What happened to all the hard games?

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TheCommander

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I remember playing games like Castlevania 3, Ghosts and Goblins, Battletoads, etc.. and they were tough games to beat and still are. Sure there are some tough games these days but nothing as annoyingly hard as games from the past.
 
TheCommander said:
I remember playing games like Castlevania 3, Ghosts and Goblins, Battletoads, etc.. and they were tough games to beat and still are. Sure there are some tough games these days but nothing as annoyingly hard as games from the past.
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Probably because they were so annoyingly hard. I mean, a challenge is great, but sometimes these games bordered on insane.

I still haven't beat Battletoads :(
 
There's a lot of stuff from way back when that just wouldn't fly now unless it was a homage game.

Would I like to see a 2d Super Ghouls and Ghosts remake? Hell yes. Would it incorporate new tech and improvements that would no doubt make it easier. Most likely.
 
TheCommander said:
I remember playing games like Castlevania 3, Ghosts and Goblins, Battletoads, etc.. and they were tough games to beat and still are. Sure there are some tough games these days but nothing as annoyingly hard as games from the past.
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Because today's gaming market is overrun by simplicity. And its all about instant gradification these days, jump over 10 feet you get an achievement , make 100 bucks you get an achievement yada yada yada, just another ploy by crappy video game designers to keep your attention span going just long enough to complete there crappy game all the while they use your money to make more crappy games for you to spend you hard earned money on. You want a real achievement? Beat Ninja Gaiden or Dragons Liar or get the 13th Zodiac Stone in the Deep Dark Dungeon and last but not least, bread a damned black chocobo and mate it with a red one to get water walking so you can get knights of the round to beat the emerald weapon at the bottom of the ocean.
 
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This question has a simple answer: Grand Theft Auto

People have proven that they just want to drive around bashing innocent unarmed people.
 
Most people play games to have fun, not want to break controllers. Hard games are best left in the past where developers didn't understand the average consumer.
 
There's still hard games out there being made. Check out Megaman 9 and 10. Demon's Souls also feels like a throwback to that era.
 
Old school games like that didn't have the benefit of today's graphics,processing power,or memory space. So they made them more challenging to extend the life of the gameplay. I don't think most players today would have the patience for games with that degree of difficulty combined with the length of today's games. I still fire up the emulator from time to time,but the reflexes aren't what they used to be,don't think I'll ever see the ending of Rolling Thunder,but it's still fun trying.
 
There are way more casual gamers than "hardcore" gamers.
 
even a so called Hardcore gamer, doesn't want to sit there and be insta killed by flying pixels over and over and over and over because they didn't jump and exactly the right microsecond.
 
the early generation of gamers got old and now were stuck with the over medicated, no attention span, live by the media, impulse generation and thus all of us older gamers are stuck playing these easy ass games.. also a lot of it has to do with the addition of multiplayer.. back then your only way of keeping some one interested in your game was making it hard as hell to beat.. now game devs use the single player to get them interested in a game and hook the gamer with the multiplayer..
sadly ive gone the route of the multiplayer features as well over the years.. it just got boring playing the AI because you cant really yell at the computer and expect a response because the AI was to stupid to fire his gun in the general direct of the the enemy AI(ahem COD:MW2 single player)..
 
Krenum said:
Because today's gaming market is overrun by simplicity. And its all about instant gradification these days, jump over 10 feet you get an achievement , make 100 bucks you get an achievement yada yada yada, just another ploy by crappy video game designers to keep your attention span going just long enough to complete there crappy game all the while they use your money to make more crappy games for you to spend you hard earned money on. You want a real achievement? Beat Ninja Gaiden or Dragons Liar or get the 13th Zodiac Stone in the Deep Dark Dungeon and last but not least, bread a damned black chocobo and mate it with a red one to get water walking so you can get knights of the round to beat the emerald weapon at the bottom of the ocean.
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This. Essentially, consumers completing an extra hard video game takes more time than an easy "content-driven" game which likely means less game sales. It doesn't work into video modern game publishers'/developers' business model.

For OP, try Demon's Souls on PS3. It's old-school Ghost and Goblins hard. Been having fun with it for two months and still haven't gotten past the second level. It's got a great atmosphere and gameplay to boot.

Higher levels of some indie games are hard too e.g., World of Goo, Trine, Braid
 
Bigbacon said:
even a so called Hardcore gamer, doesn't want to sit there and be insta killed by flying pixels over and over and over and over because they didn't jump and exactly the right microsecond.
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Yeah, no one cares about memorizing levels exactly and then precisely executing commands...or death!

Oh wait! Hardcore gamers do and have done that for years. Some have transfered those precise skills from the side-scrolling platformer into other disciplines, but those skills are still there.

I'm glad I cut my teeth on mid-eighties videogames. I like having to memorize levels/enemy patterns and I laugh at the little babies who whine that Mega Man is too hard. Not everyone should be able to beat every single game. Some people suck at certain videogames. Unfortunately, even they can squeak out a platinum trophy on all these new games that even a 5 year old can easily beat.

Can't wait for MM10, even though it's supposed to be easier than 9, which I find easy.

I've tried to beat Battletoads on hundreds of occasions, still can't do it. I have fun trying though, before throwing the controller, that is.
 
Because old games you couldn't save the game :p If you had a battletoads game now, which allowed you to save, it'd be dead easy.

Also, those games were hard because they would have had zero replay if they weren't so hard.
 
It's not the saving part, it's the limited continues part. You can save on the latest MM games, but you still have limited continues.

Anyone could save, just leave the system on. :p
 
TheCommander said:
I remember playing games like Castlevania 3, Ghosts and Goblins, Battletoads, etc.. and they were tough games to beat and still are. Sure there are some tough games these days but nothing as annoyingly hard as games from the past.
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Bunch of pussy gamers who 'think' they know what they want. Actually I'm half-kidding. I think the pussy mentality definitely applies to MMOG's. As for consoles, the one change though is games on NES were meant to play through start to finish, like arcade. They were short usually, but hard because of this reason. Eventually games evolved (with the help of titles like Legend of Zelda) to move towards progression based with saves. Usually games like that are a bit easier.
 
Try Demon's Souls, it'll kick your ass, and then stomp on you while you're down, then dismember you and then incinerate what's left of you, and then reanimate you from particles of DNA and then disembowel you just for good measure

it's that hardcore
 
If you don't beat a game in a short period, how can you be expected to immediately run out and buy your next game? It's about $$$$.
 
I agree with demos souls...extremely gratifying when you beat a level and unlock the next one.
 
snaggletooth said:
It's not the saving part, it's the limited continues part. You can save on the latest MM games, but you still have limited continues.

Anyone could save, just leave the system on. :p
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But if you could save in Battletoads you'd save after you nailed a perfect level and just load from there. Instead of having to preserve your lives for a whole heap of level, you only need to get it right for 1 level then save and load from there next time ;) Without being able to save, you die a couple of times and it wastes all the work you had done up until then.
 
Somehow I ended up thinking about something close to this the other day and realized this:

Early video games were essentially ports of arcade games. Arcade games were designed to be hard to keep you popping quarters on a regular basis in order to continue or play again. Think about who bought arcade games: the people who made money off them. The "best" arcade game for them was one the kids were willing to spend a lot of money on playing. The people who designed the first console games did so from the perspective of arcade game designers. It was almost two decades before platformers and other arcade-style games stopped emulating the "one more quarter" approach of the arcades.

Also, I think that the absurd difficulty was actually a hinderance to game sales in two ways. First, hard games don't sell. If I play a game on a friend's console and it is just stupid hard, I'm less likely to run out and buy it unless it has some really compelling feature. Second, hard games take more time. Those games that required pixel-perfect accuracy resulted in kids spending hundreds of hours mastering the game when they could have purchased and completely two or more less demanding games in the same amount of time.

I'm disappointed with how far back the pendulum has swung from hard games, though. Now we have so many no-fail games that it becomes difficult to feel like I'm really being challenged by a game.

edit: One good example of a no-fail game is Batman: Arkham Assylum. I've played through the game and thoroughly enjoyed it, but the vast majority of the game is beyond easy. You're told how to beat each boss, combat is stupefyingly simple, and the primary task of the game seems not to be stopping the Joker, but solving Riddler challenges and unlocking useless character trophies (yes, I know about the challenge modes, I'm making a point here). If you took away the Riddler content you'd have a relatively short game with some limited replay value. For a game that is so great to look at and watch, its a perfect example of exactly what's wrong with modern game design.
 
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My sypathies lie with the hardcore gamer and against the trend that games have become too streamlined and idiot proof, where games lack any real depth. However, having said that there is no need for insane challenge. For today's game, challenge only means this: save>load>load>load>load>load>save>load>load>load.... then after you get past the hard part it's save>save>save>save>save>. Then you feel safe for a while, and forget to save. Then you have to load to an old save where you lose a half hour's worth of progress. Then when it gets hard again, it's: load>load>load>load>load>load>load.... again until you beat the boss.
 
Ironman mode on Wizardry 8 is some hard sheet. The game is 10 years old though.
 
I enjoyed videogames in the 80s, but there came a point (adulthood) when I wasn't willing to spend a lot of time fighting with controllers in order to overcome challenges that were designed with the "get more quarters" paradigm still intact. Arcade games were this way to score more cash and console/computer games were this way because of memory limitations in that the easiest way to extend gameplay was to make the game progressively harder, often to the point of virtual impossibility.

The thing is, as pointed out above, those kinds of games are still being made. They aren't the stuff of a $59.99 new release, but Xbox Live, Playstation Network, and various PC online services have plenty of hard games from which to choose.
 
give the men of war series (SOHWW2, Faces of War, Men of war) series a try. very tough but very gratifying when you finally figure out a strategy that works out.

personally the difficulty of games is one of the reasons i turned towards sim style games, the difficulty is in learning to play.

but then again how many players do you know that immediately turn the game on Easy when they start a game?

personally IMO if yo udon't play on the hardest difficulty its not worth playing because at the end when you beat the game you actually didn't :)

there has only been 1 game in the last 2 years that i had to turn the difficulty down on and that was Dragon Age Origins, on Insane difficulty there were just some situations i couldn't get through without reloading a save game where i lost 4 or 5 hours of gameplay..
 
Try Resident Evil 5 on Hard. Or whatever the highest difficulty is. If you don't think thats hard, your'e sick.
 
DirectorC said:
This question has a simple answer: Grand Theft Auto

People have proven that they just want to drive around bashing innocent unarmed people.
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I remember GTA 2 being hard as hell sometimes, though I know that really doesn't have much to do with your point. :p
 
Outside of shooters as well it's too easy now a days. What ever happened to being creative and making a challenging game like The 7th Guest or the 11th Hour? I was only 14 or 15 when those came out and even if they came out today I think they'd be more challenging than a majority of todays games :-/
 
Don't know about anyone else but braid is difficult. A lot of that was timing and memorisation.
 
Many games allow you to play it easy or play it hard. Most of the hard games from the past are 2d platformers which are all but dead now.

Playing a battle for wesnoth on my iphone on hard and it is kicking my ass.

Fire Emblem on the DS on hard also kicked my ass.

Persona 4 on hard kicked my ass.

very hard on hard very easy on easy.
 
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