/vr/ - Retro Games

Tom "Let's just have the player get fucking lost" Hall.

>>3077595
follow the ways Keen can go, and the level becomes very linear, with the few branching locations almost always being so brief, they happen on the same screen. It's hard getting lost there. It's tedious though, certainly

Keen 3 was rushed as fuck, so the level design was terrible as a result. Hell one level had like 1/3th of it blocked off because of how half-assedly they threw it together

The ant hive in Bio Menace becomes unwinnable after you lose a life due to the falling blocks in the game not respawning and you have to use them to cross a bottomless pit right at the start.

westernplatformerleveldesign.png

>>3078364
>>1/3th

>>3077571
>that blind drop onto spikes right before the exit

Thanks Tom Hall.

When point & clicks make you grind for random rewards in a labyrinth.

Twice.

I think it was level 8 or so in Doom 2. At the very end, you have to run across pillars that start sinking. You'll die from the lava if you miss the run.

Except if you're doing multiplayer, the pillars never come back and you're stuck.

the anti-fun dungeon
such a dumb concept and execution it made me want to quit

Mega Man X6 in almost its entirety. Too many examples to list, but highlights include random spike pitfalls you can't scout out easily when going downhill in Commander Yammark's stage (especially if the Darkness Nightmare effect is in place), and SPIKES, SPIKES EVERYWHERE in Gate's Laboratory, including the wall of spikes in the very fucking beginning of the stage that you can only get past as Zero or with certain enhancement chips, which are possible to miss forever.

Still had more fun with it than with X5.

>>3078364
Oh wow, you're actually right. I traced the main route and all the side routes you can take, and as far as I can tell, these shaded areas of the map are completely inaccessible.

These games are too good for me, I need lots of bad games to keep me going.

>>3083479
Leftmost room of the bottom "inaccessible" area, bottom-right corner.

Legacy of the Wizard is a shoo-in for this thread, jesus christ I wanted to really beat that game as a kid but there's just no way in hell, you don't have a single clue where to go other than certain unique tiles at several points in the dungeon that may give something to a specific character if they reach it, get to one without using the character it wanted? Too bad get back out and try another character.

>>3083734
Good eye, but this block prevents Keen from being able to enter, since he is 2 blocks tall and there's no way to crouch, crawl, or otherwise reduce his height. Samus Aran could squeeze through, but Billy is SOL.

>>3083745
I take it this game could be considered the ancestor of La Mulana?

>>3083785
That would be Maze of Galious.

>>3083785
No, there was a game on genesis that La-mulana was harkening back to that I forget the name of

Legacy of the Wizard is you have a character selection of a family, consisting of Father, Mother, Son, Daughter, Dog, and Grandma. Each one of them has a specific special ability, like being able to jump higher or push through certain hidden passages. The goal is to find certain unique items that are only obtainable by one specific character out of the group, even if you find it with one person if it's the wrong character you are just shit out of luck, and that's before actually getting into the mess of hunting down the hiding places for the bosses that you need to find in order to find the items that break the seal on the final boss in the "Temple" about 5 or 6 screens down from the top of the map. The game has no text detailing any information to you besides item and character names which don't actually give real hints for the most part.

The DOS port of TMNT can't be completed due to this shit here.

>>3084432
You've got to get the hover pizza from the blue dojo to pass that part

>>3083035
isn't x6 the one where you get armor that you can climb and run on spikes with?

>>3084432

Westerners were shot game designers til about 2000.

Hope you had bread crumbs ready.

The lifewater inside Keen 4's Lifewater Oasis was actually once obtainable but after redesigning parts of the level they forgot to make it accessable again.

The lifewater inside Keen 4's Lifewater Oasis was actually once obtainable but after redesigning parts of the level they forgot to make it accessible again.

Pretty much the only part of JJR1 that was genuinely broken.

>>3083479
That's just depressing. Even the inaccessible areas suffer the same problem.

Is the yellow area accessible through the wall at the top left in any way?

>>3088721
It's only accessable through cheating, using the god mode cheat and then hover your way up there with the pogo stick.

It's a damn shame aswell, as Keen 3 was my favorite in terms of setting from the original Trilogy.

The misaligned wallpaper-tiles almost pissed me off just as much.

>>3088721
Technically, everything past the pool is inaccessible on its own, too, since you can't jump over it.

Reading up on Mega Man 1's design process was pretty interesting, but I don't think I have an answer to the question of who decided it was a good idea to have platforms with fucked up movement that shoot at you.

I'm considering this a part of level design since if you don't have the magnet beam (which admittedly can only happen in Ice Man's stage), you need them to beat the level.

>>3088721
You wanna know something even worse?

Let's look at the last level before the final boss, the cave level. Now, even as a kid I realized pretty quickly that you can jump over the mountain to reach a secret exit, but I still tried plenty of times to beat the level the "right" way. Only, it's impossible. Eventually you reach a point where the tunnel is too narrow to walk through. You literally cannot reach the lower exit. Did nobody playtest this game? Even if you could reach the exit, if you look at a map you'll see that the door is blocked by impassable spikes. Keen 3, everybody.

P.S., the final boss sucks too.

>>3088769
Clearly the entire level is a FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE

>>3088769
And just like Hal's Kitchen, the longer you look at it the worse it gets.

>long-ass level in an 1hit-death game
>green keycard in an area that'll definitely kill you unless you pixelbitch your way to it
>red balls can get into an infinite loop in narrow corridors, making them impassable
>even if you could reach the exit you'd get trapped if you'd try to reach the stuffed Vortininjas

>>3088806
>>3088806
>>long-ass level in an 1hit-death game
You say that like it's necessarily a bad thing.

>>3088806
>ninjas that take four hits to kill
>no ammo in the entire level, except the secret area

>>3088706
Huh, I thought they were just put there to taunt the player.

>>3083479
I was going to post a reply but then I saw you're a tripfag. Fuck off and die.

>>3088021
Haha right about here is when I gave up on Mother. Just way too tedious. Please tell me they changed it in the remake.

>>3092675
>remake
You mean the gba version? That was based on the unreleased US prototype and it was left the same in that. Personally I dealt with it fine, confusing pathways and decently difficult enemies didn't ruin the game for me. Maybe try it again.

>>3088749
Footholders were (and still are) the absolute bane of Megaman 1 for me, especially that fucking glitch that makes you pass right through them

>>3092746
looks like messed up collision detection, with movement of the platform and MM happening in different frames. He seems to have trouble "standing" on the one immediately before the glitch as well

bump

>>3092746

That shit has never happened to me but I've heard people talk about it.

I've played through MM1 a LOT over the years. As a matter of fact, I play through these games more than once a year and stopped having trouble with this part of Ice Man's stage when I was a child but I swear I would be so mad if that happened to me. Did they fix this in later re-releases or did they just slap a rom onto the package and call it a day?

>>3087417
Yes, and you can't beat the game if you use it pretty much because there's one part in Gates labs where you can't make a jump with it.

>>3090564
Fuck of and die tripfaggot. Stop deleting posts that call you out for your bullshit you pathetic piece of shit.

>>3092738
I meant Mother: Origins or whatever it was called.

Attempt it again? Maybe if there's literally nothing better to do...

>>3093208
prolly not, its basically just a port/VC game. there were a few minor changes made to the dungeon layouts in the american version but mainly because one dungeon looked like a swastika. id attempt it again if this was your biggest issue with it. the dungeon you posted is by far the most confusing one, the only ones that come close are mt itoi and possibly the manor. draw a map in those places and itll be fine, no need for graph paper, just doodle.

The fucking Pit

Tripfaggot confirmed for post deleting crybaby.

Hey guess what? If you didn't wanna get called out for your bullshit, maybe don't use AN IDENTIFYING NAME AND TRIPCODE.

Just fucking end it you piece of shit. Go from being FaggotvSevendicks-in-your mouth to Understands-they're-not-special-leaf.