Elden Ring (From Software RPG)

Shoganai said:
I never played the original NES games, only the first one on PS1. I've heard it was a PITA, though. I think the hardest games on NES (that I played) were Ninja Gaiden and Ghosts 'n Goblins. I feel like 5 year old me was way better at games than adult me.
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You missed out then! Kung Fu Master, Rygar and Karnov were some good ones too.
 
A lot of older games were hard, not because they demanded attention and required skill or talent, but because the devs were very small and testing teams (if they existed) were mostly for making sure a game didn't catch fire and kill your dog. They would crank out a game in less than 9 months, test it JUST to see if it could be beaten in one sitting (knowing every secret, trap, pitfall, hidden enemy and BS platforming jump because they literally put them all in) and then ship it out. a lot of the difficulty comes from being unfairly bullshit. requiring religious memorization and trial and error. They weren't "challenging" they were just outright unfair bullshit

The old 80's and 90's devs didn't have entire teams spending painstaking weeks tweaking every little velocity, damage, location and time value to optimise the experience to be fun and guide the player on how to overcome the difficulty...

they just went "haha wouldn't it be cool if we had a fireball come from here? okay it's done lol"

And that's fine! I think those games have an important place in the ecosystem. But the "That's Fing Bullshit" difficulty of older NES games came from the naivety and early inexperience of the creators more than their desire to make something challenging.
 
KazeoHin said:
A lot of older games were hard, not because they demanded attention and required skill or talent, but because the devs were very small and testing teams (if they existed) were mostly for making sure a game didn't catch fire and kill your dog. They would crank out a game in less than 9 months, test it JUST to see if it could be beaten in one sitting (knowing every secret, trap, pitfall, hidden enemy and BS platforming jump because they literally put them all in) and then ship it out. a lot of the difficulty comes from being unfairly bullshit. requiring religious memorization and trial and error. They weren't "challenging" they were just outright unfair bullshit

The old 80's and 90's devs didn't have entire teams spending painstaking weeks tweaking every little velocity, damage, location and time value to optimise the experience to be fun and guide the player on how to overcome the difficulty...

they just went "haha wouldn't it be cool if we had a fireball come from here? okay it's done lol"

And that's fine! I think those games have an important place in the ecosystem. But the "That's Fing Bullshit" difficulty of older NES games came from the naivety and early inexperience of the creators more than their desire to make something challenging.
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I think the main thing with the difficulty of the NES, was the lack of being able to save at all. You couldn't even get level codes till the 16bit consoles came out.
 
CAD4466HK said:
I think the main thing with the difficulty of the NES, was the lack of being able to save at all. You couldn't even get level codes till the 16bit consoles came out.
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That is 100% not true at all. Zelda saved your game automatically with a battery in the cartridge. You could also save manually by pressing a button combination. The Guardian Legend had a code you could write down based on your progress that you could enter later and continue where you left off. I had a notebook FULL of save codes from that game as a kid.






Also relevant:

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Shoganai said:
That is 100% not true at all. Zelda saved your game automatically with a battery in the cartridge. You could also save manually by pressing a button combination. The Guardian Legend had a code you could write down based on your progress that you could enter later and continue where you left off. I had a notebook FULL of save codes from that game as a kid.






Also relevant:

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Legend of Zelda did have a battery, but every one I knew that had it, it didn't work anymore, nor the 1 or 2 others that I played that had them. But you are right.
List of games with battery. https://www.dkoldies.com/blog/-complete-list-of-nintendo-nes-games-with-save-batteries/


You got me on The Guardian Legend having codes which I never played, since it came out when I was in high school. I guess I don't remember NES games having codes for some reason, since none of the ones I played had them. If we wanted cheat codes, we used a Game Shark.
I'm getting old and my memory is failing me.
 
Hell I thought Sonic 2 was hard as a kid, pretty sure you had to do that in one sitting and I don’t think I did until I was a teenager.
 
FRZ said:
I'm pretty sure Mike Tysons Punch Out had level codes to reach certain boxers from the main menu
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My memory is shot apparently. I'm blaming Covid and not the fact that I'll be 50 this year. :D
I played that game all the time when I had it, but never used the codes. I can't believe I forgot that.

I'll see my way out.
 
KazeoHin said:
He wasn't talking about not having hard games, he was talking about the variety of games available when he was a child.
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Hmmm I must've missed that. The article was specifically commenting on the difficulty of the expansion not the variety of games available.
 
I thought Mesmer was tough. Then I ran into Radhan. Now I'm off everywhere else I can reach, rebuilding my character so I can wear the heavies armor and shield in the game, and best stamina and shield talismans, before I can even think if facing that monstrosity again.
At 12 Scadutree blessings my weapons are hitting just about twice as hard as in the base game. Now I can actually one-two shot most regular mobs in dlc.
And bosses that drop 410k runes are not that difficult.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcXLFtM_yB4
I even beat Rakshasa in the Eastern Nameless Mausoleum on second attempt.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE1g6NBrCXM
 
I never could beat the final boss in NES Ninja Gaiden, at least not fairly and without using an emulator save states crutch.

I also thought NES Castlevania was hard.
 
I beat Messmer. All 18 inches of him. I think that's the most amount of boss retries I ever had to do in a Fromsoft game. Sheesh!

I think the frustrating thing about this DLC is that the boss fights are like 90% dodging and 10% hitting. It's a roll dodging simulator.

Unfortunately my Geforce Experience has been acting up and it didn't capture my win. However, I have a video where I got him down to the last hit, so close enough:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuYUamkTDBI
 
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