/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9861051]

Goddamn, this sucks. I'd call it barely playable. Why were western developers of this era so bad at platformers (except for Rare)?

[Anonymous No.9861273]

The fucking ostrich running giraffe jumping level is pure bullshit and ruined a weekend rental for a birthday party when I was a kid fuck you Lion King on SNES

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

[Anonymous No.9861289]

>>9861051
American devs were all for a big show. It had to make a "bang", gameplay came second; the audiovisual experience was good and faithful to the movie, so, in their eyes, it was a success. However, there were hardware limitations and the american mindset doesn't know how to cope with it; for them, it's all or nothing. In the end, the game suffers a lot with poor collision detection, and that's from where most of the difficulty stems. Nowadays, things are much less limited, so americans can make their vision come through more accurately.

European devs were "better", but they had a very... let's say, "peculiar" way of thinking how a game should be. Barring that, they were very competent and showed great results when they didn't shoot their own feet.

[Anonymous No.9861298]

AHHHH SAVANYA BABABEEBEEBATAAA!

[Anonymous No.9861323]

>>9861051
My parents got me this when I was a retarded kid since I loved the Lion King. Thought it was unreasonably difficult and clunky for no reason. I just cheated to check out the levels.

[Anonymous No.9861331]

>>9861051
everyone thought they were the hottest shit since smb3 for finally being able to do two axis scrolling trivially, that one gimmick they relied upon and in smug oblivious pride cast aside every other aspect of game design

[Anonymous No.9861373]

>>9861051
They didn't understand the basics. Controls, level design, and how to balance difficulty correctly. Rare were shit too - their approach was "oi mate, how can we piss the player off as much as possible innit, it'll be a laugh" while japan's approach was "how can we challenge the player just enough to make them want to try again, without frustrating them"

[Anonymous No.9861446]

>>9861051
Lion King is probably one of the better 16-bit platformers, despite the problems.

>>9861373
Seriously nig? Japanese games were full of obtuse difficulty spikes.

[Anonymous No.9861470]

>>9861373
>Rare were shit too - their approach was "oi mate, how can we piss the player off as much as possible innit, it'll be a laugh"
I think you're deepthroating nipdik too much, dude.
At the very least, the DKC games were pretty okay when it came to difficulty. If my retarded 6 year old self could beat those games without trying to break everything in frustration, then it was fair.

[Anonymous No.9861492]

>>9861051
It's kind of hard to believe now but magazines at the time LOOVED this games. Getting 90%+ scores and toppling lots of end of year lists.

[Anonymous No.9861609]

>>9861051
>Why were western developers of this era so bad at platformers (except for Rare)?
Stop playing bad games, Virgin also did Aladdin Genesis, Cool Spot, and the phenomenal Terminator for SEGA CD. This one just happens to be one of their weaker entries sadly, mostly because of what >>9861273 mentioned. Traveler's Tales also had a pretty good run with Toy Story, Sonic 3D Blast, and Mickey Mania. Honestly you would probably just be better off with any of those.

[Anonymous No.9861626]

>>9861273
So you can't beat the second level, that's really unimpressive. Anyways the platforming is more precise on the Genesis version.

[Anonymous No.9861628]

>>9861492
What's the problem? It's got good music and animation. The fact that it's hard doesn't completely and utterly make it irredeemable.

[Anonymous No.9861985]

It's a fine game aside from the second level which I simply use a code to skip.

[Anonymous No.9862002]

>>9861051
god i wish i was a cute fuzzy cartoon lion

[Anonymous No.9862003]

>>9861051
get filtered

[Anonymous No.9862023]

>>9861985
you didnt beat the game

[Anonymous No.9862060]

>>9861273
I never thought of this, but it makes a lot of sense. I didn't have a console when I was a kid, so I never rented a game, I'm playing (emulating) lots of old games lately and I'm surprised they're usually ridiculously hard, now I finally read a good explanation.

[Anonymous No.9862064]

>>9861626
>when I was a kid
Not him but learn to read

[Anonymous No.9862515]

>>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.

[Anonymous No.9862931]

>>9862023
just as you didn't game the beat

[Anonymous No.9862946]

>>9861273
>>9862515
Barging into your conversation, I'd like to comment that "challenge" comes with a measure. You probably played a brain-dead easy game before, and it's not very engaging at all. So, things shouldn't be easy. However, the other side of the spectrum is true, and being too hard just brews stress and questions whether it's a hobby or a job. That's why it's complex for game devs, you can't just do too little or too much, you have to maintain a healthy balance. Of course, while making everything else that compromises a game. It's like a juggling effort in which you can't let any ball fall down; that's what's required to make a good game. We have many examples of successful titles, but even more of lackluster ones.

[Anonymous No.9862948]

>>9862002
go to bed tezuka

[Anonymous No.9862992]

>>9861273
>Japanese want to make a game easier for gaijin
>Westerners want it harder to fight rentals
the eternal fight

[Anonymous No.9863000]

>>9862992
>>Japanese want to make a game easier for gaijin

It's the contrary. They made games easier for the Japanese, see Battletoads or Crash Bandicoot. The Japanese did not praise challenge like the west, it's not found in the marketing nearly as often and magazines wouldn't rate a game higher for being more difficult like the west did.

[Anonymous No.9863035]

>>9861273
>>9861051
>Lion King is a children's IP
>kids in age range 5-12 would want to play it
>first level is really nice and related to the movie storyline
>second level is a fucking bright pink and yellow ostrich running game with no feedback about what is killing you non-stop

I only played this game as an adult and was blown away trying to comprehend why I was dying and what I was supposed to do. Had to look up a fucking youtube video to see that I should be avoiding some light yellowish branches or some shit. This shitty game was probably designed by the same team that made James Bond JR. on the SNES.

[Anonymous No.9863303]

>>9861289
>"peculiar" way of thinking how a game should be
example?

[Anonymous No.9863357]

>>9863303
There isn't a single game, but a style, as if they were signing "this game was developed by an european team". Answering your question, that style consisted of:

* Darker palette: even when representing colorful images, they tended to go for "dark colorful", giving a drab or eerie look, depending on your point of view.
* Uncanny sprites: their foundation was on realism, then sprinkled with fantasy twists. So you got "deformed" humans, animals and flora. The results varied, some were eye-catching, others were disgusting, but one thing was certain: they were never cute. Just like a Grimm fairytale.
* Graphical reliance #1 - Nature: Europe has some breathtaking sceneries, so games portraying nature were a no-brainer. Forests filled with mushrooms and cobwebs, praeries, water wheels, flowers, sunbeams, you name it. Many times, they darkened it a bit, making it a kind of "sad beauty", which adds to the eerie feeling. Of course, we can not forget that drops of water almost always damages your character.
* Graphical reliance #2 - Sci-fi: european games also liked a lot the idea of a lone space traveler facing the unknowns of the vast universe. Things were still dark and it gave plenty of opportunity to draw more exotic flora.
* Overspeed and/or overanimations: euros knew how to handle those machines, and they made sure to show everyone their skill. Many things happening at once on the screen, fast pacing of the game and too many frames for a basic animation happened quite a lot. While technically very impressive, sometimes it ended up being too garbled or having poor responsiveness (but not poor performance, they're not synonyms).
* Music: contemplative ambience or electronic. Both of highly technical quality. About the compositions per se, it's up to the listener, but, once you get used to them, you can spot them from a mile away.

I'm nearing the 2000-character limit. I could say a few more things I noticed, but I hope it's useful for you.

[Anonymous No.9863389]

>>9861051
>he play'd the shitty snes port

Genesis does what Nintendony.

[Anonymous No.9863395]

>>9861051
The problem is the 2nd hardest stage in the game, is literally the second stage. The main problem is people here that beat it will say stuff like "This stage is not hard, because there are harder ones", and that is something said by a person who forgot what it's like to not be "a gamer". Anyone skilled at any activity or task eventually forgets what "normal" people feel like. And people forget that thanks to being a tie-in to one of the biggest animated films in history, it wasn't just played by gamers, it was played by EVERYBODY so that did a lot to increase its reputation as a really hard game.

Yeah, if you're skilled at games it's not that bad, but it's insanely hard for the average kid.

[Anonymous No.9863397]

>>9861051
>yoge kusoge was right again

[Anonymous No.9863462]

>>9861609
People who worked on those then did EWJ which was good, but then EWJ2 was too damn gimmicky despite having more levels and not as good.

[Anonymous No.9863476]

>>9863357
One Zillion internets bro

[Anonymous No.9864778]

>>9861051
aye, shooda plehd't 'n th' good ol' mega drahv lad

[Anonymous No.9865067]

>>9861051
I still have this god forsaken game. All I remember is jumping with precision and still falling through solid surfaces. The monkey bullshit in the second level was too cryptic for my child mind.

[Anonymous No.9866321]

>>9863035
>I played Lion King and couldn't tell branches arching over the racing path at the same height as my character was causing me to fall off
Oh, so you're an idiot. Gotcha.

[Anonymous No.9866327]

>>9863035
How wasn't it clear that the branches are fucking you up?
The colors are grating tho.

[Anonymous No.9866337]

>>9861373
If it isn't a run-and-gun game nothing says Western game quite like giving you an impossible puzzle right in the first ten minutes too, like it has to be 'brilliant gameplay' if 90 percent of the audience is filtered by it immediately. For example the difficulty in Battletoads is perfect because it's all right there, but the gameplay in something like Broken Sword.... eugh. But no matter what, Frustration always marks something as a Western title.

[Anonymous No.9866340]

>>9861492
Imagine if Disney made the Mario movie, it would be full of Positive reviews.

[Anonymous No.9866348]

>>9861273
I never got past the lava level or whatever point that was in the game. I got past the stampede tho