiculously slow in SML2

>>1901380
I would tend to agree, the only truly difficult thing in S1 is the labyrinth boss, however once you realise you don't need to actually hit him it turns into a fairly simple affair that shouldnt take more than a couple of attempts. Scrap Brain act 3 is a bit tricky, but the final zone is pretty straightforward.
Sonic 2 is much harder, once it gets going. It's fairly simple until Oil Ocean then it ramps up the pain significantly. It was the main game I played as a kid, but when i fired it up again recently I got my arse handed to me by Metropolis and especially the Wing Fortress boss, who is IMHO the hardest in the game.

The episodes in the registered version of Bio Menace are full of shit and even completely broken level design like the ant hive that has falling blocks at the start that don't respawn after losing a life, therefore making the level unwinnable.

Monster Bash also had the swamp levels in the final episode that had some leap of faiths and the first level of the second episode of Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure was WAY too busy looking, making the playfield and background blend together into one big mess.

>>1901648
Yeah, cosmo was a nightmare in more than one way.

>>1899775
>the game kicks my ass so it's bad level design
fuck you /vr/

>>1900479
That boss fight prevents Mega Man 2 from being a perfect 10.

>>1901648
What the fuck is going on in this picture? I can't tell the character from the background or if there even is any powerups or enemies there.

gotta go slow.

>>1901782
forgot pic

>>1901698
You should see it in action.

Its even worse.

>>1901648
I've noticed that with a lot of the old shareware classics. The stuff you get in the registered versions is never as good,

>>1901381
Did Arino get rekt by Iwata?

>>1901380
I'll use OoT as a base for my point, it's not that it's hard, it's the progression of the level design that makes it annoying and tedious compared to the rest to the game, i think that fits the Labyrinth Zone very well. I doesn't help that the devs decided to throw it at you again in the final level, i honestly would've preferred a chemical underwater Scrap Brain Zone level to it.

>>1901868
Fuck i forgot to fit Water Temple in there somewhere.

I've never felt so underwhelmed by a final boss of a video game, ever.

>>1901903

Forgot picture.

Most of Doom 2's levels.
It's not unplayable, just really mediocre.

>>1901365
You mentioned bullshit deaths a bunch in your post, but back them this is not what they were shooting for in home console games, at all.
Jap devs usually tried to make shit hard, but fair.
It's why I can go back to playing Castlevania after years without having played it, and still do fine in medusa head stages, that a lot of people who just suck at games complain are bullshit (just a dumb example but you get what I'm saying).
If at any point in time implementing bullshit deaths into games was the norm, it was when people were making arcade games, and even then, it was mostly Americans making slot machine arcades where you were forced to memorize stuff and keep pumping coins (compare some american arcade games to shit like metal slug. Metal slug is hard, but if you get good at one metal slug game, you can beat other metal slugs without much dificulty without needing to memorize enemy placement).

>>1901791
Bio Mence feels very much like the sole creator got REALLY good at it so bumped up the difficulty to make it stop being so easy for him.

>>1901908
It was huge and very creative at the time. Such a fun final battle.

>>1899775
6 golden coins was brilliant

You're just some jaded casual who can't appreciate anything anymore

>>1900262
>Mario Land 2
>Favorite Mario game

da fuck?

>>1901365
You're a dumbass. Some of these are legitimate examples of bad design that developers sought to correct in later titles. Later NES Mega Man games don't have any bosses as bad as the Boobeam Trap, and no Genesis Sonic water level is as bad as Labyrinth. Quit with this "all old games are intentionally unfair" shit.

>>1901380
Labyrinth Zone isn't hard, it's just annoying. A first time player is going to spend most of his time in the water, and there isn't much interesting down there. So it's just three slow, plodding levels. Later games used water levels much better, either as something you wanted to avoid, or just by designing the stages better so that being underwater wasn't a slog.

>>1901323

There are no Sonic ports from Genesis or MS to GG, they are all different games.

>>1903428
no the game gear games are ports of the master system versions.

I've been trying to play Mega Man on my 3DS but I just fucking can't. maybe if I were 7 or something and playing it on the NES.

>>1904128
If you're talking MM1, it's a lot worse than the later titles. There's a reason why the game that made the series really take off is 2. On 3DS the better Classic titles to play would be 2-4 for NES and IV & V for GB.

>>1904184
Funny how Capcom doesn't realize that the situation is similar for the Battle Network series, with 1 being the odd one out and later games being better.

>>1901908
>>1901903
>not just letting mobs spawn constantly and using it as a time trial to see how long you and your friends last.
>not having a "Doom 2: Icon of Sin" ranking list on an unused noticeboard at school

ITT: People who are bad at videogames

>>1904194
Well 4 is met with its fair share of vitriol

>>1904241
And it's still considered better than 1.

>>1901785
>>1901782
I'm not sure I understand your complaint with this area.

>>1901686
>Metal Blade is overpowered, making all the other weapons mostly useless
>No time limit + random drops encourages farming
>Farmable E-tanks
>Slowdown

>>1902028
It's excessively easy even by Mario standards. The only good level is Wario's castle.

>>1899775
Every single retro game ever

>>1904286
Recent Mario games have been way easier than SML2.
>Wario's Castle
More like "easy with one dumb jump and a cool but easy as well final boss" castle

>>1904286
I think that's part of the charm. Playing through the game doesn't take forever and because of the little challenge, you necessarily don't even die once.

I don't know if I can word my affection to the game properly, but I think SML2 is a unique, quirky but lovable piece of fun. It's like a walk in a nice park.

>>1904591
It's also got some of the most uniquely themed levels in all the Mario series.

>>1904256
Centaurs in narrow corridors slowing you down.

>>1900415
>wants to play Sonic1
>remember this

>>1901945
But most folks aren't born good at Metal Slug, you have to plod your way through one or several of their games first, and put lots of quarters in the machine. It's like that with a lot of arcades games, no matter if it's jap or american or european. They were designed to generate revenue after all. So yeah "git gud"[sic] you say, but it takes time and money to do so. I've been there, I was pumping quarters in the Ghouls 'n Ghosts arcade machine around 1990, despite having totally mastered Ghosts 'n Goblins at home on my Amstrad CPC from playing it so damn much (it was one of my top-10 games, next to Gryzor, Arkanoid, Ikari Warriors, Bruce Lee, Gauntlet, and a few other classics). So my take on that is not all experience is directly transferable, at least not for average dude like me. If nothing else, you have to learn the level layouts, enemy placements/tactics, and where to grab health/powerups, all of which takes time and money at the arcades. For most games, I'm just not interested in making that kind of investment. It has to be one that really grabs my attention so that I *want* to experience it completely. And at that point, the difficulty level is almost moot...

>>1904534
>Recent Mario games have been way easier than SML2.

that's not true. at all. not by any stretch of the imagination. stop talking out your ass anon

The entire world of Beyond Oasis 2.
Holy shit its bad.

>>1900585
>trial and error
No. Just pause the game.

>>1901284
>game about going fast
>having to stop at each precipice to look down first

All of Sonic CD. And I even like that game.

suprised no one mentioned the maze from Revenge Of Shinobi or that fucking level in Tomb Raier III where you have to drive the quadbike up on the trees and shit

>>1906921
>implying
all you have to do if get good, there are ways to get through every room easily enough.

>>1907054
You don't think being sent back to Stage 6-1 when you die in any of the three bosses in a row without so much as a life bar fill is bad level design?

>>1907061
Oh, you were talking about that. That is bad design but it's got nothing to do with 6-2 specifically.

you know, it's okay to look at an old game and say "this game was good, but section X could have been better designed."

this doesn't automatically mean the player is bad.

it might - hold on to your dicks here - it might mean that even though a game is old, it could contain a flaw. crazy, I know! old games are automatically perfect, right? because they're old!

it's okay, though, on a message board about old games, to admit that some bits of old games are worse than other bits of old games. we are not, actually, confined to only claim that all old games are absolutely perfect. people who are capable of pointing out potential flaws in a game are not necessarily terrible gamers. the possibility exists that they have actually noticed something worth discussing.

>>1907158
NO NEVER ALL OLD GAMES ARE PERFECT WHEN THE YEAR TICKED PAST 2000 EVERYTHING BECAME TERRIBLE. OLD GAMES CAN DO NO WRONG THEY WERE JUST DESIGNED THAT WAY ANY FLAW IS INTENTIONAL

>>1907061
>>1907054
it's just a memorization game. ng1 wasn't my favorite, but I got to the point on ng2 where i could beat it without continuing

>>1907061
It's actually great design. The bosses stay dead, so going through the stage from the start allows you to fully replenish your MP and any subweapon you want. There's a jumpslash in the stage which is capable of taking them all out in one hit if you need that as a crutch. If they just made you start at the final corridor you'd be screwed if you were out of MP.

>>1907935
Sending you back to 6-3, would be good design. Making you do 6-1 and 6-2 over again is not.

>>1907948
I looked it up on youtube just to make sure. You can clear 6-1 and 6-2 is literally two minutes. That's nothing, plus it's just more chance to acquire MP.

>>1907970
What looks easy on video is not always what it really is. People who upload videos playing the game know it inside out or already skilled. The jumps you have to make in 6-2 are tedious.

>>1907980
Well if you can't handle 6-1/2 you're not ready to tackle the final boss, so it's still good practice.

>>1907983
The final boss is a lot easier than Jaquio and 6-2. Ninja Gaiden isn't a well balanced game

>>1900667
>It wouldn't be as bad if it was consistent, but nowhere else in the game, or even in the series, are you forced to lose a life to beat a level.
Megaman X6. If you don't have the right parts/armor equipped, or if you don't have any special weapons upon meeting High Max beyond the intro stage encounter. You will be not only forced to lose a life, but forced to lose all your lives. Or use the Exit function if it's a stage you've previously finished.

>>1901903
>>1901908
Final boss fights in western-made vidya tend to be fucking awful anyway.

>>1908029
As true as that may be, you can't use design from a game that came out later to justify an earlier game in the series.

>>1901273
That's not bad level design, that's flat-out evil design.