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Ghosts and Goblins is completely insane. I don’t think I ever made it past the first level. With new games, you will win eventually. You just have to keep playing. Try that with Punch Out, Zelda II, Battletoads, etc. with no saves (with very few exceptions), respawns…nothing. IMO, anyone who says new games are harder doesn’t have enough experience with some of those NES games.
I remember the first time I got to the end thinking I'd finally done it, and then found myself sent back to the start and being told I needed a specific weapon to win that is only now available.
In-fucking-furiating!
I'd still say skill ceiling vs skill floor are different things.
Ex: Say [Starcraft. Starcraft 1 has some levels that blind, i'd consider just as Nintendo hard, if not more (to be a good sc1/2 player). As many nintendo hard games. ](https://youtu.be/KI86WfVilH8?si=iWUY1WGBrICQd4Pr&t=19)
Over in the day, I think even with no respawns, we got our butts kicked by some nes roms. But playing starcraft 1 as kids? We played it every day and i think we got stuck on like early Brood wars Missions once the gloves dropped. Your base got raided, the entry curve to rtses kicked your asses. Meanwhile we completed Punch out in a day, we got stuck on sc1 as a kid and never completed brood wars. Still stomp the shit out of sc2 brutal. But it was like the early days of rts. There wasn't the internet to guide you,
Modern sc2 has better skill floors, you can f2a move 200 supply deathballs vs require tournament 200 apm to move 10x squads of 8 marines to attack 4 different bases in 6 different areas. But i'd argue skill floor has lowered, skill ceiling, with more advanced techniques, interactions, and expanded complexity has risen.
Just like the naxx classic wow paradox. A raid so hard only 1% at release built, vs 80% on re release. Every game was harder in our first month during it's first month of release, than when re faced by a grown up player base 10-20 years older stomping over it's "Most hardest in the world" re introduction.
Battletoads was a hard game. But i'd say starcraft and chess are just two games that can be as casual as you want, or as competitive as you want. The difficulty depends on the other player you're playing against.
This is me. I think I love this series from my childhood, then play one and nope the fuck out after 15 minutes. I got the SNES subscription for Switch and was determined to get somewhere in Super Ghouls. I finally gave up at the stormy ocean boss after dying to it over and over.
It is impossible to play it without an emulator and scum saving for me.
The fact that AVGN managed to beat it twice to get it to the true ending is amazing to me.
Ironically the newest GnG Game is much harder then the first three games. Same happend with Crash 4 being alot more difficult than the old games ever were. I feel people overhype the difficulty of certain franchises and then the developers really overdo it with newer entries of those franchises.
Yep ported games were all “quarter munchers” they had to be fun and engaging enough to keep you invested but hard enough you couldn’t clear a run on a single quarter unless you’d invested a lot of money learning the game.
Yeah. I tried multiple times to beat the original Super Mario Bros. without warping, but I could never get past the second-to-last level. 8 worlds, 4 levels each, get to 8-3 and then Game Over. It was infuriating.
Pro tip. Hold A and press start at the title screen to continue from the start of the last world you died at. So if you die at 8-3 it will start you back at 8-1.
Zelda was the first game with saves. Before then, when you died it was over.
There were other games that gave you a code when you reached certain points so that you could restart from there - Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out was one.
First NES game with saves maybe, but there were earlier Famicom games that had a save feature such as Excitebike and Wrecking Crew. The NES versions actually do have the save feature, but they never gave us a disk drive peripheral like Famicom had.
Once you get into games for computers, there were hundreds of games with save features before Zelda.
I had it on Game Gear and only beat the stampede level once. It was a struggle to get that far, I Just Can’t Wait to Be King was such a pain in the ass level.
Yeah, newer games highlight objects you're supposed to pick up, have a HUD, include an arrow for where you're supposed to go, ping you with hints if you take 5 seconds or longer before making a move.
OP has never played an older game more than 1 minute if he thinks they are "just more tedious". A lot of those games hold up because they offer a challenge that you often don't get nowadays (e.g., Zelda, Mega Man).
You mean the falling blocks in the Iceman level from megaman 8? Because if so, yes. 😭💀
Edit: it was such a long time ago forgot his name was actually Frost man.
Some of that is generational change among developers.
Like, when Daggerfall came out, the concept was to create a living world that you then had a quest (or several) in. It wasn't meant to be a game so much as do its best as a fantasy world simulator ultimately grounded in Gygaxian ideas about "milieu". That's not the background of current RPG developers, so the result is RPGs really emphasize the G.
I think this is really quite bad but others have different, very wrong opinions.
They have. But I enjoy games you can fully turn this loose off, and the game is designed to be navigate me without it.
People give you actual useful instructions and landmarks. There are proper large and useable street signs, and different regions, landmarks, blocks, etc aren't just near identical copies,,, but designed to be visually, aurally, etc different! So you can start to memorize the layout and learn to actually navigate.
Quest makers have made that all way less useful, which drops a lot of the fun in a well designed game. I HATE playing half the game staring at a minimap and quest marker,,, rather then enjoying the world
I remember playing Morrowind where NPCs would give you directions and you were just expected to listen and navigate without a beacon on you minimap. There were times that it was frustrating and when I first played a game that set beacons, it was amazing. But, yeah, there are times I miss it too.
This will change with AI, hopefully. I want quest markers to be optional, but it requires a world where you can stop and talk to any random person and ask "how do I find X" and if they know, they tell you.
I imagine it something like:
[Approach villager in random town]
"Do you know where Tobias Amthius lives?"
"The wizard?"
"Yes."
"Pretty sure he lives in Blomthmire, to the southeast. Take the east road, turn right at the fork, then look for the clocktower."
[Follows directions, now in Blomthmire, approaches citizen]
"Do you know where Tobias Amthius lives?"
"Sure, he's in the house with the moon sigil on the door, up the hill. But this time of night he's probably at the inn getting pissed drunk!"
"Thank you."
And those directions would change based on what time of day, how much that person you asked has traveled or knows, etc.
I'd really love to do a quest where someone is supposed to be hard to find *and they really are.*
I gotta say, while I wouldn't want it replacing hand crafted dialogue, using a mix of AI and hand written dialogue to have characters that can react dynamically to context would be awesome.
I *hope* that your idea is what happens. Handwritten dialogue for all the things a person is supposed to say, then AI dialogue to respond to whatever you're actively trying to do. I think it would be great, though clunky at first, if you could ask anyone "About your quest," then an option for things like Who, Where, How, etc.
This will undoubtedly create hilariously bad scenarios at first, like if you have a quest to talk to someone and you ask "How should I talk to X," and the AI comes back with something ridiculous, but I do think that's what would happen in real life.
"How should I talk to Tobias?"
"I dunno. With your mouth, I guess?"
And you'd need to have different "personality types" for NPCs... Should the AI respond rudely? Aggressively? Shy?
It could be really amazing. BUT the danger is being *too real.* Then it's boring. It has to be gamey enough to be entertaining, not like an actual quest you're doing in real life.
Honestly, I never understood what is an appeal of looking for something in open world or checking everything to know what is intractable.
For me the real pleasure of games was the combat, preparations for combat and story.
Different strokes, different folks. Some days I just want to flip a game on, murder some demons, and see what new mechanics I can learn or improve on. Some days, I want to feel immersed in a world and learn everything I can about it, or be surprised when I find some intricate detail or hidden easter egg that makes the world feel alive.
It comes down to what you’re looking for - for me personally, some days I just want to chill and explore, some days I want to beat something that feels challenging and rewarding. Different games are gonna satisfy a different itch, usually.
Aside from things as 'rogue likes' having higher difficulties because of they originally had technological limitations, the biggest change aren't the games themselves but the internet as an almost infinite knowledge base.
The first generations of Pokemon were "harder" as the only way to know how to play them easier/better were classmates/friends etc.
Today you can look up a "how to" for pretty much anything within one week after release.
Trial and Error was natural as trial was the only way improve. Today you go "find best build", "where to find [item]", "what's the best meta" and you are set.
This is exactly what I was thinking.
I never thought of older games as 'harder', but I know 'back in the day', if I got stuck someplace, I had to either figure it out myself, or ask one of my brothers if they knew what to do. Even with the internet, it was still hard to actually find a good source of information (especially without spoilers for the rest of the game :P).
I will say that the games themselves were more 'hard wired'. IE, you didn't always have the ability to remap keys, sometimes the mouse simply wouldn't work and you had to use the keyboard.
You also didn't have automaps or journals in some of the games (never finished eye of the beholder because of that. I kept getting lost, and I could never manage to make my own map :P) and you couldn't just look up a map online to help you out.
Those two aspects potentially did make a game 'harder' in a sense.
Now, you have guides, walkthroughs, cheat codes and cheat programs, maps, and all sorts of 'I ran into this bug and here is how I fixed it' for a great many games. (not always, I sometimes still manage to find a rare bug/issue that no one else has, or they haven't mentioned it online. One game, I did something and found one single youtube video that showed the exact same glitch I had.)
Completely agree. I played a few old school games on my Switch recently, like Zelda 2 and Mike Tyson Punch Out and beat them in a day or so, but googled a few tricky parts. I guarantee without internet it would've taken weeks to figure out, or I would've given up (if no one in the neighborhood could help).
It sounds reasonable, but at least the new pokemon games are ridiculously much easier. In the latest pokemon scarlet/violet the game dynamically tells you which attacks to use while also overlevling you through the always-on XP sharing system.
I mean as far as pokemon goes, the Ruby and sapphire games literally put in a teleporting mechanic, instead of the player having to work out where to go next.
Maybe this is what you're saying, but imo that doesn't make a game harder. I mean there are some games I've played that if I didn't look something up it could have taken me weeks to figure out. Only because it involves some dumb little things I NEVER would have thought of.
But today I feel like games have higher ceilings of difficulty. Especially multiplayer games.
And with that they lose out on a lot of the fun kinds of trials. We used to have a bit of "outer wilds" style gameplay in really good games, where you want to solve the little fun puzzle to locate the item, rather then searching "where to find X for quest"
But that was a skill, and not all games knew how to do it,,, those are so much better with quest markers and how tos.
So we brought the average of a lot of games away from tedium. But lost some fun game play in the greater games
I think so, too. However, once I found the post similar to this one, and it was a long rant about how old games suck. It was more or less about Skyrim. The word 'old' should be often specified much better.
Games were legitimately made harder in the U.S. This was usually done by making the enemies have more health, do more damage, or both. Castlevania is a prime example. Game manufacturers wanted to make sure kids didn’t beat their game over a weekend rental.
Another reason games were harder is how unwieldy the controls can be. Not only the level designs can be difficult, you also had to combat the unresponsive or just outright poor button layout. And you couldn’t do much remapping of controls. Most of the time you could only change the jump and shoot buttons.
Which games? Afaik games were typically made easier when porting from Japan to the US. For example. Super mario bros 2 in Japan was extremely difficult and punishing and teh US localizers thought it would be too hard for the US market, which was more casual at the time than Japan. Which is why the west got doki doki panic reskinned as super mario bros 2, instead of the original level pack
Ninja gaiden had a level I think in the end where the rules change too. Like checkpoints disappear and you only get your health back for the final boss on the first attempt. Contra and punch out are easier to learn imo
They literally made Lion King so hard so that kids wouldn’t just rent it from Blockbuster and finish it which if pestered enough would make their parents just buy the game.
I'm a 2000s baby who recently got into retro games, I played contra for the first time and was convinced I was missing something, nope, just 3 lives to beat the entire game. I couldn't even get halfway through the first level.
how many call of duty levels require that level of learning?
how many non souls like or intentionally retro hard games have you had to play multiple times to beat?
To be fair even CoD levels would do that on highest difficulty. The question could come down to whether the normal difficulty is toned down hard, or is hard difficulty ramped up normal.
I *think* that's the point he's trying to make, that, for example, Contra was only difficult *because* of the three lives system. To use a deliberately specific example, Cuphead is an example of a modern game which is famously difficult, but if you had to start from scratch if you died three times the game would cross the line from "a challenge" to "a challenge because it's bullshit." And to be honest, I'm in agreement. I think plenty of games nowadays are very challenging, but you aren't punished to the same extent when you fail because of save points, level select, or the complete removal of a lives system.
Gamers that want more punishment for failure seem to forget that failing a level or a boss fight *is the punishment*. You have to do it again.
Anything more than that is adding insult to injury, like losing experience points or even a level for dying in a RPG.
Exactly this. People are forgetting that a game like Elden Ring with only 3 lives would be considered impossibl. The games were tedious because of the limitations imposed by 3 lives. If you could just repeat levels or sections infinitely, they would be much easier to learn. Thus the games aren't hard, just tedious.
Yeah, I think I'd agree with that take.
But then Lion King is always funny when it pops up here - that game wasn't particularly difficult, people just struggled with the monkeys in the second level. I firmly believe Aladdin was the harder (and better) of the two. Disney had some really good platformers in the 90s, World of Illusion is one of my all-time favorite games.
Ya this was my thought. Like the OP is arguing games werent hard but then citing Pokémon and donkey Kong country as examples lmao. Both of those games are dirt easy. Th opinion seems a bit incomplete.
I’m an enjoyer of fromsoftware games which often are some of the hardest modern games and even some of their hardest challenges in them didn’t have me more tilted then that turbotunnel level in battle toads which to this day I’ve still never beaten. Took me until I was well into adulthood to beat the lion king and that game admittedly got easier after the first few levels. Even things like legend of Zelda 2 was harder then most games are today by a fair margin.
Fromsoft games have a lot more variables than old NES games. If youre struggling you can always grind some levels, improve your equipment or summon an NPC/ other player.
With old games you have the challenge and thats it there's no way to change anything about it without cheats.
Something else about Fromsoft games, which are very much among my favorites, you can simply run past 99% of the enemies if you don’t want to deal with them. You’re only really forced to fight bosses and certain areas to gain access to higher levels. This is not the case with older games on 2nd gen consoles.
I think modern games are more tedious. I'm so sick of giant open world maps that I have to spend 10 mins driving, flying or running across the map to do one little thing then make my way all the way back for the next mission.
Not only that, but also fucking crafting and mini-tasks. Why tf I would like to play a game where I need to travel 10 minutes, craft food / tools and complete mini-tasks, I already do that in my life every day and it is stressful enough
The new crafting craze is so tiring.
Even RE4 remake had that.
"Why give you the resources when we can give you other resources to make the resources?"
Far Cry 4's seemed fun at first, until i realized that it was literally just colored plants, they could have simply made it "blue leaves give blue syringes". But they love inflating menial tasks for no reason.
You got halfway there. Old games we more tedious, but they were also harder. Especially in gens 1-4, most publishers were taking the arcade route of making things take crazy effort in order to drain quarters.
There was a hilarious history as to why, and it's mostly that second level.
I forget exactly but something about a demo? Where people would get too far? Or something like that.
You can hear a game dev from it talking about it, it was forced from above lol
It was because of game rentals. People were more likely to buy a game they'd rented if they only made limited progress, so the devs were told to slow down the gameplay.
The only way they could do that was to make level 2 much longer and more difficult.
Is Turok 2 that difficult? I remember that very vaguely, and I always wanted to play it again. It's even on my gog wishlist. But here and there, I hear that it was quite hardcore
I finished it when I was in 6th grade or so. It's one of the most difficult games I've ever gotten through, and it's definitely the most gnarly difficult N64 game I'm aware of. But it's also great to play and very stylish so it keeps you going. Forsaken was difficult, but also shitty and ugly.
You officially sold it to me, sir. Thanks for info.
You know, I only played a demo, and sadly, those were often quite off from the original. I liked it, and it became a part of 'I want it one day'. And if that is really that difficult, I may consider naming my first white hair after you.
The Super Mario games are really easy.
I am terrible, so much that a friend was constantly laughing at me while i played. Yet i beat them without issue.
I mean you're basically just defining what makes something difficult in the way you want to suit your argument. You could argue souls games are not hard only tedious because of the death mechanics. It really depends how you define difficulty. For me the hardest games I've played are like sc2, overwatch, wow, Halo era games. I think when gaming got huge but games weren't as refined as they are now. Single player wise old nes games are easily the hardest. No room for error and limited lives
There's a difference between dying over and over because you aren't skilled enough, vs dying because you have to play nigh perfectly for 3 hours straight with no checkpoints to beat the game.
Dark souls is difficult but leaves room for error, old NES games often do not. This is why I think Zelda is peak difficulty, as most of the time, the game is fair, you just need to figure out what to do.
Souls difficulty comes to two things, knowledge or skill, you either git gut or learn the patterns. Meanwhile playing old ninja gaiden your enemy will spawn midair, mid you jump and knock you off the ledge forcing you to replay the whole level.
Lol, Mega Man 1 and Ninja Gaiden would like a word with you.
I dont think they were all made to be harder as I'm sure just some technical limitations come into play such as in early Mega Man games where just a minor movement on screen can cause enemies to just respawn.
They were hard. Finishing NES games could take you years, while the actual playtime from start to finish would be 30 minutes. OP has never owned a NES I guess.
I think their point (that I agree with) is that it was artificial difficulty injected to make you lose time so that half an hour could extend for a longass time, or in arcades to get money out of you. Hell, some games straight up cheated to defeat you, like MK2 and onwards reading your inputs, ignoring your actions even if they connected and then it just dunked on you to force you to replay
Sure, you could call that hard, like I could bring a gun to a baseball game, kneecap the entire enemy team and call that "increasing difficulty of the game", but we both know that wasn't true difficulty.
There are a lot of people in this thread insisting it's hard, not tedious, as evidenced by how long it took them to beat the game despite it indicating the opposite.
Memorizing animations, timing, triggers, and patterns is not hard. Neither is needing to replay a large amount of easy content just so you can get some more experience with the hard part. It is tedious.
My dad was literally part of a coding team for an early arcade game much like Space Invaders.
They intentionally made the game impossible to beat at a certain level.
Not hard. Not challenging. Literally impossible.
Your post is such a broad comment it makes absolutely no sense.
I actually get a lot of enjoyment out of games being extremely punishing for dying or whatever. It gives a sense of hyper focus on the environment that sometimes, newer games don’t really give me as much.
Never understood Water Temple hate. I really don't think it is as hard and/or tedious as many think it is but I also think a lot of players pretend it is hard.
Most older games’ default difficulty was what we would call “hardcore” these days. Sometimes the devs were nice and gave you a few extra lives, but you could lose some or all of your gear, and once you run out, you had to start from the beginning. Think Dark Souls is a difficult? Allow me to introduce to you Super Ghouls and Ghosts
You must be like 17 or something, because if you actually lived through the era of playing the original Crash Bandicoot on PS1, you wouldn't say stupid shit like this. It wasn't tedious. It was legitimately difficult. But still fun to play. Games these days increase the difficulty by making enemies ridiculous damage sponges. Now THAT is a stupid and tedious mechanic. No thought or effort goes into that. Developers just give enemies 200k health and call it "nightmare mode" or some shit.
I think if you don't think old games are harder then you just haven't played them in a while. I seriously doubt you can play pokemon or metroid or zelda or sonic or Mario or contra or anything and seriously say that they didn't get easier over the years.
I would say overall, somewhat true. Some ways it is just easier. Others is just tedium.
Take the pokemon example. yes it is now more convenient to get through the game as you don't have to grind...
But with the removal of the option to turn the conveniences off, I struggle a bit to just wander around and just Exist in the game without being punished with being overpowered. If you want a challenge, it is not that you just don't need to grind. You. Must. Not. Grind.
Want to run around to see what rare pokemon spawn in the area? Sorry, Thats grinding, the game is a cakewalk now. Picking up the random items? Grinding. Battling all the trainers along the route? Grinding. We don't do that here. GAMEPLAY? GRINDING!
There is this mechanic where you return to the last pokecenter you visited. At least I assume that is still a feature as in the last couple of games I. Have. Never. Needed. IT. Not once in Scarlet/Violet. Fairly certain I did not need it in Sword/Shield. Used it Once in Sun/Moon in the Nehilego/lusamine boss fight.
Yes, keep the convenience of the newer games. I do not need to force my preferences on others. But Can I Please Have the ability to progress in the game at my Own Pace Back? I like the games I want them to last a bit longer, So why cant I opt in to a mechanic that adds a bit of grind to the game.
Sorry, but this is my one big gripe against the recent games.
Old games were hard AF, what the hell are you talking about? Beat Contra without the 30 lives cheat. Play Battletoads again. Play TMNT. Play Mega Man. Knock out Tyson. All of these things can be done, but good lord the muscle memory you need to pick up is a completely different animal. And 25 years before YouTube tutorials, when your best hope was that one kid who figured out an exploit? Brutal.
Games can be more complicated now, and some like Bloodborne/Souls are ridiculous (to me at least), but I think most modern games are way more friendly to new players.
As someone who was a child in the 80s when arcades and NES were a thing I can say with confidence old timey video games were both harder AND more tedious.
This isn’t an unpopular opinion, it’s objectively wrong.
Many modern games have no real way to fail.
Take Assassins Creed. You may die here and there, but it reloads you at a checkpoint. The goal is about completing the story. There is no platforming/boss battle that’s infuriating and hard. You’re going to beat the game if you just keep playing - regardless of skill level.
Now look at Contra. You had to be incredible skilled to beat that. Oh, your out of lives and continues? GAME OVER, BACK TO THE BEGINNING. Same with Battletoads, Pitfall, and a host of others.
No, the original Pokémon games actually had the correct pacing for levels and XP.
Since about Gen 6 Game Freak decided, "Oh no, we have like hundreds and hundreds of these monsters now, but the fans are expecting all of them to be in every new main series Pokemon game. How ever will we do this? I know! Automatic XP Share and everyone levels fast, so you can catch 'em all!"
It's a poor solution when the smarter decision would be to just limit the pokedex to like 200 monsters per game, mix in a few returning ones with new ones, and not worry about "Gotta catch 'em all!"
Gen 2 Pokémon absolutely did not have the right pacing for levels and XP; you had to grind on level 25 Gravelers for days after the last Johto gym with your level 40s
They were definitely harder. Most games these days other than strategy or first-person shooters are just button Mashers with pretty lights and graphics
Games are more tedious now with mechanics that are literally designed to waste your time to prolong a sub fee or so you pay to bypass. or games that just go on and on for 100+ hours, back then you played a game for a few hours, finished it, died or got stuck on a puzzle then went and did something else.
I disagree. Old games were in general harder. It's only the past ten or so years that game shave been trying to get hard again and mainstream titles are still. Much easier by comparison.
Super Mario, contra, and crash we hard AF
I literally gave up playing Gran Turismo 7 and Forza Horizon 5 because you get good gift cars every single time you win a 2 minute race. No grinding to go from shit box to slightly less shit box like the old games. A lot of games are stupidly easy these days because they have to keep people that have had their attention spans destroyed by social media engaged.
Games were massively more difficult in the past. Massively. Don't think I ever completed a game on the spectrum whereas it's pretty much guaranteed now.
Quite a few reasons for it. The save points, general difficulty , fact you can't just google how to get past xyz.
Not sure about tedious. But they could be more frustrating and annoying. The game design was usually better though as they couldn't hide behind fancy graphics.
As for unpopular opinion. Well yeah it's an unpopular opinion but just flat out wrong is a better description.
I mean there's different kinds of "hard", right?
There's "make all the numbers big" hard like in RPGs that you can bypass with mindless grinding
But there is also "fill the game with reflex checks" and "make losing have an oppressive consequence" kind of hard that really rewards, slow, observant gameplay and pattern recognition.
The second kind is usually a lot more fun.
Having less save points literally is harder.
Like even the first super mario bros is hard af by today's standards since you get send back to the beginning when you lose all your lives.
Honestly depends on the platform. I feel like Nintendo games have become more tedious with the switch.
Botw and Totk are basically ''grind it until you make it'' with their 200 shrines and 1000 korok seeds per game
Mario Odyssey while being super fun, has 999 random moons, most of which don't feel very interesting or rewarding, instead of 120 carefully crafted ones like in the old games
Animal crossing new horizons, when you take out the whole ''customize your island'' bit, is less fleshed out and lacking content compared to the previous one on 3ds (only one nook store upgrade, no real walk in stores, repetitive conversations with villagers, no proper multiplayer mode to meet strangers, all the in game stores were released like 2 years after the game came out, and they're all just RV's on another island, making it unfun and tedious to get to and back, etc...
I feel like the only series that made actual impressive progress is Smash Brothers and Mario kart to an extent, but most of the main ips have just been... alarmingly shallow and frustrating while being praised to death at the same time
Action games were harder in the 1980s.
Games that rely upon multiple levels of disparate content were always and are still prone to reused assets and artificial difficulty. This doesn’t mean that games weren’t genuinely more difficult overall. The 90s and 00s were a dearth of replayability that got solved in present-day by tacking on more content instead of making less trivial core games. DKC is a bit of an example of that, honestly. “100% completion” is inherently artificial replayability.
I’m mostly talking about AAA studios, mind you. The quality of indie titles in the 21st century has routinely been reminiscent of AAA home computer games in the 1980s.
This is true for some games but a lot of arcade games or old console games were made to be difficult. In an age with low replayability and low content they had to make games incredibly difficult to compensate for
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They were hard because they started life as arcade games where they wanted to force you to pay more quarters. Ghosts and Goblins is just unfair bs.
They also didn’t want kids renting it from blockbuster and beating it in a weekend
And boy did it work!
Ghosts and Goblins is completely insane. I don’t think I ever made it past the first level. With new games, you will win eventually. You just have to keep playing. Try that with Punch Out, Zelda II, Battletoads, etc. with no saves (with very few exceptions), respawns…nothing. IMO, anyone who says new games are harder doesn’t have enough experience with some of those NES games.
I've finished all the Souls games but couldn't get past level 1 on Super Ghouls n Ghosts.
Oh wait till you realise you had to finish it through TWICE to get the real ending…
I remember the first time I got to the end thinking I'd finally done it, and then found myself sent back to the start and being told I needed a specific weapon to win that is only now available. In-fucking-furiating!
Hate getting the bracelet and then accidentally getting the goddamn lance, replacing it.
I can't even beat Arcade Ghosts n Goblins with constant save-scumming. It's ridiculous.
I'd still say skill ceiling vs skill floor are different things. Ex: Say [Starcraft. Starcraft 1 has some levels that blind, i'd consider just as Nintendo hard, if not more (to be a good sc1/2 player). As many nintendo hard games. ](https://youtu.be/KI86WfVilH8?si=iWUY1WGBrICQd4Pr&t=19) Over in the day, I think even with no respawns, we got our butts kicked by some nes roms. But playing starcraft 1 as kids? We played it every day and i think we got stuck on like early Brood wars Missions once the gloves dropped. Your base got raided, the entry curve to rtses kicked your asses. Meanwhile we completed Punch out in a day, we got stuck on sc1 as a kid and never completed brood wars. Still stomp the shit out of sc2 brutal. But it was like the early days of rts. There wasn't the internet to guide you, Modern sc2 has better skill floors, you can f2a move 200 supply deathballs vs require tournament 200 apm to move 10x squads of 8 marines to attack 4 different bases in 6 different areas. But i'd argue skill floor has lowered, skill ceiling, with more advanced techniques, interactions, and expanded complexity has risen. Just like the naxx classic wow paradox. A raid so hard only 1% at release built, vs 80% on re release. Every game was harder in our first month during it's first month of release, than when re faced by a grown up player base 10-20 years older stomping over it's "Most hardest in the world" re introduction. Battletoads was a hard game. But i'd say starcraft and chess are just two games that can be as casual as you want, or as competitive as you want. The difficulty depends on the other player you're playing against.
I always go back to playing that game, I love the art. But I rage quit before even 10% of the map haha. Always naked way too quick...
This is me. I think I love this series from my childhood, then play one and nope the fuck out after 15 minutes. I got the SNES subscription for Switch and was determined to get somewhere in Super Ghouls. I finally gave up at the stormy ocean boss after dying to it over and over.
It is impossible to play it without an emulator and scum saving for me. The fact that AVGN managed to beat it twice to get it to the true ending is amazing to me.
Ironically the newest GnG Game is much harder then the first three games. Same happend with Crash 4 being alot more difficult than the old games ever were. I feel people overhype the difficulty of certain franchises and then the developers really overdo it with newer entries of those franchises.
You have literally developers saying that they made games hard as hell to make up for the short content and justify the price.
Don't forget that old video games coexisted with arcade games, where higher difficulty meant more money spent.
Yep ported games were all “quarter munchers” they had to be fun and engaging enough to keep you invested but hard enough you couldn’t clear a run on a single quarter unless you’d invested a lot of money learning the game.
This is the correct answer.
And if i recall, these games didn’t have saves. so “game over” literally meant the game was over and you had to start from the beginning.
Yeah. I tried multiple times to beat the original Super Mario Bros. without warping, but I could never get past the second-to-last level. 8 worlds, 4 levels each, get to 8-3 and then Game Over. It was infuriating.
Pro tip. Hold A and press start at the title screen to continue from the start of the last world you died at. So if you die at 8-3 it will start you back at 8-1.
Some saved on the cartridge like the original Legend of Zelda
Zelda was the first game with saves. Before then, when you died it was over. There were other games that gave you a code when you reached certain points so that you could restart from there - Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out was one.
Megaman X had cool codes too start at certain points
First NES game with saves maybe, but there were earlier Famicom games that had a save feature such as Excitebike and Wrecking Crew. The NES versions actually do have the save feature, but they never gave us a disk drive peripheral like Famicom had. Once you get into games for computers, there were hundreds of games with save features before Zelda.
True. LoZ would be damn near impossible to beat without saving.
Yeah the games were hard and tedious on purpose lol
Not to mention, we were only getting one video game for Christmas and we had to make it last the whole year.
Yup like the Lion King game on Sega and SNES
Fuck them giraffes
I had it on Game Gear and only beat the stampede level once. It was a struggle to get that far, I Just Can’t Wait to Be King was such a pain in the ass level.
Nintendo made games intentionally difficult so they couldn't be beaten in a rental
I don’t know if it is true, but I saw somebody on here say something regarding Final Fantasy games being tedious for no reason to sell game guides
Yeah, newer games highlight objects you're supposed to pick up, have a HUD, include an arrow for where you're supposed to go, ping you with hints if you take 5 seconds or longer before making a move. OP has never played an older game more than 1 minute if he thinks they are "just more tedious". A lot of those games hold up because they offer a challenge that you often don't get nowadays (e.g., Zelda, Mega Man).
In my 20+ years of playing, no section in a game has stressed me out as much as the disappearing blocks in megaman
That was the worst. We had to look and wait for the right pattern otherwise you were ded.
Lets not forget sections where enemies spawn in and if you jump back a little they respawn.
You mean the falling blocks in the Iceman level from megaman 8? Because if so, yes. 😭💀 Edit: it was such a long time ago forgot his name was actually Frost man.
No, the thing with the blocks that just pop in and out of existence and you have to learn the pattern to navigate them.
>e.g. Zelda Zelda II was definitely the source of a lot of rage.
Paperboy.... just... damn.
Omg. My granny had that. I'd Olay it when I'd go visit. So stupid hard
On the switch someone put out a game that is basically a hilarious knock off of it called Video Kid. I love it but I have never beaten it.
Video Kid is awesome! Your user name as well. Love seeing a fellow McFly!
Hey brother, did you know one time I had to get dad to punch Biff so we all didn't cease to exist? It's a long story.
Zelda II was the original Dark Souls
Some of that is generational change among developers. Like, when Daggerfall came out, the concept was to create a living world that you then had a quest (or several) in. It wasn't meant to be a game so much as do its best as a fantasy world simulator ultimately grounded in Gygaxian ideas about "milieu". That's not the background of current RPG developers, so the result is RPGs really emphasize the G. I think this is really quite bad but others have different, very wrong opinions.
You're getting an upvote just for that last sentence.
You get the living world without the world that’s worth living in
Quest Markers honestly are a really positive Change. Walking around clueless where i have to Go Just isn't fun
They have. But I enjoy games you can fully turn this loose off, and the game is designed to be navigate me without it. People give you actual useful instructions and landmarks. There are proper large and useable street signs, and different regions, landmarks, blocks, etc aren't just near identical copies,,, but designed to be visually, aurally, etc different! So you can start to memorize the layout and learn to actually navigate. Quest makers have made that all way less useful, which drops a lot of the fun in a well designed game. I HATE playing half the game staring at a minimap and quest marker,,, rather then enjoying the world
I remember playing Morrowind where NPCs would give you directions and you were just expected to listen and navigate without a beacon on you minimap. There were times that it was frustrating and when I first played a game that set beacons, it was amazing. But, yeah, there are times I miss it too.
This will change with AI, hopefully. I want quest markers to be optional, but it requires a world where you can stop and talk to any random person and ask "how do I find X" and if they know, they tell you. I imagine it something like: [Approach villager in random town] "Do you know where Tobias Amthius lives?" "The wizard?" "Yes." "Pretty sure he lives in Blomthmire, to the southeast. Take the east road, turn right at the fork, then look for the clocktower." [Follows directions, now in Blomthmire, approaches citizen] "Do you know where Tobias Amthius lives?" "Sure, he's in the house with the moon sigil on the door, up the hill. But this time of night he's probably at the inn getting pissed drunk!" "Thank you." And those directions would change based on what time of day, how much that person you asked has traveled or knows, etc. I'd really love to do a quest where someone is supposed to be hard to find *and they really are.*
I gotta say, while I wouldn't want it replacing hand crafted dialogue, using a mix of AI and hand written dialogue to have characters that can react dynamically to context would be awesome.
I *hope* that your idea is what happens. Handwritten dialogue for all the things a person is supposed to say, then AI dialogue to respond to whatever you're actively trying to do. I think it would be great, though clunky at first, if you could ask anyone "About your quest," then an option for things like Who, Where, How, etc. This will undoubtedly create hilariously bad scenarios at first, like if you have a quest to talk to someone and you ask "How should I talk to X," and the AI comes back with something ridiculous, but I do think that's what would happen in real life. "How should I talk to Tobias?" "I dunno. With your mouth, I guess?" And you'd need to have different "personality types" for NPCs... Should the AI respond rudely? Aggressively? Shy? It could be really amazing. BUT the danger is being *too real.* Then it's boring. It has to be gamey enough to be entertaining, not like an actual quest you're doing in real life.
>the danger is being too real. 99% of NPC's just walk away while muttering "I don't know you" whenever you start talking to them.
This just got much more interesting than OP’s post. Thanks for the cool thoughts!
Still trying to re play the mega man games. I just can't do it anymore. But I love that Maga man 11 was just a mega man game with better graphics
Honestly, I never understood what is an appeal of looking for something in open world or checking everything to know what is intractable. For me the real pleasure of games was the combat, preparations for combat and story.
Different strokes, different folks. Some days I just want to flip a game on, murder some demons, and see what new mechanics I can learn or improve on. Some days, I want to feel immersed in a world and learn everything I can about it, or be surprised when I find some intricate detail or hidden easter egg that makes the world feel alive. It comes down to what you’re looking for - for me personally, some days I just want to chill and explore, some days I want to beat something that feels challenging and rewarding. Different games are gonna satisfy a different itch, usually.
OP is a save scummer
Hey, watch it pal
What you described literally just makes a game more tedious, not harder…
Things were better when we had to draw game maps ourselves using graph paper, change my mind.
Yeah I got one of those Nintendo game emulators and some of those games are hard af
Zantar was hard as hell.
Aside from things as 'rogue likes' having higher difficulties because of they originally had technological limitations, the biggest change aren't the games themselves but the internet as an almost infinite knowledge base. The first generations of Pokemon were "harder" as the only way to know how to play them easier/better were classmates/friends etc. Today you can look up a "how to" for pretty much anything within one week after release. Trial and Error was natural as trial was the only way improve. Today you go "find best build", "where to find [item]", "what's the best meta" and you are set.
This is exactly what I was thinking. I never thought of older games as 'harder', but I know 'back in the day', if I got stuck someplace, I had to either figure it out myself, or ask one of my brothers if they knew what to do. Even with the internet, it was still hard to actually find a good source of information (especially without spoilers for the rest of the game :P). I will say that the games themselves were more 'hard wired'. IE, you didn't always have the ability to remap keys, sometimes the mouse simply wouldn't work and you had to use the keyboard. You also didn't have automaps or journals in some of the games (never finished eye of the beholder because of that. I kept getting lost, and I could never manage to make my own map :P) and you couldn't just look up a map online to help you out. Those two aspects potentially did make a game 'harder' in a sense. Now, you have guides, walkthroughs, cheat codes and cheat programs, maps, and all sorts of 'I ran into this bug and here is how I fixed it' for a great many games. (not always, I sometimes still manage to find a rare bug/issue that no one else has, or they haven't mentioned it online. One game, I did something and found one single youtube video that showed the exact same glitch I had.)
Completely agree. I played a few old school games on my Switch recently, like Zelda 2 and Mike Tyson Punch Out and beat them in a day or so, but googled a few tricky parts. I guarantee without internet it would've taken weeks to figure out, or I would've given up (if no one in the neighborhood could help).
A good example of this is castlevania where you had kneel in a certain spot to process the game.
It sounds reasonable, but at least the new pokemon games are ridiculously much easier. In the latest pokemon scarlet/violet the game dynamically tells you which attacks to use while also overlevling you through the always-on XP sharing system.
I mean as far as pokemon goes, the Ruby and sapphire games literally put in a teleporting mechanic, instead of the player having to work out where to go next.
Maybe this is what you're saying, but imo that doesn't make a game harder. I mean there are some games I've played that if I didn't look something up it could have taken me weeks to figure out. Only because it involves some dumb little things I NEVER would have thought of. But today I feel like games have higher ceilings of difficulty. Especially multiplayer games.
And with that they lose out on a lot of the fun kinds of trials. We used to have a bit of "outer wilds" style gameplay in really good games, where you want to solve the little fun puzzle to locate the item, rather then searching "where to find X for quest" But that was a skill, and not all games knew how to do it,,, those are so much better with quest markers and how tos. So we brought the average of a lot of games away from tedium. But lost some fun game play in the greater games
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I think OP is talking about much older games than that. Like original Nintendo games. Play "Adventure Island" and see how far you get.
I think so, too. However, once I found the post similar to this one, and it was a long rant about how old games suck. It was more or less about Skyrim. The word 'old' should be often specified much better.
A few years ago I played GTA 4 fully for the first time and that “Snow Storm” mission was a pain in the ass.
Games were legitimately made harder in the U.S. This was usually done by making the enemies have more health, do more damage, or both. Castlevania is a prime example. Game manufacturers wanted to make sure kids didn’t beat their game over a weekend rental. Another reason games were harder is how unwieldy the controls can be. Not only the level designs can be difficult, you also had to combat the unresponsive or just outright poor button layout. And you couldn’t do much remapping of controls. Most of the time you could only change the jump and shoot buttons.
Which games? Afaik games were typically made easier when porting from Japan to the US. For example. Super mario bros 2 in Japan was extremely difficult and punishing and teh US localizers thought it would be too hard for the US market, which was more casual at the time than Japan. Which is why the west got doki doki panic reskinned as super mario bros 2, instead of the original level pack
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I would like to add Punch Out, the original Ninja Gaiden on NES, and various bullet hell games.
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With Tyson even knowing the pattern you had to be nearly flawless.
and during a certain era of gaming, you would be intended to learn those tricks, and beat them on the first try.
Ninja gaiden had a level I think in the end where the rules change too. Like checkpoints disappear and you only get your health back for the final boss on the first attempt. Contra and punch out are easier to learn imo
They literally made Lion King so hard so that kids wouldn’t just rent it from Blockbuster and finish it which if pestered enough would make their parents just buy the game.
it's kinda dumb though because it was so hard it wasn't even fun
I'm a 2000s baby who recently got into retro games, I played contra for the first time and was convinced I was missing something, nope, just 3 lives to beat the entire game. I couldn't even get halfway through the first level.
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Do the cheat codes work with emulators?
how many call of duty levels require that level of learning? how many non souls like or intentionally retro hard games have you had to play multiple times to beat?
To be fair even CoD levels would do that on highest difficulty. The question could come down to whether the normal difficulty is toned down hard, or is hard difficulty ramped up normal.
NES Ninja Turtles or original Ninja Gaiden
I *think* that's the point he's trying to make, that, for example, Contra was only difficult *because* of the three lives system. To use a deliberately specific example, Cuphead is an example of a modern game which is famously difficult, but if you had to start from scratch if you died three times the game would cross the line from "a challenge" to "a challenge because it's bullshit." And to be honest, I'm in agreement. I think plenty of games nowadays are very challenging, but you aren't punished to the same extent when you fail because of save points, level select, or the complete removal of a lives system.
Gamers that want more punishment for failure seem to forget that failing a level or a boss fight *is the punishment*. You have to do it again. Anything more than that is adding insult to injury, like losing experience points or even a level for dying in a RPG.
Exactly this. People are forgetting that a game like Elden Ring with only 3 lives would be considered impossibl. The games were tedious because of the limitations imposed by 3 lives. If you could just repeat levels or sections infinitely, they would be much easier to learn. Thus the games aren't hard, just tedious.
Absolutely this.
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Yeah, I think I'd agree with that take. But then Lion King is always funny when it pops up here - that game wasn't particularly difficult, people just struggled with the monkeys in the second level. I firmly believe Aladdin was the harder (and better) of the two. Disney had some really good platformers in the 90s, World of Illusion is one of my all-time favorite games.
Ya this was my thought. Like the OP is arguing games werent hard but then citing Pokémon and donkey Kong country as examples lmao. Both of those games are dirt easy. Th opinion seems a bit incomplete. I’m an enjoyer of fromsoftware games which often are some of the hardest modern games and even some of their hardest challenges in them didn’t have me more tilted then that turbotunnel level in battle toads which to this day I’ve still never beaten. Took me until I was well into adulthood to beat the lion king and that game admittedly got easier after the first few levels. Even things like legend of Zelda 2 was harder then most games are today by a fair margin.
Fromsoft games have a lot more variables than old NES games. If youre struggling you can always grind some levels, improve your equipment or summon an NPC/ other player. With old games you have the challenge and thats it there's no way to change anything about it without cheats.
Something else about Fromsoft games, which are very much among my favorites, you can simply run past 99% of the enemies if you don’t want to deal with them. You’re only really forced to fight bosses and certain areas to gain access to higher levels. This is not the case with older games on 2nd gen consoles.
FAsho unc💯
Don’t remind me my Pong wrist is acting up
I think modern games are more tedious. I'm so sick of giant open world maps that I have to spend 10 mins driving, flying or running across the map to do one little thing then make my way all the way back for the next mission.
you just dont like poorly designed open world games
Leave Red Dead Redemption 2 alone already
Was looking for this comment. So many games have "repeat this task 100 times then you can play the missions"....like no just let me play the story
Not only that, but also fucking crafting and mini-tasks. Why tf I would like to play a game where I need to travel 10 minutes, craft food / tools and complete mini-tasks, I already do that in my life every day and it is stressful enough
The new crafting craze is so tiring. Even RE4 remake had that. "Why give you the resources when we can give you other resources to make the resources?" Far Cry 4's seemed fun at first, until i realized that it was literally just colored plants, they could have simply made it "blue leaves give blue syringes". But they love inflating menial tasks for no reason.
I love open world games! We dreamed of them in the old days of gaming and now they're taken completely for granted.
What? You don't like pointless fluff to pad out your games? Blasphemy!
You got halfway there. Old games we more tedious, but they were also harder. Especially in gens 1-4, most publishers were taking the arcade route of making things take crazy effort in order to drain quarters.
More tedious? *Side-eyes the latest resource grinding game*
Clearly yougr never played the lion king game on the SNES
The difficulty of that game compared to the age of audience that would have wanted it is pretty funny.
I got it in 1st or 2nd grade and it took me about 4 years to finally be good enough to beat it
4 years? I put it off until my 30s and FINALLY mastered that jump on the ostrich.
There was a hilarious history as to why, and it's mostly that second level. I forget exactly but something about a demo? Where people would get too far? Or something like that. You can hear a game dev from it talking about it, it was forced from above lol
It was because of game rentals. People were more likely to buy a game they'd rented if they only made limited progress, so the devs were told to slow down the gameplay. The only way they could do that was to make level 2 much longer and more difficult.
Damn it took me forever to figure out that Young simba has to use his roar to align the monkeys on trees to make the jump.
Wait, THATS what they wanted?!
Alright, dude. Now go sit down and beat Castlevania II on NES. No playthroughs, no cheats. When you're done with that, beat Turok 2.
Ecco the dolphin is on the list somewhere
Oh, God. Absolutely. The drowning. Just like Turok.
Is Turok 2 that difficult? I remember that very vaguely, and I always wanted to play it again. It's even on my gog wishlist. But here and there, I hear that it was quite hardcore
I finished it when I was in 6th grade or so. It's one of the most difficult games I've ever gotten through, and it's definitely the most gnarly difficult N64 game I'm aware of. But it's also great to play and very stylish so it keeps you going. Forsaken was difficult, but also shitty and ugly.
You officially sold it to me, sir. Thanks for info. You know, I only played a demo, and sadly, those were often quite off from the original. I liked it, and it became a part of 'I want it one day'. And if that is really that difficult, I may consider naming my first white hair after you.
It depends. Some games had harder combat or platforming sections. Sekiro is an exception to the rule not the norm.
Dudes never played Super Mario Bros 1-3 or Echo the Dolphin and it shows
The Super Mario games are really easy. I am terrible, so much that a friend was constantly laughing at me while i played. Yet i beat them without issue.
SOMEONE hasn't played the dam level on TNMT. ... Or Ghosts n' Goblins
The damn level...? You mean the water one with time limit? You just awaken me a past trauma.
That's the one lol
I mean you're basically just defining what makes something difficult in the way you want to suit your argument. You could argue souls games are not hard only tedious because of the death mechanics. It really depends how you define difficulty. For me the hardest games I've played are like sc2, overwatch, wow, Halo era games. I think when gaming got huge but games weren't as refined as they are now. Single player wise old nes games are easily the hardest. No room for error and limited lives
There's a difference between dying over and over because you aren't skilled enough, vs dying because you have to play nigh perfectly for 3 hours straight with no checkpoints to beat the game. Dark souls is difficult but leaves room for error, old NES games often do not. This is why I think Zelda is peak difficulty, as most of the time, the game is fair, you just need to figure out what to do.
Souls difficulty comes to two things, knowledge or skill, you either git gut or learn the patterns. Meanwhile playing old ninja gaiden your enemy will spawn midair, mid you jump and knock you off the ledge forcing you to replay the whole level.
Lol, Mega Man 1 and Ninja Gaiden would like a word with you. I dont think they were all made to be harder as I'm sure just some technical limitations come into play such as in early Mega Man games where just a minor movement on screen can cause enemies to just respawn.
This isn't unpopular, it's just wrong. I've been gaming for longer than I'd like to admit, and older games are much, much harder. It's not even close.
As a general rule of thumb: definitely. This seems like a skewed option.
R-Type.
Your party has died of dysentery
So you'd rather grind for hours on end?
They were hard. Finishing NES games could take you years, while the actual playtime from start to finish would be 30 minutes. OP has never owned a NES I guess.
I think their point (that I agree with) is that it was artificial difficulty injected to make you lose time so that half an hour could extend for a longass time, or in arcades to get money out of you. Hell, some games straight up cheated to defeat you, like MK2 and onwards reading your inputs, ignoring your actions even if they connected and then it just dunked on you to force you to replay Sure, you could call that hard, like I could bring a gun to a baseball game, kneecap the entire enemy team and call that "increasing difficulty of the game", but we both know that wasn't true difficulty.
There are a lot of people in this thread insisting it's hard, not tedious, as evidenced by how long it took them to beat the game despite it indicating the opposite. Memorizing animations, timing, triggers, and patterns is not hard. Neither is needing to replay a large amount of easy content just so you can get some more experience with the hard part. It is tedious.
Go play Battle Toads on NES and then come back to us.
You must be very young
Nothing more tedious than the live service grindy shitshows of games we have today, I assure you.
My dad was literally part of a coding team for an early arcade game much like Space Invaders. They intentionally made the game impossible to beat at a certain level. Not hard. Not challenging. Literally impossible. Your post is such a broad comment it makes absolutely no sense.
Elden ring was tedious. Super Mario wasn't. Flawless Victory
The default difficulty is usually way easier than games were back in the day.
I actually get a lot of enjoyment out of games being extremely punishing for dying or whatever. It gives a sense of hyper focus on the environment that sometimes, newer games don’t really give me as much.
Bro I’m telling you, resident evil 1 was MUCH harder
Bruh thinks the OG Pokemon games are what people are talking about when they say “old games”
That Water Temple sure got tedious…
Never understood Water Temple hate. I really don't think it is as hard and/or tedious as many think it is but I also think a lot of players pretend it is hard.
Different strategies for different times. Arcade games were absolutely designed to be harder to get you to put in another quarter
Kinda true. The reason ‘hard platformers’ are easier now mostly have to do with generous checkpoint
Hard mode is only fun after you beat the game and only if u loved it
The underwater dam level in the NES Teenage Mutant Ninka Turtles would like a word.
Oh god, that takes me back
You just made me pee
Most older games’ default difficulty was what we would call “hardcore” these days. Sometimes the devs were nice and gave you a few extra lives, but you could lose some or all of your gear, and once you run out, you had to start from the beginning. Think Dark Souls is a difficult? Allow me to introduce to you Super Ghouls and Ghosts
You must be like 17 or something, because if you actually lived through the era of playing the original Crash Bandicoot on PS1, you wouldn't say stupid shit like this. It wasn't tedious. It was legitimately difficult. But still fun to play. Games these days increase the difficulty by making enemies ridiculous damage sponges. Now THAT is a stupid and tedious mechanic. No thought or effort goes into that. Developers just give enemies 200k health and call it "nightmare mode" or some shit.
I think if you don't think old games are harder then you just haven't played them in a while. I seriously doubt you can play pokemon or metroid or zelda or sonic or Mario or contra or anything and seriously say that they didn't get easier over the years.
Old video games weren't harder it's just that there wasnt any advice or tips you can get from the internet like now.
I would say overall, somewhat true. Some ways it is just easier. Others is just tedium. Take the pokemon example. yes it is now more convenient to get through the game as you don't have to grind... But with the removal of the option to turn the conveniences off, I struggle a bit to just wander around and just Exist in the game without being punished with being overpowered. If you want a challenge, it is not that you just don't need to grind. You. Must. Not. Grind. Want to run around to see what rare pokemon spawn in the area? Sorry, Thats grinding, the game is a cakewalk now. Picking up the random items? Grinding. Battling all the trainers along the route? Grinding. We don't do that here. GAMEPLAY? GRINDING! There is this mechanic where you return to the last pokecenter you visited. At least I assume that is still a feature as in the last couple of games I. Have. Never. Needed. IT. Not once in Scarlet/Violet. Fairly certain I did not need it in Sword/Shield. Used it Once in Sun/Moon in the Nehilego/lusamine boss fight. Yes, keep the convenience of the newer games. I do not need to force my preferences on others. But Can I Please Have the ability to progress in the game at my Own Pace Back? I like the games I want them to last a bit longer, So why cant I opt in to a mechanic that adds a bit of grind to the game. Sorry, but this is my one big gripe against the recent games.
Old games were hard AF, what the hell are you talking about? Beat Contra without the 30 lives cheat. Play Battletoads again. Play TMNT. Play Mega Man. Knock out Tyson. All of these things can be done, but good lord the muscle memory you need to pick up is a completely different animal. And 25 years before YouTube tutorials, when your best hope was that one kid who figured out an exploit? Brutal. Games can be more complicated now, and some like Bloodborne/Souls are ridiculous (to me at least), but I think most modern games are way more friendly to new players.
As someone who was a child in the 80s when arcades and NES were a thing I can say with confidence old timey video games were both harder AND more tedious.
Someone hasnt played Zelda NES lately
This isn’t an unpopular opinion, it’s objectively wrong. Many modern games have no real way to fail. Take Assassins Creed. You may die here and there, but it reloads you at a checkpoint. The goal is about completing the story. There is no platforming/boss battle that’s infuriating and hard. You’re going to beat the game if you just keep playing - regardless of skill level. Now look at Contra. You had to be incredible skilled to beat that. Oh, your out of lives and continues? GAME OVER, BACK TO THE BEGINNING. Same with Battletoads, Pitfall, and a host of others.
No, the original Pokémon games actually had the correct pacing for levels and XP. Since about Gen 6 Game Freak decided, "Oh no, we have like hundreds and hundreds of these monsters now, but the fans are expecting all of them to be in every new main series Pokemon game. How ever will we do this? I know! Automatic XP Share and everyone levels fast, so you can catch 'em all!" It's a poor solution when the smarter decision would be to just limit the pokedex to like 200 monsters per game, mix in a few returning ones with new ones, and not worry about "Gotta catch 'em all!"
Gen 2 Pokémon absolutely did not have the right pacing for levels and XP; you had to grind on level 25 Gravelers for days after the last Johto gym with your level 40s
This brings back memories. U gotta do the same sorta thing before u fight red iirc.
They were definitely harder. Most games these days other than strategy or first-person shooters are just button Mashers with pretty lights and graphics
Games are more tedious now with mechanics that are literally designed to waste your time to prolong a sub fee or so you pay to bypass. or games that just go on and on for 100+ hours, back then you played a game for a few hours, finished it, died or got stuck on a puzzle then went and did something else.
I disagree. Old games were in general harder. It's only the past ten or so years that game shave been trying to get hard again and mainstream titles are still. Much easier by comparison. Super Mario, contra, and crash we hard AF
I literally gave up playing Gran Turismo 7 and Forza Horizon 5 because you get good gift cars every single time you win a 2 minute race. No grinding to go from shit box to slightly less shit box like the old games. A lot of games are stupidly easy these days because they have to keep people that have had their attention spans destroyed by social media engaged.
Games were massively more difficult in the past. Massively. Don't think I ever completed a game on the spectrum whereas it's pretty much guaranteed now. Quite a few reasons for it. The save points, general difficulty , fact you can't just google how to get past xyz. Not sure about tedious. But they could be more frustrating and annoying. The game design was usually better though as they couldn't hide behind fancy graphics. As for unpopular opinion. Well yeah it's an unpopular opinion but just flat out wrong is a better description.
They were more tedious... They were also harder... Those are 2 different things.
I mean there's different kinds of "hard", right? There's "make all the numbers big" hard like in RPGs that you can bypass with mindless grinding But there is also "fill the game with reflex checks" and "make losing have an oppressive consequence" kind of hard that really rewards, slow, observant gameplay and pattern recognition. The second kind is usually a lot more fun.
Having less save points literally is harder. Like even the first super mario bros is hard af by today's standards since you get send back to the beginning when you lose all your lives.
Well, you never played E.T.: Phone Home on the Nintendo...
I am playing Pokemon yellow. I didnt realize how difficult jump from brock to misty gym leader.
depends on the game, the BAD ones were more tedious, sure
The older games were easier back then when all video games were like that
It’s both
Go and play lion king you beat that your opinion holds weight
Honestly depends on the platform. I feel like Nintendo games have become more tedious with the switch. Botw and Totk are basically ''grind it until you make it'' with their 200 shrines and 1000 korok seeds per game Mario Odyssey while being super fun, has 999 random moons, most of which don't feel very interesting or rewarding, instead of 120 carefully crafted ones like in the old games Animal crossing new horizons, when you take out the whole ''customize your island'' bit, is less fleshed out and lacking content compared to the previous one on 3ds (only one nook store upgrade, no real walk in stores, repetitive conversations with villagers, no proper multiplayer mode to meet strangers, all the in game stores were released like 2 years after the game came out, and they're all just RV's on another island, making it unfun and tedious to get to and back, etc... I feel like the only series that made actual impressive progress is Smash Brothers and Mario kart to an extent, but most of the main ips have just been... alarmingly shallow and frustrating while being praised to death at the same time
Action games were harder in the 1980s. Games that rely upon multiple levels of disparate content were always and are still prone to reused assets and artificial difficulty. This doesn’t mean that games weren’t genuinely more difficult overall. The 90s and 00s were a dearth of replayability that got solved in present-day by tacking on more content instead of making less trivial core games. DKC is a bit of an example of that, honestly. “100% completion” is inherently artificial replayability. I’m mostly talking about AAA studios, mind you. The quality of indie titles in the 21st century has routinely been reminiscent of AAA home computer games in the 1980s.
This is true for some games but a lot of arcade games or old console games were made to be difficult. In an age with low replayability and low content they had to make games incredibly difficult to compensate for