/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9986126]

why did they make it so difficult?

[Anonymous No.9986132]

>>9986126
If you think that's hard, try Japanese SMB3 with no save states and no warp whistles

[Anonymous No.9986138]

>>9986126
Because they're French.

[Anonymous No.9986139]

Because it was clinging to the era of 16-bit platformers, and because players and reviewers alike were better at games and genuinely wanted hard games. Easy games would get bad reviews for being too easy.

Since then the playerbase has grown weak, soft, and the general skill level has decreased, so now, what was just your average western action difficulty, will be seen as "super hard hardcore game" if it's popular.

In other words, it isn't and wasn't that hard, it's the players perception that has changed due to casualization

[Anonymous No.9986156]

>>9986126
I heard it was only ever playtested internally, which meant that the testers were the same ones who made all the bullshit placements and never fully realized how bullshit they were. No idea how true it is, but it makes a lot of sense.

[Anonymous No.9986158]

>>9986139
You're full of shit and probably never played it. Even back in its day, Rayman was widely recognized as being surprisingly difficult for its kid-friendly presentation.

[Anonymous No.9986175]

>>9986126
Get good.

[Anonymous No.9986189]

>>9986126
I'm glad it's hard. If it were easy, it would be pointless.

>>9986132
I only play the Japanese version, and it's not that hard if you've already played the Western version millions of times. Rayman is harder.

[Anonymous No.9986190]

Trans women ARE NOT women and NEVER will be women.

[Anonymous No.9986240]

>>9986132
Shit I haven't played Rayman 1 since I was a kid because I'm afraid to even attempt it since people say it's one of the hardest platformers ever. I have no problem with the Japanese version of SMB3 (no save states of course), are you saying it's actually harder than Rayman 1? I'm a big fan of Rayman but I think I never actually beat the first one even as a kid. I even played the GBA entries and also the GBA version of 1

[Anonymous No.9986269]

>>9986158
> Even back in its day, Rayman was widely recognized as being surprisingly difficult for its kid-friendly presentation.

Because as I said the game was clinging to the 16-bit era. It started dev as a SNES game after all. Wit the PSX came a new influx of players who didn't know what they were getting into hence this game's reputation. Rayman isn't harder than your average 8-16bit sidescroller (especially western ones) and is about the same difficulty as Crash Bandicoot.

[Anonymous No.9986283]

>>9986269
>and is about the same difficulty as Crash Bandicoot
you're a disingenuous fuck

[Anonymous No.9986293]

Literally wasn't playtested. It's just a sloppily made game.

[Anonymous No.9986315]

>>9986139
game reviewers barely played past the first couple of stages in games, difficulty is irrelevant to them

[Anonymous No.9986316]

>>9986269
Look. I can see you've never played Rayman past the first 4 stages or so (first world, Dream Forest). And that's ok.
Rayman IS really fucking hard, but the first 4 or so stages are pretty standard platformer fare, that's why you're probably not remembering it.

However, once you reach the second world, Band Land, the game becomes impossibly hard. It's not a difficulty spike, it's a difficulty wall. You hit it face-first and can't progress. Althought Dream Forest had a few gimmicks, they weren't that overbearing. Starting from Band Land though, every stage has at least one gimmick, that either involve falling down a very long shaft or downright dying. The stages are also rather long, and to compound it, you can only get 1 life from each of the mini-games. If you enter the mini-game again, you can't gain another life. The game starts you with 5 continues (each with 5 lives, I think?), which may sound like a lot, but believe me: it isn't. You'll lose most of your lives not to enemy attacks, but to gimmicks or falling down holes.

What are those gimmicks, and why are they so overbearing? Well, listing just a few:
- Rayman turns small and can't kill enemies
- Wind propels you upwards, but only on certain intervals
- There are enemies that push you away or suck you in from a distance
- You're traveling on top of something, with very limited control (if you can control it at all), all the while having to dodge spikes and enemies (the most numerous and worst kind of gimmick!)
- The stage is slippery the whole way through. I don't mean "ice stage" slippery, I mean you need to slip to clear long jumps.
- Auto-scrolling stage.
- You have to use an enemy (that's not a boss) as platforms to reach a higher place. The bad thing about this is that it's not immediately obvious where you're supposed to climb.

The 99 lives cheat is almost mandatory for a first-time clear.

[Anonymous No.9986319]

>>9986269
>Rayman isn't harder than your average 8-16bit sidescroller
It's harder than most of the good ones. The ones people liked playing, like Sonic, or DKC.
Although maybe more importantly, Rayman is a game where it's hard to go fast. It's a game with a lot of standing around, and stopping, and starting, and that just makes it fundamentally kind of unfun, which I think is the deeper problem. Kids can't articulate exactly what it is about the design that they don't like, so they just conclude that the game is frustrating because it's "hard", and leave it at that.
If you stick to the game, you can beat it, but most people give up before that point, because the game is a tedious, annoying slog.

[Anonymous No.9986576]

>>9986189
>I'm glad it's hard. If it were easy, it would be pointless.
It's pointless how hard it is.

[Anonymous No.9986579]

Is this harder than Lomax?

[Anonymous No.9986585]

The jag deserved better bros..

[Anonymous No.9986604]

>>9986132
Warp whistles are equivalent to saves. Play the whole damn game noobs, the last world isn't the hardest, the worlds you skipped over are harder.

[Anonymous No.9986613]

>>9986579
It's pretty easy to stock up on lives on Lomax. His attack is also pretty good and, although there are a few leaps of faith, they're not as prevalent as in Rayman. I listed some gimmicks above, but not that sometimes there are two or three together at once. The most common one is a moving platform together with an auto-scrolling stage.

[Anonymous No.9986676]

>>9986189
I grew up with World and my favorite game is also the easiest one (Land 2) so I wasn't prepared for the huge leap in difficulty at all

>>9986604
Idk about this. I played through every world before warping to 8, I can barely pass 8-1 without a P-Wing (specifically in the JP version though, I might be able to do it in the US version

[Anonymous No.9986682]

>>9986676
The entirety of Rayman 1 is like Wario's Castle

[Anonymous No.9986694]

>>9986682
I don't remember it being that hard, haven't played it in a long time though. I always liked the music

[Anonymous No.9986720]

>>9986132
>If you think that's hard

Oh, you think that's hard? I'M JUST THE TUTORIAL LEVEL!

[Anonymous No.9986721]

The GBA version is more toned down, probably to make it more appealing and less frustrating for kids

[Anonymous No.9986725]

>>9986720
THAT'S THE NEXT LEVEL OVER THERE!

What's'p?

[Anonymous No.9986764]

>>9986720
I've never played NG on the Xbox, is it really THAT hard or just a meme like the NES games?

[Anonymous No.9986779]

>>9986764
It's pretty damn hard from what I understand, but people liked to meme it up a lot. That line was from an old animation joking about how hard it was

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jluv2HxFEqs

[Anonymous No.9986842]

>>9986764
Not really.
It's just that any enemy can fuck you up royally, there's no health recovery (there are items, but you can only carry 3, I think), and there are no retries. Like in Devil May Cry, as soon as you learn most of the systems and use them properly, you won't ever need to use items.

You die, back to the beginning of the stage. The later games are more streamlined, but it also makes them easier.

Just an example, the first thing that catches people completely unaware is that, while NG has a block button that you should master, you shouldn't stay rooted in place, because enemies have grabs and they're not really that telegraphed.

[Anonymous No.9986901]

>>9986316
>Look. I can see you've never played Rayman past the first 4 stages or so (first world, Dream Forest).
This troglodyte must've done that, perhaps played the GBA version (are they both rayman1?) to say such asinine blabber.
Most games fall under "I beat it as a kid". A normal game like megaman is like that, you beat it given enough time to master it. This is a game you may not complete even as a kid. I could not fathom how to even approach beating its hardcore puzzles, while I enjoyed the distinctive style of the game anyway. I dabbled on a demo with various stages and soon the full PC version, which at least gave a map and let occasionally try levels with low difficulty; there was one stage I only beat thanks to it lagging ironically, when a game lags I like to pretend it's a slow-motion effect and use it as a boost, like using a mechanic in the time-travel persia game or matrix.

[Anonymous No.9986914]

>>9986842
>>9986779
I see. They really need to port this game to modern platforms for people who don't own any of the Xboxes. I'm aware of the recent collection but it only includes the Sigma versions which are inferior according to most people. I've always wanted to try these games because I'm a fan of the NES trilogy

[Anonymous No.9986920]

>>9986132
Warp whistles make the game harder if you use them to continue at world you stopped at.

[Anonymous No.9986931]

>>9986914
I think the only truly inferior Sigma version is Sigma 2. Sigma 1 is kind of a sidegrade to NG Black, where it removes some things and adds others. Sigma 2 is just pretty much a different game.

Now, the last one (NG 3/Razor's Edge), I have to disagree, because Razor's Edge is vastly superior. The original NG3 was a barely-finished game.

Just a heads-up, but all the NG games have really annoying or downright bad boss fights. 1 has only one, 2 has a few, and 3 has a lot. It becomes more pronounced in 3, where the final boss is the worst of the saga.

[Anonymous No.9987003]

>>9986931
>Sigma 2 is just pretty much a different game.
Good to hear about Sigma 1 but man at this point I wanna try them all, shouldn't have fucking sold my 360

[Anonymous No.9987290]

>>9986158
You're stupid, kids are better at games than faggot adults are now, shut the fuck up.

[Anonymous No.9987542]

>>9986126
Because it is poorly made eurojank. Essentially, an Amiga game that somehow isn't on the Amiga.

[Anonymous No.9987584]

>>9986156
That's what I heard too, and it makes sense. If you already have the game memorized it's not that hard, it's beating it the first time that's hard.

My brother beat it (on the Jag) when we were kids, but the only reason he was able to was because I was fucking around on his save file one day and jumped in a completely random spot. That made the last Electoon cage appear for no goddamn reason, which you need before you can fight the final boss. Just...complete nonsense.

[Anonymous No.9987653]

>>9986720
>first level is a fucking NINJA FORTRESS
>first boss punishes your BUTTON MASHING ASS
that's how you know this game is good

[Anonymous No.9987723]

>>9986189
>and it's not that hard if you've already played the Western version millions of times
what an idiotic statement

[Anonymous No.9987792]

>>9986316
none of these things are any harder than what's in Crash Bandicoot, I reached the final boss of Rayman at the age of 12 and couldn't do it in Crash Bandicoot until I got much better at games

Both games have very similar structures and you're all a bunch of crybabies.

I think you're probably all british which is why you have a skewed view on the game. Rayman was super popular over there for some reasons, it's like every single Playstation had the game. Marketing probably tried to sell it as a game for toddlers, so you all played it as toddlers, and now remember it being this impossible game. Whereas Crash Bandicoot was targeted at teens.

[Anonymous No.9987909]

>>9987792
No, I actually didn't play Rayman properly until my 20's. It's just a tedious game. It's not well designed.
I think the bigger issue is that it's slow and not particularly satisfying though, not that it's impossibly hard, because I really like Battletoads and Plok, and I've never beaten those games, but they're fun to play regardless. I'm not playing those games just waiting for the game to let me start having fun.

[Anonymous No.9987921]

>>9987792
A lot of people here are millennials and likely grew up with a PlayStation. If you're older (or your family was poor like mine) you were already stockholmed into enjoying bullshit difficulty after years with a NES or a Master System.

[Anonymous No.9987938]

>>9987921
Rayman's not bad because it's hard. It's bad because it's bad.
I've played that fan remake that makes it a bunch easier, and it's still not a great game. The problems are too baked in.

Look, compare these games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymCGXLRlcck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAd6MlU5yiY

Look how much more fast and exciting Plok is. You actually look at that game, and want to play it. Rayman's just a bunch of boring shit with nice graphics.

[Anonymous No.9987942]

>>9987938
>Rayman's not bad because it's hard. It's bad because it's bad.
A lot of 8bit (and even some 16bit) games were like that, though, they were still being made with the arcade in mind. Quarter/50p vacuums.

[Anonymous No.9987946]

>>9987942
That's not what I said at all.

[Anonymous No.9987959]

>>9987946
I'm not disagreeing with anything you said. What I'm saying is that a lot of people here look past the bullshit difficulty because they were used to it by the time they got a PS1.

[Anonymous No.9987961]

>>9987921
> stockholmed into enjoying bullshit difficulty

lol that's a new one, is this the new trendy meme for people who can't get good after "rentals", "devs didn't know what they were doing", "there was no testing", etc ?

[Anonymous No.9987963]

>>9987961
No, it's called trying to meet someone halfway. If I wanted to shitpost and fuck around I'd go to /v/

[Anonymous No.9987964]

>>9987959
Fair enough. That's really not what I don't like about the game though.
I think the crux of is that all of the sprites are large, and everything has an overly long animation. That leads to not very satisfying platforming gameplay. It never feels snappy.
And I really hate how the combat works. I hate how I'm expected to stand still, charge up my fist, and then throw it. How is that fun gameplay in a platformer? Compare that to Plok, where you have multiple projectiles you can just throw out in quick succession. That's so much better.

[Anonymous No.9987973]

Rayman's difficulty design is a mess. It's not sure if it wants to be a traditional platformer where you just beat all the stages without running out of lives and maybe get a choice about stage order or whether it wants to be an adventure game where you can always load your file and you have to find hidden stuff.

They should have either removed the need to collect cages or removed the ability to run out of lives/continues (which would require they find something else to do with the tings).

What I would do is give you infinite continues. Keep the continue screen cuz it's cute though.
Lives are only for stage-check points and I would make you need fewer tings for a 1 up so that collecting them within the context of a single stage meaningful. After you beat the game you would get a password for "hard mode" which brings back the limited continues.

[Anonymous No.9987975]

>>9987964
There's nothing wrong with disliking it for those reasons. It is an ugly looking and slow platformer that looks like it belongs on one of those Jak's Pacific TV games.
I've never played Plok before. Might look into it, so thanks for the recommendation.

[Anonymous No.9987980]

>>9987975
Plok's awesome. And it's evil. You wont beat it.

[Anonymous No.9988016]

>>9986126
Accessibility and lastability.
There's plenty of easy stages on the main path through the first 2 worlds that teach the basics mechanics and also provide a pleasant, fun time for a young/casual gamer.
The rest of the stages give a satisfying challenge and value for money for experienced players, with the ultimate test being to break all the cages and take on the final bosses.
Besides which you can save before starting a level, farm lives, and the necessity of replaying stages to find missed cages helps you to get good.

Rayman's fantastic. Best 2D platformer of 5th Gen by a mile, and a jewel among the early PSX releases

[Anonymous No.9988023]

>>9987980
It has a great sense of humor, art style and it bullies you when you start getting cocky. I love it. Thanks again.

[Anonymous No.9988030]

>>9988016
None of the things that make Rayman challenging are satisfying. It's a slow paced frustration simulator.

[Anonymous No.9988042]

>>9988016
>Best 2D platformer of 5th Gen by a mile
The 5th gen doesn't have anywhere near as many classics as the 4th gen, but even then, nah, not really.
You've got any of the Megaman games, Tomba, Kirby 64, Oddworld and SoTN depending on whether you'd consider those platformers. Probably some PC shit like Claw or whatever that game is called.

[Anonymous No.9988054]

>>9988042
If we're considering PC platformers from that era then Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is better than most 5th gen platformers.

[Anonymous No.9988065]

Other than Rare, western devs had no idea how to make a good platformer in the 80s and 90s. At best they used visuals, character designs and humor to distract from bad core gameplay.

[Anonymous No.9988068]

>>9988016
>There's plenty of easy stages on the main path through the first 2 worlds
The second world has no easy stage

[Anonymous No.9988079]

>>9988065

>>9988023 comes closest just because it has a rudimentary knowledge of Nintendo-style level design, there's no massive fuckoff mazes (even the 'open' leves are usually linear loops). It also has fairly simple controls and physics until the vehicle sections.

[Anonymous No.9988086]

>>9988065
Cinematic platformers were their own kind of niche for a while. That's almost a whole other genre though.

[Anonymous No.9988089]

>>9988079
>rudimentary knowledge of Nintendo-style level design, there's no massive fuckoff mazes
Pic related is Mario if he eurojank

[Anonymous No.9988635]

>>9988042
5th gen platformers are such trash. The fact that Rayman is one of the better ones is pretty damning. Its like they thought they couldn't just take the winning formula, add better graphics, better animation, and speed, and make better games. Instead they had to introduce all sorts of tedious shit. That or they are just worse games than 4th platformers but with ugly digitized graphics (Shinobi).
I'd point out that Rayman came out within like a month of Yoshi's Island and Donkey Kong Country 2, though. It might even be older than them. It isn't just to be compared to 4th gen platformers in terms of quality, it was released during the height for 4th gen platformers.

[Anonymous No.9988665]

>>9988635
The obsession with graphics is why what little new games there are being made take so long to come out. Rockstar had a team of people modelling and animating a horse taking a shit for RDR2. This is a thing that exists and people come here wondering why people are pissed off at the current state of the hobby.

[Anonymous No.9988750]

>>9988068
The two stages on the main path through to world 3 are not hard at all.
Allegro Presto in particular is a good one to replay to farm lives for the actually difficult stages.

[Anonymous No.9988780]

>>9988042
>Kirby 64
lol
lmao

[Anonymous No.9988821]

>>9988665
Graphics don't really have much to do with why 5th gen platformers suck, though. Most of them have worse graphics than SNES games.

[Anonymous No.9988860]

>>9988750
>replay to farm lives
By the gods, who would subject themselves to the absolute torture of collecting 100 blue balls multiple times?

[Anonymous No.9988943]

>>9988860
If the devs had the foresight to just give you infinite lives, but remove the check points in the middle of stages, that would probably be an extremely good way to remove complaints yet keep it challenging. Like those modern "hardcore" platformers where you are expected to die a shit ton. Maybe even make check points, but you need 100 orbs in the current stage to activate them.

[Anonymous No.9989015]

>>9988821
The push was to make everything 3D instead of sticking with what worked. All of the PS1s advertising was about the hardware. To me that says they were obsessed with graphics, what made a lot of the 16bit (and some 32bit) games look good was the superior art direction. Hopefully that makes sense.

[Anonymous No.9989847]

>>9986132
It's not hard. Just don't get hit.

[Anonymous No.9989860]

>>9989015
What you're describing is what the Playstation and N64 were promoting and what was hyped. And what you're talking about does have to do indirectly with why platformers sucked. All the best talent weren't tasked with making platformers anymore.
What I'm talking about is more the actual side scrolling platformers that did get made during the era. They were mostly "B tier" games, if that.

[Anonymous No.9990040]

>>9986316
Thank god it wasn't just me, Band Land reamed my ass and I literally never got through it as a kid. Why the fuck was that one stage full of slippery jumps, holy shit.