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Ok, it's been quite some time since I've been able to get more than about ten minutes into a regular NES game wihtout my Nintendo locking up, but today I went out and bought a top loading NES... when I got home and tryed it out I put in one of my favorite NES games of all time (I know it might sound stupid but it's been one of my favorites since I was little) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II The Arcade Game.
From this experience of finally being able to get past the first level without the game locking up I realized that this game is really hard compared to the alot of the new ones made for the newer systems (PS2,Game Cube, etc.) so I tryed some other games and they were all rediculously hard... I mean, it's been along time since I've been able to play much of any of my old NES games and they seemed so easy years ago but now that I've been playing newer games I guess I've gone soft with them... what do you think? Have new games just gone soft or what? Why is it like that? I mean, I just can't understand why they would make a big deal out of all of these new games but yet most of the older games would kick their butt royally!

Edit

Sorry if it's already a topic... it seems like it would be but I searched and couldn't find anything.

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles

I think that it's probably just a case of you not being used to the way that the old NES games were played (2-action buttons, flat rectangular controller, less freedom of movement on-screen), although Nintendo did have some uber-hard games. It's the opposite for me, since pretty much the only games I play on the newer systems are RPG's I have a hard time getting used to having 8+ buttons to use in a game.

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Don't worry, I'm not going to garrote you.

this may be due to the fact that the newer games require so much quick thinking and precision timing, that you're not used to the slower pace of these games. and i base this, on absolutely nothing. plus, i haven't played any NES games for a LOOOOOONG time. lol.

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moé in the streets, senpai in the sheets

I don't think this is a matter you need to see from our perspective, but you should reason from the point of view from those days.

You see, I really think that what they were trying to do is create a game like we have now. However, they didn't have the resources. Back th n, you could make a gam! that felt 'real'. There was no emotional connection with the characters, hardly a plot you cared for or any kind of graphics/m sic that would enhance the gaming experience. The only 0hing they got was the fact that games can be addictive.

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The Collapse of Heaven and Earth

I still play Gradius and Life Force every day. =^_^=

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Uwao. aooh! I'm Gau!
I'm your friend!
Let's travel together!

I may sound really old saying this, but I remember a time when games were ulta-hard, and had virtually no end (asteroids, Galaga, Jumpman, etc.)

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Don't worry, I'm not going to garrote you.

What was your reward for beating those games? More of the game only much harder!

I remember games like Space Invaders and Donkey Kong on Atari having virtually no endings. Rather, the stages got quicker and tougher the more you progressed. It seems it took better reflexes and timing to get far in games in those days, but now most of the focus is on story (in the case of RPGs among others), innovation, and generally more freedom in worlds. One of my favorite older games is Solaris on Atari 2600, a game that did incorporate a lot of freedom, but was also extremely difficult and lengthy (for those times). I don't know a single person who's ever beaten it, and is one of the more 'impossible' games on the system (although I do seem to remember beating it myself, but it was probably just my imagination).

I think the main reason older games seem more challenging is simply because those games were designed more for playing in short intervals (of course, that doesn't mean there aren't those of us who played them for hours at a time anyway). The goal of most of the games was achieving the highest score, so it was basically a "see how long you can last for X amount of time" type of deal. Few games allowed you to save, and the ones that did rarely gave the option. In addition, your character/vehicle/spaceship/etc. could usually easily be taken out in one blow from an enemy as opposed to several damaging hits nowadays. In the case of RPGs, the threat of death was more real in those times since you couldn't revive allies during battle, etc.

Games have gone soft to a point, but it's basically because of the change in target audiences and such (I assume). Also, with newer technology, companies seem to want to focus more on expansion and longer, engrossing play rather than on what we used to have.



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Words of Wisdom:

If something can go wrong, it will.

If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.

If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong. - Murphy’s Law

Boing! Zoom! - Mr. Saturn

Games have gotten easier, but only in certain genres. You could say that modern day platformers have nothing on the old-school Ghouls 'n' Ghosts, et. al., but you'd be counting out the extreme difficulty of pseudo-platform action titles like Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden. (What is it about ninja games that fosters insane complexity?)

Likewise, modern-day shooters like Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga are just as hard as their R-Type predecessors, if not moreso. Street Fighter 2 was always tough to beat, but impossibly cheap bosses like Shin Mr. Karate from SNK vs Capcom CHAOS have the odds stacked in their favor so much that winning requires nothing short of godlike reflexes and a really lucky AI overcorrection.

If you wanted to put every "modern" game vs every "old" game, though, I'd have to say that the older games are tougher. Especially if you go back to the glory days of DOS RPGs. Rogue was freaking impossible, and all the "secret bosses" or whatever of Final Fantasy and the like are a bunch of pansies compared to getting raped by a group of dragons and aquators. I'm still horribly bitter about that game, and to date I have never defeated it. If you ever beat Rogue, then by all means tell me how you did it, because I've tried more times than I can count and I've never made it to the treasure at the bottom, much less climbed all the way back up.

This post has been edited by Super Moogle on 18th June 2004 02:27

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"I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original thinking."
~Dorothy L. Sayers

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~T.S. Eliot

"Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as reality - in your own mind!"
~ Bruce Lee

Quote (SaintWeapon @ 17th June 2004 19:42)

What was your reward for beating those games? More of the game only much harder!

Yeah... if I remember right ,in Kirby's Dreamland for regular Game Boy after you beat King DeDeDe the credits roll and then the game restarts only to give you a much harder version of it. On a seperate note, to the post above about what Silver Fork said about ships and such, I was playing Battletoads earlier and there is a part in it where you have a hover car that you have to avoid walls in as you advance at probably 70 mph or faster, it gives you a good 7 or 8 minutes worth of dodging only to have to start all over again if you end up crashing into a wall once and of course as you also stated Silver Fork, the pace speeds up dramatically as you advance.

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles

I think we've moved past the stage of games being "impossible". The creators know how to make a Challenging [in relation to a monotonous and impossible] game now. The creators have added like one million extras into their game. Like FFX, my brother spent over 180 hours in approximately one month perfecting that game. Oh BTW, that is also why they added the difficulty selection at the beginning of most games. If you want that impossible feeling back, just press Expert.

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Estuans interius
ira vehementi
Estuans interius
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Veni, veni, venias,
Ne me mori facias
Veni, veni, venias,
Ne me mori facias

The random encounter Imps in Final Fantasy 1 kicked my ass, and I never got past the very beginning of the game. I like games where if you bother to level, you'll be okay, and if you want a challenge, you don't hang around and level forever.

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Veni, vidi, dormivi.

Games have gotten easier.
Atari had the philosophy that games should be easy to play and impossible to master. There was a gradual shift towards what we have today - easy games thats value lies in graphics, technical capabilities, ability list length, story, etc.
Compare FFI to FFIX - FFI imps killed me before I got to Garland's castle (until I figured out how to properly equip weapons and armor, and even then it was still difficult). FFIX random monsters are easy; the difficulty in this game lies in its length, secret bosses/secret random monsters, mini-games, excessive amounts of Side Quests, etc. FFIX had tutorials and explainations for everything, you had to figure out everything in FFI for yourself.

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"I had to write four novels before they let me write comic books."
-Brad Meltzer

I agree. They're making it so it is easy for the casual gamer and challeging for the hardcore find-everything-out gamer.

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Estuans interius
ira vehementi
Estuans interius
ira vehementi

Veni, veni, venias,
Ne me mori facias
Veni, veni, venias,
Ne me mori facias

So if the change in game difficulty is partly due to change in target audience, couldn't you say it's the target audience that got softer?

I agree, because I used to be able to beat all the NES games that I play now when I was little but now that it's been so long and I've adapted to the newer games that seem so much easier to me I've gone "soft" I guess you could say, and I have problems even getting pass the first half of most of the games where as now when I buy a game if it's not RPG length I can can usually have it beaten within the first couple of hours or so... so what I'm saying is I do still think that games have gotten easier but I also agree in the sense that gamers have gotten softer (a good example is myself obviously) because they have made the new games easier and personally I play the new games more so I get used to them.

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles

Ok, first of all, TMNT 2 is one of the best games ever.

Second of all, if you want a hard game, try Contra: Shattered Soldier. Its not nearly as good as Contra 3: Alien Wars, but it is just as hard.

There are plenty of games out there that contain challenge, you just have to know where to look. The online arena is a good place to start, or the puzzle genre.

AS for the games or gamers getting soft. I think its a mix of both. Certain gamers wanted more satisfaction out of games so certain games were made for them. But like some posters allready stated, there are still games out there that cater to the old school hardcore gamer.

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<Nealio> Seymour sounds like evil Winnie the Pooh

Games were harder because they were much shorter and developers needed to create ways to give their games replay value. Back then we had the patience to play through a certain game hundreds of times in an attempt to beat it, spending countless hours in the process. Now that games are longer and rely more on technological capabilities they can be easier while still providing a fulfilling experience. These days the best way to find a good challenge is to play against other people over a network.

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