Game PTSD
May 14th, 2008, 3:29pm by GeoffWow, I’m full of tiny, irrelevant posts today. Everyone loves top ten lists, so here’s one of the most irritating old school Nintendo games. I’m absurdly proud of the fact that I’ve actually beaten 3 of them honestly (Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden, and Contra) .
Ironically, many of these games have actually spawned sequels that are even harder than the originals - Contra and Ghosts n’ Goblins, I’m looking at you. I would go so far as to speculate that the incredible difficulty was actually the main thing people remembered about these titles and so impelled designers to retain it.
I’ll conclude by noting that I think Battletoads may in fact be impossible. Literally. I cannot conceive of a human being who can beat this game without emulation, Game Genie-ing, or otherwise cheating. The vehicle levels themselves were enough to make me hurl my controller across the room in rage.
Posted in Nintendo, Geoff |
May 14th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
I’ve beaten the same three games — in fact, I’m awesome at NES Contra. My record for beating it on three lives with no continues is two and a half times through the game — I think I finally lost in the Snow Zone on the third time through. (In contrast, I can’t beat the arcade version even once.)
Mega Man was tough but doable — but those pictures aren’t from the first game. I recognize the first one, at least, from Mega Man 2, and I’m pretty sure the second one is from a later game as well.
That article misses a few important (and infuriating) issues:
- Ghosts & Goblins - not only is this game punishingly difficult, but after beating it once, if you want the real ending, you have to go back through all the levels again, and if you die it’s all for naught and you have to start from the beginning of the first run-through again.
- Battletoads - Reportedly, if you are playing with a second player, at a certain level the second player’s character simply stops responding to controller input, due to a bug. Oh, and you can hurt each other. That always went well.
May 14th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Re: Battletoads:
Years after it originally released and I got nowhere with renting it, I played it on an emulator where you have the ability to “save state”. Amazingly, I still couldn’t beat it.
Contra 3 I thought was actually easier than the original Contra. I’m not sure why, but when I bought it on the Wii VC, I had no trouble beating it again. Still a great game, though.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Contra III isn’t too hard except that you have to play it on the hardest difficulty in order to get the “real” ending. I can never seem to beat the final boss on that difficulty.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Wait, I may be thinking of Shattered Soldier. They all run together after a while, I’m afraid.
NES Contra isn’t so difficult as long as your reaction times are good — the game is more about memorization than anything else. Once you know where enemies will appear you can mop the floor with them.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Rob-
Shattered Soldier seemed utterly impossible to me. Geoff and I played it for a bit and managed to get to the second level using the 30-lives code… then once you’re out of those lives, continues only give you the original 3 or whatever lives, and that pretty much means game over. Seemed like a fun game, but sort of ridiculously impossible to me. =)
May 15th, 2008 at 7:03 am
I beat all the games on that list that I owned/played.
MT’s Punchout
Megaman
Ghosts n Goblins (both times through)(bought it on VC and beat it again)
Ninja Gaiden (#3 was much harder than #1 because it had limited continues)
Contra (without the 30 lives upgrade)
I never owned a game genie or anything like that and I never played any of the other games. When I was a kid (about 13 at the time of the games above) I never played a game that felt “unbeatable”. I was pretty into games and I would put the time in until I beat something, no matter how hard it was. I beat pretty much every game I owned.
I would even add the original Top Gun on NES. That game was incredibly hard, much harder than some in the list. It took me a lot of time to finally beat it.
May 15th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
This is the second time I’ve ever laughed out loudly at NPD figures. Like, daaaayuuuummmm