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/vr/ - Retro Games

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6110449 No.6110449 [Reply] [Original]

Where did the meme of Mega Man being a difficult series come from? Of the NES games only the very first one comes close to being any challenging and there's plenty of other games on the platform that make it seem like a cakewalk. Have people just always been bad with platformers or does this stem from some source being parroted around without having played the games?

>> No.6110456

Like almost anything else you can learn, gaming has a certain language to it. There are ideas inherent to how we build and play games that only make sense if you've learned the formal rules to each game world. Mario jumps on Koopas, which only really makes sense in Mario; other titles require you to avoid enemies completely.

A similar thing happened when Super Metroid hit the Wii U Virtual Console. Beyond of the infamous "Y can't Metroid crawl?" question (that guy eventually beat the game), many players were stuck because they lacked the tools and expectations to deal with certain obstacles. Knowing that brown doors are completely inactive is a learned trait. Something as simple as taking a leap of faith is hard because other games have taught you bottomless pits are instant death.

These are all things most of us take for granted, because we grew up playing these titles. Concepts like wall jumping, double jumps, and charge shots, are familiar to us. We're more apt to sit down with a title and see what gameplay tropes form the backbone of a game's world. Imagine not having that knowledge to draw on? It's why I use the language metaphor; if you don't understand Russian vocabulary or sentence structure, of course you're going to be lost reading a Russian book, even if it's meant for children.

These kids lack the vocabulary to engage with something like Mega Man early on. Despite that, they take damage, die, learn, and improve. They get farther and repeated attempts see them getting deeper into the level. That's how the game works. Many of us just forget that we had to learn at one point. Mega Man makes no effort to teach you anything or even hint at possible solutions. It's like a point-and-click adventure game in platforming form; things work because they were built that way, you just have to keep dying until you figure out the solution.

>> No.6110457

"Video games from that era are abnormally hard," Nintendo president Satoru Iwata admitted in a guest appearance on Japanese show Game Center CX. "Back in the NES generation, for example, let's say everyone debugs a game after it's finished. 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.'"

>> No.6110460

>>6110456
So you're saying it garnered this reputation well after the series' prime? I'm too zoomer to have been alive when the games were at their most popular so I'm curious to know if it was always this way, but the way you talk makes it seem that's not the case.

>> No.6110478

>>6110460
These games were always hard. The first Mega Man is one of the classic "Nintendo Hard" games (It's not Mega Man and Bass or Megaman Zero 2, but you get the idea). Not only was it the introduction to this specific style of play, but it lacked the superior level design of its sequels. Mega Man is meant to be a game where you die and learn from your death.

For a neophyte, things come at you from every direction and it only takes some knockback to find yourself falling into spikes or a bottomless pit. There's no charging, no sliding, and no Energy Tanks to ease the difficulty and the infamous Yellow Devil is waiting for you.

The boss weaknesses make little sense. Using Ice Slasher on Fire Man makes sense, but why would you think to use Thunder Beam on Ice Man or Rolling Cutter on Elec Man? You just have to keep trying until you figure out what works.

Games today are easier. Many of these Nintendo titles had designs informed by the arcade games of the day, which were meant to eat all your precious quarters. Designing a game that most of your player bases couldn't beat was the norm, and many of these older Nintendo games have been proven to be painfully hard. Hell, there's even one study that proves older Nintendo games are NP-hard, meaning they're even computationally difficult.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.1895v2.pdf

Here's a challenge for you. Find an NES game you didn't play back in the day. Go play it. See how easy it is to learn its systems, or how well you do in the first 10-15 minutes of play. Or revisit one of those old classics that you haven't played in decades. Even drawing on the knowledge you already have as a gamer, I think what you'll find will surprise you.

>> No.6110491

>>6110478
That is kind of my point already though. Going back to replay through the NES games there's a steep decline in challenge following the first game, everything after is significantly easier but it seems people still hold the entire series as being difficult. Going off your last point I did just that with NES Ghosts 'n Goblins and I find that game much harder than any Mega Man game on the NES. I would even go to say the first two Ninja Gaidens (haven't played through 3 so I can't comment on it) are significantly more difficult than the first Mega Man is. There's some rough sections in the first Mega Man but it's reasonably beatable compared to games both before and after it yet I've seen the whole series held to this standard of being brutal when every following game was fairly forgiving in comparison. Perhaps the series just clicks easier for me than others, but these different viewpoints are an interesting read regardless.

>> No.6110516

>>6110449
Most people played MM as dumb kids. Of course their memories are going to be that the games were hard.

I would think the same of Castlevania I or Mega Man X if I didn't play them every year.

>> No.6111334

>>6110449
>Where did the meme of Mega Man being a difficult series come from?
Zoomennials

>> No.6111762

>>6110478
>Why would you think to use Thunder Beam on Ice Man or Rolling Cutter on Elec Man?
Because water conducts electricity and so do metal blades. Not this hard (figured that out on my first try, Cutman being weak to Power Arm is a different story), and you complaining about this makes it obvious you played one of the shit-easy (or just shit, period) sequels long before you played this game.

>> No.6111778

>>6110516
For me it's the other way around. I used to clear MMX5 as a kid like it was nothing. Now I can barely clear a second stage. Dexterity loss from aging is real.

>> No.6111903
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6111903

>>6111778
if you played X5 as a kid then you're not that old yet, you're just bad

>> No.6111909

>>6111903
Like I said, I used to clear it flawlessly. Two decades is enough to slow down.

>> No.6112106

>>6111762
Oh right, I forgot how ice is such a good conductor. Fuck off, faggot.

>> No.6112271

They posed a menial semblance of difficulty before you could just look up the boss weaknesses online. But yeah once you knew the "cheat sheet" for bosses and/or passwords it's basically a cakewalk. Still you have a good 8-10 hours of virgin exploring and experimenting for each game.

>> No.6113419
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6113419

I recently played through 2 today and MOST of three. 2 was pretty easy. I'd say 3 is a bit harder but not because it's actually hard. It's just really messily designed and doesn't run well.

Also fuck this. Man I used to remember liking 3 as a kid but fucking hell does it suck.

>> No.6113458

>>6110449
>all these dumbasses ITT flexing that MM is SooOOooo easy
i'd love to see any one of you faggots streaming yourselves playing these fucking games. how long until you hit up the rewind function? they're nowhere near the level of shit like ninja gaiden (which i'm sure i'll get at least one or two responses saying "no that's easy too") but they absolutely are challenging games, especially if you're new to NES stuff.

>> No.6113467

>>6110449
Not difficult just boring, having trial and error to get better was not really well done.

>> No.6113469

>>6113458
They always say it's easy because they grew up with it so they say nothing is really wrong with the games "it became more casual" rather than evolved and became fair. Even I can even admit faults with Gran Turismo on PS1 era and Ape Escape 1 as well despite them having a certain charm to them. Even today it would consider to have issues of detection and camera angles etc.

>> No.6113787

>>6112271
>They posed a menial semblance of difficulty before you could just look up the boss weaknesses online.
Yeah because everyone who buys a game googles "how to be the very best like no one ever was in X quickly". No way they would enjoy engagement with the gameplay systems.

>> No.6113827

>>6113419
Pleb, 3 is arguably the best of the series alongside 2 and X.

>> No.6114027

>>6111762
So the reason one enemy is weak to electricity is because it conducts electricity, and the reason another weapon is strong against the electric robot master is because the weapon itself conducts electricity? That doesn’t make any sense. You have the logic of strengths and weaknesses going in both directions.

>> No.6115071

>>6114027
So the reason babies think they can logic is because of electricity?

>> No.6115072

>>6113827
Absolutely based taste.

>> No.6115098

>>6112271
>They posed a menial semblance of difficulty before you could just look up the boss weaknesses online.

I remember going online in the 1980s

>> No.6115103

>>6110449
I think a lot of it came from the trial and error segments a lot of levels had.

Like; you're jogging around, shootin motherfuckers until you entrr a room with invisible platforms you have to jump on ib an exact sequence and it takes 9 year old you 30 tries to get it down. That sort of thing

>> No.6115937

>>6115103
I think it's more an issue that babies nowadays want to win their entire game in the first run

>> No.6116120

>>6112271
You don't even need to know the boss weaknesses. Most special weapons are good enough to carry you through the stage, even if they aren't good on the boss. The weapons do get worse in the later games, but at that point you have the charge shot to fuck up everything.

>> No.6116230

It comes from people coming back to retro games after playing exlusively modern shit for years and discovering that they weren't piss easy. It's always the popular games that are mentioned as being hard even though in reality games like Megaman, Contra and Castlevania are quite easy. This had a snowballing effect thanks to journos and AVGN, which cemented an already existing faulty perception.

>> No.6116268

>>6113787
There is a lot more than just being Ash. It's about time and convenience. Tell me the last game you ran into a wall for 2-3 hours and didn't look for the solution to. Loads of fun.
>>6115098
We both know that that wasn't nominal for households. Thank you for your "detention slip" post.
>>6116120
I only really feel that was applicable to MM2. The "cure all" weapons like Metal Blade got nerfed BAD in MM3 (i.e. Shadow Blade takes more energy and has shit range). You're right though, around MM4 onward you could just spam Charge shot and memorizing the weaknesses wasn't an integral.