I would also add Iimitations. Developers were limited quite a bit for what the could do. Back then, arcade games were superior to consoles in many ways. One of the issues that made games hard on consoles was the respawning of enemies, like you mention with Ninja Gaiden, it was also in the Mega Man games and many others. Developers worked with what they had. I seriously doubt they coded respawning of enemies on purpose. With the resources they had back then, they had no choice. An enemy was programmed to show up when the screen got to a certain area. It's the reason why respawns happen in the exact same place. To stop that from happening, developers would have to use memory they couldn't afford to use or didn't have to time to use. I bet finishing a functional game has priority over enemies that respawn in inconveinent times. Many NES games weren't that hard once you remembered the respawning patterns. 
RETROspective: The Brutality of Old-school Games
|
 On 11/07/2013 at 09:29 AM by The Last Ninja See More From This User » |
Remembering when gaming was *%#$^@ hard and frustrating!
One day when I was twelve I went into a gaming store and looked around. I saw a really cool NES game that had a ninja on the front; the dude was really buff and vicious-looking, and behind him the city was on fire! Well, I thought ninjas were pretty awesome, so I bought the game and took it home. I popped it into my NES and began playing. . . Ninja Gaiden! I quickly discovered that this game was ridiculously hard! Enemies appeared out of nowhere, and all the tricky climbing was extrememly frustrating due to the fact that Ryu jumped back when he got hit, often to his doom. I made it to the third level before I quit. I'm afraid I've never gotten very far in the game due to its sheer difficulty.
What is it that makes old-school games so hard? Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man, and Battletoads are remembered as some of the most difficult NES games ever made (and there are many more). Games today can be challenging, but they don't hold a candle to how hard games used to be in the NES era and early 90s. I believe there are three main reasons why games were so much harder "back in the day" (my main focus in this blog is the NES).
1. Developers were still "getting the hang of it"
Many developers started making games in the 80s during the arcade boom. As a result, developers made the games difficult in order to get the most money from kids and teens trying to beat their game. When the NES came into popularity, many developers had several arcade games under their belt; it was difficult for them to port their games to the NES without keeping the difficulty high.
Remember these days?
Many developers began making new games for the console, but they were used to making the difficulty high due to their experience of arcade games. Perhaps they simply thought kids wanted a good challenge. But NES games were beyond just "a challenge;" some games had ludicrous puzzles that were impossible to figure out on your own. Other games had incredibly difficult level design and bosses. I like to think here that developers were getting the hang of making new games for the NES. Some developers hit the sweet spot, like Konami, who made two refined Contra games for the NES that were difficult, yet not too much to make it through to the end.
By the next era of gaming, developers either had a handle on making games for the home console market, or they got out of the gaming business altogether. Then there's LJN, the most notorious developer of all; any licensed game they made in the NES era was awful!
2. The Gaming Market
These terrible covers are nothing compared to how difficult these games are!
In the mid and late 80s, the world did not have iphones and laptops, blu-ray players and intelligent boxes that could do everything for you. It was a much different world. As a result, the gaming market was a lot different too. Most developers brought out a big game once every year, some even farther apart than that. As a result, the game was made difficult in order to keep the player busy with it for a long time. The limitations of the cartridge format kept games from being too long, so developers focused on difficulty instead.
A difficult game would frustrate the player, yes, but a dedicated player would keep trying to overcome the section again and again. Gaming magazines such as Nintendo Power were started to help players through the difficult games. Sometimes, however, it was a matter of skill and not knowledge.
3. The Gaming Audience
This last point is the most valid of them all. In the mid and late 80s, the vast majority of gamers were kids! In order to get a new game, kids would have to beg their parents; even worse, they would have to wait until their birthday or Christmas to get that special game. Many times they would get a game and it would be the only game to play for five months or more. Developers knew this. So what did they do? They made the game hard so little Billy would have to play it for months before he beat it completely.
Now these are real gamers!
The truth is, many kids honed their gaming skills so well that they could buy a new game and beat it in a weak, so developers were forced to make their games even more difficult. Thus, we have games full of cheap level design that is intended to kill you countless times. Developers knew that kids would be playing their games; they knew that said kids would be playing their game for possibly a very long time. So fun was not their focus; difficulty was.
In Conclusion
Perhaps I'm wrong about all of this, but these are the reasons I believe why games of yesteryear were so stinkin' hard. Games today are different because the gaming audience is not just kids, but everyone. Hardcore games are still around, but the difficulty of games has been pulled back quite a bit. Pixlbit friends, what reasons would you give for old-school games being so hard? Please share your opinions below.
For your entertainment and enlightenment, I have embedded a video here of two guys playing the top ten most difficult NES games ever. Please watch it if you can, as it will show how difficult some of these games really are! Just be prepared for a lot of swearing.
Comments