Limited Continues in Console Games

[Anonymous No.9932268]

Defend this.

[Anonymous No.9932273]

It's a good stopping point for your game session that day.

[Anonymous No.9932286]

It's a good way to punish sloppy play.
That being said, if the game also gives the player an option to continue through passwords, then limited continues is ultimately pointless and all you're doing is making the player waste time going back and typing a password in.
You could argue limited continues in a game that has no password system is also pointless, but with a system like that the only way to get back to where you left off is to replay the game and improve. Whereas limited continues with a password system is just going to have players typing the password back in, so they're not building their skills with the game.

[Anonymous No.9932287]

Extremely good. You’re not entitled to anything.

[Anonymous No.9932295]

>>9932268
>REEEEEEE WHY DOES THE GAME EXPECT ME TO ACTUALLY LEARN PATTERNS INSTEAD OF BRUTE FORCING MY WAY TO VICTORY
Limited continues are based.

[Anonymous No.9932308]

>>9932287
/Thread

[Anonymous No.9932314]

>>9932273
>good stopping point for your game session that day.
So it's good because it makes you want to stop playing?

>>9932286
>punishes sloppy play.
Yeah. I can see that.
Like in Castlevania / Megaman, you can just die several times to get back all your lives.
But I think the problem with the system is that lives shouldn't be deducted at the start of stages.
They should only be deducted after the player has reached a checkpoint.

[Anonymous No.9932317]

>>9932295
This logic makes no sense. Replaying levels 1-5 again isn’t helping you learn level 6. It’s just adding pointless time between attempts.

[Anonymous No.9932327]

>>9932295
There are other ways to test that a player has learned patterns.
For instance, the Megaman games often have a boss rush at the end.

[Anonymous No.9932329]

>>9932317
It forces you to git gud at getting to level 6 though. If you play like shit getting to level 6, your punishment is a swift game over once you get there.

[Anonymous No.9932342]

>>9932329
>play perfectly up to final level
>waste all my lives on this bullshit

[Anonymous No.9932346]

>>9932342
What a cruel game. Technos were total assholes with the NES version of Double Dragon.

[Anonymous No.9932347]

>>9932342
So was there really no pattern at all? As a kid I never got past the cave.

[Anonymous No.9932359]

Are people really so dumb that they don't get that old games have obtuse difficulty spikes just so you never stop playing?

[Anonymous No.9932378]

>>9932359
No shit, Sherlock. You think you are smarter than everyone else because no one has went out of the way to state the obvious for you. Most of why games, or any other medium for that matter, do anything is because they want to keep you engaged. Intention is one thing, actually accomplishing what is intended is another, which is what this thread is about.

[Anonymous No.9932383]

>>9932287
*unblocks your path*
nothing personnel kid

[Anonymous No.9932393]

>>9932347
It has a complex pattern:
1 & 2 are always followed by 1 or 3
3 & 4 are always followed by 2 or 4

But a simple strat has been found:
Jump-kick over the first/second brick as it retracts.

[Anonymous No.9932407]

>>9932383
This can result in some bad habits as a player if you get too reliant on savestates.

[Anonymous No.9932417]

>>9932317
Naw you always play better if warmed up. Good games have a rhythm. Emulation is for you guy

[Anonymous No.9932419]

>>9932342
Lol every time

[Anonymous No.9932427]

>>9932317
True, I'll just be wasting my time going through all those useless levels I already mastered. unless it's sonic and I can go fast.

[Anonymous No.9932452]

>>9932268
>A non issue for skilled players? Check
>Easy to bypass? Check
>Makes zoomer seethe? Check
Nothing to defend there kiddo

[Anonymous No.9932457]

What people don't understand about limited continues is that it comes from arcade ports or having the arcade formula on console at home.

In the arcade you had to pay to continue, but at home you've already paid 30-50 bucks for the game. What should the game do, give 50-100 continues and then have the cartridge self destruct?

But then if you wanted to beat an arcade game, paying up wasn't enough, you also had to get good (this is contrary to popular belief who thinks all you have to do is keep paying to beat arcade games, because they don't know that arcade games used to put you back at the start of a stage when you die and only know about the 90's stuff you can bruteforce without getting good given enough money).

So, limited continues on a console port makes sense, because just like in the arcade, you have to pay up (buy the game) AND get good.

But of course the mentality changed with time as the playerbase grew and video games gradually casualized, so now people look at times before theirs with a mentality from a different time period.

[Anonymous No.9932470]

There's an almost universal secret to overcome this limit git gud

[Anonymous No.9932483]

>>9932457
Dudelet, literally everyone understands that and has for ages. Your sad attempt at redditing your sage wisdom is just embarrassing.

[Anonymous No.9932616]

>>9932268
>not Limited Continues in Arcade Games
Defend THIS

[Anonymous No.9932630]

>>9932317
In a well designed game, level 6 is just a test for everything you learned in levels 1-5.

[Anonymous No.9932635]

>>9932616
>not Limited Continues in Arcade Games

Some arcade games just say fuck you when you get a game over at the final stage/battle, depends on developer.

[Anonymous No.9932690]

It adds real tension to a game. People can go on about how Dark Souls is "le sooo hard" but you have infinite tries and plenty of checkpoints.

Battletoads though? You can play for an hour, lose all your lives at the final boss and have to start over from the beginning. It's incredibly stressful...but incredibly rewarding once you pull it off.

[Anonymous No.9932754]

>>9932268
>>9932273
this is a good point. a game over screen is a stopping point. i guess i could bang out a rant about how modern games are more than happy to string you along indefinitely rather than challenge the player by saying no, fuck you, go back to level 1 until you get it right.
>>9932457
right. it can be tempting to think arcade games are just trying to steal your quarters, and sometimes they are, but if arcade games has been kirby-tier easy audiences around the world wouldn't have been satisfied.

it's a different mindset. it seems like 50% of people into retro games don't appreciate developing skill. i'm not sure how to communicate this to people who don't get it. i remember when i was a kid i would beat my face into a game like mega man 4 or ninja gaiden until i got it right. as i kept trying i'd discover different nuances about the game, which i could then bring into the earlier levels. there are some games i can half way beat purely from muscle memory.

i guess a way to explain it is if you consider what japshit meant back in the 80s-90s. anime was a huge novelty at the time because it was extreme. japan has always been autistic, and if the devs wanted to get a point across, they fucking would. you're not just developing skill in a given game to prove you're better than someone else. you're going on a journey with the character(s) because the anxiety and stress and frustration has to exist so you can overcome it and be just like the protagonist--a hero.

[Anonymous No.9932774]

>>9932690
>Battletoads though? You can play for an hour, lose all your lives at the final boss and have to start over from the beginning. It's incredibly stressful...but incredibly rewarding once you pull it off.

I got a Game Genie just so I can practice on Battletoads

[Anonymous No.9933712]

>>9932754
I think you're hitting at something important in that last paragraph. Games were mysterious, and not just because they came from a foreign country, but because unlike movies or books, you couldn't just skip to the ending (without cheat codes). Most people didn't have internet until the mid-late 90's, so before then there were no datamines or day 1 YouTube longplays. If you couldn't get past stage 5, you might not even know how much longer the game was. Was stage 6 an ice stage? Is there a secret move to beat the minotaur boss? These were the kinds of things we talked about on the school playground and the details we hungrily devoured from every issue of Nintendo Power.

A local restaurant had a Metal Slug 2 machine for years. I played it countless times with whatever few quarters I had but never made it past the bit with the mummies. I sat down with one of the rereleases of the game years later and blew threw the whole thing on infinite lives and it felt so empty. Limited lives are a product of the time, and removing them from a game designed around the mechanic is impossible without fundamentally changing the experience.

[Anonymous No.9933725]

>no continues at all in arcade game
gotta get good son

[Anonymous No.9933747]

>>9932383
Update your shit, nigga, it don' look like that anymore.

[Anonymous No.9933772]

It was so THIS would not turn that $40-80 game into a $5 fee that the publisher even ever see. Same reason "Nintendo Hard" was a thing back when game carts were too small to hold a game longer than 15-45 minutes for 95% of genres.

Other reasons include many games were just ports from arcade games that let you put in as many quarters as you wanted so they had no idea how to properly balance that and a lot of programmers back then had little to no experience designing games as well as there being almost no prior knowledge of what design choices are a good idea back then.

[Anonymous No.9933787]

>>9932268
It's a good thing. If the standard configuration isn't enough to complete the game you should come back again to practice until you beat it.

[Anonymous No.9933843]

>>9933712
This post is correct. There are lots of good games balanced around not being able to clear the game in the first sitting, but expecting the player to enjoy replaying the early stages and getting better at them. If you remove that aspect, you're removing a big part of the game. Most Shoot-em-ups are good examples.

But that's not to say there aren't games that abuse the concept of limited continues.

[Anonymous No.9933912]

>>9932317
No, but it helps you actually learn level 1-5 instead of just luckshitting your way through them once.

[Anonymous No.9933919]

>>9932287
>You’re not entitled to anything.
Okay in that case

>game doesn't even work
What, you thought you were entitled to play a game you paid money for? Fuck you.

[Anonymous No.9933921]

>>9932635
>Wonder Boy 2
>life meter is tied to your highest score that session
>can credit feed to continue indefinitely but doing so resets your score to 0, which need to regain all the points you had at the point you died before you start getting health upgrades again
>final level just kicks you back to the title screen when you die

It's the perfect "git gud faget" game, practically forces you to 1cc it.

[Anonymous No.9933941]

>>9933772
>nips were designing games around some faggot store in a different country
No.

[Anonymous No.9933949]

>>9933772
Show me one single quote from a Japanese game dev who says they were making their games harder to combat game rentals.

[Anonymous No.9933993]

>>9933949
The only fucking quote anyone ever has is from that one Lion King dev, and that game had a level select code anyway so the renters could just cheat their way past level 2 if they had read a magazine.

[Anonymous No.9934120]

>>9933941
>>9933949

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_of_America,_Inc._v._Blockbuster_Entertainment_Corp.

Nintendo went apeshit trying to get video game rentals outlawed everywhere and were only successful in Japan yet you think rentals had nothing to do with it? Or nothing to do with how many US versions of games like Castlevania 3 or Contra Hard Corps are harder than the Japanese versions?

Notice how "Nintendo hard" started to go away once it was possible to make games that take multiple hours and can't be beaten during a rental fit on a cart as commonplace?

[Anonymous No.9934170]

>>9934120
Nintendo of America aren't nips.

[Anonymous No.9934364]

>>9933772
>design $5 worth of game
>sell it for $40-$80
If you think rental services were the problem here, you're hopeless.

[Anonymous No.9934418]

>>9934170
Nintendo of Japan calls the shots everywhere, it wasn't only in America they tried this.

>>9934364
I don't think people would have been happy with $200 carts so you can fit more than "$5 worth of game" in the early 80s.

[Anonymous No.9934427]

I'm glad Super Mario Bros. 3 For NES had limited continues, and forced me to become a good player. Something the All-Stars version, I've felt had always lacked.

[Anonymous No.9934441]

>>9932268
This should be pretty obvious.
At that time, you couldn't put a lot of content in a game, so in order to make a game long, developers made it more difficult.
Imagine if Contra restarted you at the start of the level once you lose your lives. You could probably beat it in a couple days then.

[Anonymous No.9934449]

>>9934418
In that case these "Blockbuster hard" games would've had easier versions released in Japan. Oddly enough they didn't. And oddly enough Japan-exclusive games were hard too.

[Anonymous No.9934452]

>>9934449
There is no special version that rental stores get, they would not have been able to police a "blockbuster" version, also that's a huge waste of money in both development and production.

Also, easier versions in Japan DID happen as I mentioned with Castlevania 3 and Hard Corps.

[Anonymous No.9934891]

>>9934427
>I'm glad Super Mario Bros. 3 For NES had limited continues
It didn't, retard.

[Anonymous No.9934897]

>>9934441
>Imagine if Contra restarted you at the start of the level once you lost your lives.

[Anonymous No.9935369]

>>9932268
I don't have to justify anything to a dumb fucking literal nobody faggot.

And I don't know why so many fragile people on this board apparently do.
Stop being op's bitch. Do better.

[Anonymous No.9935390]

>>9934120
>Notice how "Nintendo hard" started to go away once it was possible to make games that take multiple hours and can't be beaten during a rental fit on a cart as commonplace?

Let's take the example of Japan's favourite genre: RPGs. all the popular Famicom RPGs were generally more challenging than all the popular Super Famicom RPGs which themselves were more challenging than all the popular PSX RPGs.

I bet you're going to blame that on "rentals" as well.

[Anonymous No.9935394]

>>9935369
Quit the whining, sissy.
Men are talking here.

[Anonymous No.9935403]

>>9932268
Continues as a secondary form of lives, just another resource, is an interesting thing in some console games. Like in Sonic games, where you can earn continues for playing well. Continues are just last ditch lives in those games. You get a second chance after losing all your lives, maybe being forced further back than just dying normally. Sometimes losing points or other punishments.

I like limited continues in games. In effect you have two forms of lives and that's cool. Plus forcing you to play with a limited number by default in ports of arcade games encourages people not to credit feed. It should be an option to have unlimited in those ports, but I like the default being limited continues.

[Anonymous No.9935423]

>>9935390
Are you braindead? That's exactly what I said happened once they were able to put games that lasted longer than 15-45 minutes on a cart:

>>9934120
>Notice how "Nintendo hard" started to go away once it was possible to make games that take multiple hours and can't be beaten during a rental fit on a cart as commonplace?

I ALSO mentioned how some genres were one of the exceptions because they could make ones that take a long time to beat fit on the carts at the time:

>>9933772
>Same reason "Nintendo Hard" was a thing back when game carts were too small to hold a game longer than 15-45 minutes for 95% of genres.

RPGs are a prime example of those genres that they could fit many hours of gameplay on the carts at the time.

[Anonymous No.9935445]

>>9935403
But a lot of games with limited continues don't have a way to get extra ones.
And for those that do, 1-Ups already accomplish much the same thing - as far as being an interesting mechanic that provides incentive for the player to do certain things (explore, collect coins, risk/reward for running after a mushroom, etc.)

[Anonymous No.9935463]

>>9935394
>needy fragile faggot demands to be coddled
>"men are talking"
Embarrassing. You haven't said a thing of substance on this board in your life.

[Anonymous No.9935483]

>>9935463
The only thing that's embarrassing is the fact you're still monitoring this thread.
You've called everyone here a fragile bitch, and me - a dumb faggot.
And yet here you are... still desperately checking in to see what we say.

[Anonymous No.9935501]

>>9934441
>Imagine if Contra restarted you at the start of the level once you lose your lives.
Man, wouldn't it be retarded if that was in Super Mario Bros.?

[Anonymous No.9935504]

>>9932268
no

[Anonymous No.9935514]

>>9935445
There are still the other factors, tho.
Mainly, the score reset. I don't care about the score itself, but having a score reset is a big deal and kinda gives the impression that the game is letting you go on and see the late levels. This gives you an incentive to play again better than the score itself, which just looks like some big number, and in a different way than the 1-ups. It so-to speak makes the player think they "didn't beat the game" since they had to use a continue, while you might see using an 1-up as more as a simple mechanic that's still part of the game since you can get them, and while you could've done better, you still beat the game.

[Anonymous No.9935516]

>>9935423
You are so stupid I facepalmed real hard, enjoy your rental boogeyman then

[Anonymous No.9935523]

>>9935514
But the score resets when you continue in games with unlimited continues too - e.g. Castlevania, SMB3

[Anonymous No.9935535]

>>9932268
Shutup fag. No one is dead

[Anonymous No.9935537]

DO BETTER

[Anonymous No.9935539]

>>9935523
It's a good compromise. There's a difference between letting the player explore a bit more of the game and the ridiculousness of letting the player go through the entire thing in one go (somewhat akin to unlimited lives).

[Anonymous No.9935590]

>>9935539
Hardly a compromise. Seems like the score reset accomplishes everything that the arcade equivalent does.
Not sure what your second sentence has to do with it. But since you've thrown it out there, I'll say that I'm not advocating for PS1 Metal Slug X style infinite lives - where you can just respawn from where you died endlessly.
Though that's a whole other argument regarding the legitimacy of credit feeding games.

[Anonymous No.9935608]

>>9935590
I don't get your posts, I've explained the nuance in both questions.
>(question in 1st post) how is limited continues different than limited lives + 0 continues?
>(question in 2nd post) how is limited continues different than unlimited continues?
The second question is so obvious it hardly deserves explaining. The first less so. Getting thrown a bit back in SMB3 is A LOT different than the game throwing you to the beginning. It's clearly different which one your game has. Although what you may advocate as the best is up to you.
>Seems like the score reset accomplishes everything that the arcade equivalent does.
The matter is what it does as a console game. I don't think every console game IS an arcade port.

[Anonymous No.9935636]

>actually beat the game
>GAME OVER

[Anonymous No.9935650]

>>9934170
Dumbass, actually read the article
>In 1984, the copyright law of Japan was amended to allow copyright holders to decide their own terms and conditions for rental stores, after lobbying from the Recording Industry Association of Japan.[11] A similar policy discussion occurred in America, with the Rental Records Amendments Act banning music rentals in 1984.[12]

[Anonymous No.9935679]

>>9935608
>(your post) extra continues are an interesting mechanic because they can encourage certain player behaviour.
>(my post) 1-Ups already achieve this.
>(your post) but the score reset encourages you to 1-credit clear.
>(my post) games with unlimited continues reset your score like this too.
>(your post) it's a compromise.
>(my post) it's not.
not sure what you're talking about now.
who asked these questions you're answering?
we both know what limited continues mean.
is your point now that limited continues are good because they increase tension?
why not just say that?

[Anonymous No.9935686]

>>9935636
Game over yeaaaaaaaah

[Anonymous No.9935753]

>>9935650
>banning music rentals in 1984
wow, must have been nice to rent albums to see if they were good or not before you buy

[Anonymous No.9936245]

>>9935650
NTA you're coping to but that's not only a completely different thing but also factually wrong. Ironically You'd know this if you actually read the law, instead of parroting wikipedia.

[Anonymous No.9936247]

>>9932268
Git gud
Simple as

[Anonymous No.9936364]

>>9932268
It forces you to git gud.

[Anonymous No.9936372]

>>9934364
Manufacturing the cart and distributing it worldwide made up for the $35 part. And don't forget paying $20000 up front for the dev kits and developer contracts.

Console development in the 1980s wasn't as simple as dicking around with visual basic and then pushing the game on steam.

[Anonymous No.9936720]

>>9932268
1CC or nothing

[Anonymous No.9936725]

>>9932268
Obsolete arcade remnants.

[Anonymous No.9937582]

>>9935463
Don't reply to him, stupid.
He just destroyed you.
You should be begging for forgiveness.

[Anonymous No.9937625]

>>9932268
Sucking has consequences. If you had a father he would have taught you that.

[Anonymous No.9937627]

>>9932342
If you got there once, it shouldn't be hard to get there again.

[Anonymous No.9937628]

>>9932457
Who the fuck doesn't know that? Quit living up your own ass.

[Anonymous No.9937641]

>>9937627
Well, yeah.
But it's just gambling at that point.

[Anonymous No.9937647]

>>9932314
>So it's good because it makes you want to stop playing
Yes.

[Anonymous No.9937663]

>>9932268
Back then you weren't supposed to be able to beat a game in one sitting, at least not your first time playing it.

[Anonymous No.9937710]

>>9932268
I'd imagine the excuses at the time were either
1. Anti-rental design, such as Super Mario Bros. actually letting you continue from the world you died in instead of booting your ass back to the title screen if you actually read the manual.
2. Terrible padding, all those dogshit arcade ports could be beaten in an hour if you knew how to play, but parents world-wide would stop buying your $60 games if they could actually be beaten in that timeframe by a kid so they added no continues as a feature along with (from a player standpoint) questionable design choices such as cheap one shot kills, bullshit enemy spawns, etc.
Even the more lenient arcade ports like NES Bubble Bobble, which featured a level code system, would have kept a kid busy for DAYS with the bullshit padding level they added in that version

[Anonymous No.9939580]

>>9932268
Outdated. Thank god it's gone.

[Anonymous No.9939650]

>No continues in console games

[Anonymous No.9940015]

>>9939580
>>9939650
scdhz

[Anonymous No.9940621]

>>9932754
>it seems like 50% of people into retro games don't appreciate developing skill

that's because there's plenty of games that weren't made like castlevania or megaman

[Anonymous No.9940646]

>>9932314
>So it's good because it makes you want to stop playing?
Yes anon, it’s time to brush your teeth and get ready for bed, you have school in the morning.

[Anonymous No.9940650]

Limited continues is archaic. Just attach a score that gets reset or something if it's going to be about bragging rights. It's annoying to try to learn boss patterns and stuff when messing up means replaying the entire game.

[Anonymous No.9940729]

>>9937628
>Who the fuck doesn't know that?

Only all the people going
>it was all artificial difficulty because of rentals and to sell strategy guides and because devs didn't have testers and because devs didn't know better and because [insert next trendy zoomer revionism for people who can't get good and have to blame it on something]

who are prolific on this board

[Anonymous No.9941454]

>>9937641
Then you didn't learn anything, you just got lucky.

[Anonymous No.9941476]

I can't. There's no good reason for this. Isn't the point of home consoles that you didn't have to pay for extra lives like you'd do in arcades?