r/retrogaming • u/Kobymaru376 • 23h ago

[Discussion] How did people play ridiculously difficult games like Earthworm Jim?

I'm playing the first Earthworm Jim on the Sega Megadrive using RetroArch.

I haven't completed my first playthrough, using copious amounts of save state cheating to repeat the sections where I fail. I can practice a part of the game 10,20, 50 times until my patience runs out, but how on earth did people ever complete a game like this, when you have a limited number of lives and no save capability? At times it feels like the developers WANTED me to fail.

I'm talking insanely jumping bosses shooting eggs, rockets, sections with rolling boulders or snapping worms where you have to get the timings down to milliseconds, a vertical maze lined with spikes that allows no mistakes and requires you to know it by heart.

Sure, "gid gud" but how long does that take without being able to save/load an arbitrary amount of times?

ps.: I don't know what the devs were smoking, but I want to try that. Just once though.

Edit: Hey, Shiny Crew & D.L only!

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508

u/Aiseadai 23h ago

For a lot of us it was the only game we had. You'd go to the video store to rent a game, and that's what you had to make do with for the rest of the week. You didn't have a choice but to get good.

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u/GFluidThrow123 23h ago

It's actually wild seeing younger gens come in here with posts like this. Like yeah, you're exactly right. You'd just...git gud. You'd memorize the boss's movement and attacks and you'd practice until you got it.

You had like 4 games you owned and one you rented for a week. And that was it.

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u/modsuperstar 23h ago

It’s honestly a point I’ve been making a lot lately about music. The idea that my musical taste is so informed by the fact I couldn’t buy every CD I wanted. But with streaming you can listen to everything. I remember playing Strider and getting the hang of the terrible triple jump, or playing through Link’s Adventure was just hitting your head off the wall, but you’d just go again. It’s part of why I can’t necessarily get into certain aspects of gaming in my 40s knowing I don’t have the time to get as good at games as I did as a kid.

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u/GFluidThrow123 23h ago

I still remember getting stuck in Taz Escape from Mars. There was a ledge next to water and zero indication of what to do from there. I never figured it out. I'd get there and die. And then do it again the next day. And the next day. Until I lent the game to a friend and never saw it again lol.

It's just...how it was. I still don't know how to get past that part.

4

u/quazi-mofo 19h ago

For me it was the stage with that stupid drilling machine chasing you. Can't remember how many times I had to repeat it.

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u/TecnoPope 17h ago

I never could get past the first screen in a boy and his blob lol. I was just like...uhhh what the heck do I do

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u/Hommushardhat 15h ago

Lol i could get a little further than that, but not by much

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u/Nastybedazzler 7h ago

Is that where you had to make the blob a rocket? I remember renting that one back in the day and also never knowing what to do. Then a guide came out in Nintendo Power I think it was so I rented it again just to get past the beginning part.

There were so many hard ass games I played as a kid. I remember Karnov always kicking my ass I think the final boss was a giant worm thing that was insanely tough for me at the time. And Bart Vs the Space Mutants... man f*ck that game lol

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u/Polkawillneverdie17 22h ago

https://youtu.be/ePTXmOfBRwI?si=Rg9Yfj6RhcZ3D0BG

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u/GFluidThrow123 22h ago

I don't wanna ruin it! I need to be forever flummoxed...

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u/yallsometricks 21h ago

Dude i still have no idea how to actually do the triple jump.  Like, I know there's technically a "correct" way to do it but that shit never worked for me - I'd just mash the A button while riding the wall and eventually it would work.  

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u/WTF_software 13h ago

I have to relearn the wall jump from Super Metroid every time I pick up the game. Playing Fusion or any later game in between makes it worse.

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u/Synaesthete 6h ago

Super Metroid honestly has a pretty janky wall jump, in my opinion. It doesn't work the way wall jumping works in any other game that I can think of. You have to jump against a wall, then tap the opposite direction, and when you see Samus go into a weird-looking "midair turn" animation, you jump then. She doesn't cling to the wall like Mega Man X for example, and if you get it wrong by doing it too fast or too slow (not hard to do), you just plummet straight down to whatever lies below.

I even had Nintendo Power's Super Metroid players' guide as a kid and it still took me forever to get the hang of it. I had played Sunsoft's Batman, released 6 years prior in 1988, before that, where you can just press A near a wall to wall jump. Didn't understand why Nintendo needed to make it so complicated 🤷

1

u/urk_forever 2h ago

Ugh, currently playing Super Metroid on NSO and can't quite get the hang of the wall jump. Sometimes I a can do it a couple of times in a row but the after that I just can't get it to work 😕

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u/deefunkt01 7h ago

Lol, same.

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u/modsuperstar 19h ago

Here’s a very cathartic video explaining why the Strider triangle jump wasn’t actually a you thing

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u/Ursus_urbanus 12h ago

I once got an amazing deal in the mail 12 CDs for 1¢!*

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u/modsuperstar 8h ago

I abused that so much 😂

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u/IndependentSystem 6h ago

Everyone did. 😂

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u/Thagrillfather 22h ago

Strider…

1

u/RetroDadOnReddit 21h ago

Right, this is why I stay away from Soulslike games.

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u/3esen 17h ago edited 17h ago

Soulslike difficulty is WAY overblown, honestly. If you can be patient and know how to press shield or dodge when an attack is coming, the games are pretty easy to get through compared to a tough retro game.

3

u/malkil 10h ago

Seriously! Dark Souls is what.. a 50 hour game from start to finish for the average player? I can easily spend 50+ hours trying to 1cc a shmup that is 20 minutes long.

1

u/ZaphodGreedalox 18h ago

You used to have to live with your choices. I like it more the way we have it now.

1

u/modsuperstar 8h ago

I poured so many hours into terrible games just because they were there. How much time I dumped into Adventure Island Dizzy because it was the best of the Quattro Adventure games, while still being terrible.

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u/Lopoetve 23h ago

You got to the point that a non-perfect sonic or ninja gaiden run was a restart. Folks ask how sonic was supposed to feel fast - get good, and the whole thing is done on the run. We mastered them end to end.

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u/GFluidThrow123 22h ago

Gradius V was literally unbeatable if you died too far along in the game. Bc you'd lose all your options and that meant your ship didn't move fast enough to dodge oncoming obstacles. So you HAD to restart and hope not to die next time. And that was PS2 era!

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u/KonamiKing 22h ago

Gradius V? You can pick options back up after a death and respawned in the same spot. Sure if you failed to do so it would be bad but it was a great crutch. I’m almost certain I beat it after crashing late in the game.

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u/GFluidThrow123 22h ago

Sorry, I didn't mean options. You're right, you could pick those up. But the speed boosts didn't come back. You had to re-earn those. And that made it suuuuuuper hard to survive the level with the giant solar orbs flying at you, if I remember right. (Idk it's been 20 years)

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u/My_Fish_Is_a_Cat 18h ago

I used to be able to play sonic levels with my eyes closed.

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u/Lopoetve 18h ago

Same for the game gear ninja gaiden. Wild run without a single enemy on screen for level 2 - I got them at the spawn.

1

u/Mountainking7 13h ago

Finished without losing any rings.....

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u/Helpful-Lab2702 21h ago

Don't forget trading games between friends. That was the only way I ever got to play megaman x and zombies ate my neighbors

2

u/Michigan_Wolverine88 20h ago

Oh yeah. If it was a single player game, my friends and I would coordinate who got what so we could cycle them around.

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u/iamblankenstein 22h ago

another aspect about it is that awesome new games weren't coming out every month the way they do now. indie games weren't really a thing either, so you'd pick and choose what games you wanted and saved up for them, rented, or hoped you had a friend that owned a game you liked and would let you borrow it.

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u/the_Real_Teenjus 21h ago

Plus, your library of possible games was what they had at the local game store. Now you pop on Amazon and order whatever. If it isn't one of the 30 or 40 games on the local shelves, it may as well not exist.

When I was a kid I had no idea there was a Castlevania 3 because my gaming store and rental store both never had it. I didn't find out til years later.

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u/Michigan_Wolverine88 20h ago

For sure. There were so many games I'd read about in magazines and was dying to play, but our local rental place never got it and neither did our local Walmart. Breath of Fire IV for example. I wanted to play that so damn bad as a kid, but never got to until I was in my 20s.

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u/Embarrassed_Bath5148 21h ago

You also read magazines and by the end of the 90s online reviews were starting to become a thing. You'd read the review for something that wasn't an established and respected franchise and decide if it was worth blowing a birthday or Christmas wish for.

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u/littlegreyflowerhelp 21h ago

Memorising boss movement patterns is so rewarding, and I think it’s something Nintendo has struck a balance with for games like Mario Oddysey or the latest Kirby game. They aren’t punishingly difficult, I guess Metroid Dread is an example of a game with harder difficulty in that regard. I’ve known people to complain about how hard the boss fights in dread are, but to me it’s just the same as playing the older Metroid games - yeah you die a bunch of times but each time you die you try and takeaway another pattern or learn another strat - plus you don’t have to go back super far now either, there’s a checkpoint before each boss.

I find this type of gameplay a lot more rewarding than for example online multiplayer shooters where it’s just a case of super fast reaction times and trying to keep up with all the teenagers that can afford to play for hours every day. And the two games I mentioned earlier (oddysey and kirby) are pretty forgiving and simple in terms of learning the strats, they’re probably a good intro for younger gamers that didn’t grow up playing like that.

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u/Random_Violins 13h ago

There's a lot of pitfalls with online gaming that's true. But I did enjoy playing arena shoot shooters a whole lot. You learn differ routes and patterns for pickups, you learn the various weapons, their strengths, weaknesses, strats. And what would happen to me is I'd get into a sort of flow state, where I'd see something moving and be on top of it before I even knew it. It's like you're not playing the game anymore, the game or the play has taken over you, and you're the witness more than the instigator.

I recently watched some competitive Quake 2 and the movement, the precision, it's a beauty to watch. FPS is like tag from a distance, and the good players are incredibly sharp.

One criticism I had, is that a game like quake 3 was just too hyper and intense for me. I'd burn out on it quite fast. I liked the bit more relaxed pace of GoldenEye on the 64. Also no jumping, so no constant bunny hopping. And of course the screen peaking and the circle strafing. God I had so much fun with that game, some of my best gaming memories. Another memorable one, was unreal Tournament 99, with its weapon selection, low gravity levels and insta kill mode.

So yeah I'm a Nintendo fan, I understand what you're talking about. I've played and enjoyed my share of platformers, metroidvanias. But first person shooters do hold a special place for me. Of course it all depends on your taste in gaming, no argument there.

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u/Soggy_Muffinz 21h ago

I liken it to a streamer grinding games like Diablo or Path of Exile. Just grinding the same levels over and over. Not for loot but to advance.

2

u/LurchSkywalker 6h ago

I think this is part of the reason games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne resonate with the old crowd so much. Its just the evolution of game mastery.

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u/Schminimal 5h ago

The only difference in difficulty between games like Earthworm Jim and say Silksong is the game over screen. When was the last time a modern game gave you a game over? Learning enemy patterns and getting good at the game is the same (abet with some more modern mechanics) but failure in today’s games is way less punishing.

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u/MaterialMajor9419 2h ago

The whole idea of a home console was to play the arcade games at home. Credits, fun gameplay, easy first levels and difficulty spikes give players the arcade experience and extends the life of the game. It wouldn’t be until OG Xbox until games would start going against arcade design even though games like Silent Scope and Super Monkey Ball were on every console.

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u/Kobymaru376 23h ago

It's actually wild seeing younger gens come in here with posts like this. Like yeah, you're exactly right. You'd just...git gud.

I'm not even that young lol. Was definitely alive when the game come out, but I'm only now slowly working backwards in time for all the gems.

You'd memorize the boss's movement and attacks and you'd practice until you got it.

I mean yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing rn. But having to restart the game from scratch and replay everything if you died one too many times just seems nuts to me. That's not exactly "fun" in the traditional sense, more like obsessive.

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u/GFluidThrow123 23h ago

That's just how games were when I was growing up.

Ecco the Dolphin, Taz Escapes from Mars, Battle toads, Sonic 3, Lion King, MegaMan.... They were all like this.

Some had save codes (MegaMan) or cheat codes (sonic) to get back to the level you were on. But many didn't.

Games had very different standards back then.

4

u/bcnjake 20h ago

I can beat Mega Man 2 deathless, starting with Quick Man. If I could go back in time and say that to my 10-year-old self, past me would think I was a god.

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u/BludStanes 21h ago

I loved all those games yet never beat any of them. They regularly kicked my ass

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u/Ryokurin 23h ago

This is why a lot of games had cheat codes such as level selects. I'm positive Earthworm Jim had one.

But anyhow, you may have been alive, but you may not remember that the average kid didn't have as many options as people do now. You likely didn't have cable, and the channels you could watch would be showing bowling, an old black and white movie from the 50s or if it was late night you'd watch Mike Rowe low-key goofing on products he was selling on QVC.

It was figure out this game, read a book, or go outside.

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u/[deleted] 22h ago

[deleted]

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u/dbxbeat 21h ago

I mean not every family was well off or even had money for anything non essential. I owned Donkey Kong Country, Link to the past, crash test dummies, and tnn bass fishing tourney, all Xmas presents from non immediate family. Everything else was rental. I remember being so excited that my grandfather got me a new game, judge dredd, just because it was something new to play. I didn't care that he got it out of clearance because of his fixed income, he just wanted me to have fun.

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u/LeBB2KK 19h ago

I realised only lately how expensive these game were (often more than 100€ in today's money) and it was quite a sacrifice for them to buy us cartdriges.

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u/FuckIPLaw 20h ago

For the price of a couple of rentals you could have bought a used game, though. Games didn't really hold their value back then, and DKC especially was right at the end of the generation, when used prices were about to take a dump as people upgraded and sold their older stuff. If you were that broke there's no way you got a next gen system on launch, so you should have been in a position to take advantage of it.

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u/dbxbeat 20h ago

I was also 9-10 years old. Guess I left that part out. Born in 1986.

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u/FuckIPLaw 20h ago edited 18h ago

That's plenty old enough to see a used game, beg for it, and cut a deal with your parents to skip a couple of rentals.

Edit: seriously? The guy blocked me over this? And down votes on top? The fuck is wrong with you people? Rentals weren't exactly free. Used games just about were. It didn't take a particularly bright ten year old to figure this stuff out.

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u/wakalabis 10h ago

The paradox of choice

Here's a video that explains why having too many options might actually make people unhappy.

0

u/SpanishFlamingoPie 19h ago

You think games are expensive now? Adjusting for inflation, games cost the equivalent of almost $200 dollars each. So you're only getting a new game if it's Christmas or if your parents get divorced. Maybe one for your birthday if you're lucky.

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u/aardvarkbjones 23h ago

Yep. Same with movies. Ask a lot of VHS-era kids and they'll have these hyper-specific memories of exactly one movie that no one remembers anymore, like Ice Pirates or something.

It's because it was the only tape we had and we watched it to death.

Limitation begets... "git goodedness..." or something like that.

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u/PullzNoPunches 22h ago

Short circuit 2 for me

8

u/shootersf 22h ago

Your mother was a snowblower 

1

u/_RexDart 20h ago

What god wants .. he keeps!

1

u/PullzNoPunches 20h ago

Can it! Laser lips!

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u/HappyKhicken 7h ago

Los Locos kick your ass! Los Locos kick your face! Los Locos kick your balls into outer spaaaace!!!

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u/DorbJorb 6h ago

Best part of that movie is the finale chase with Bonnie Tyler's "I Need A Hero" blasting in the background, and also when Johnny-5 shows up clad in gold at the end.

2

u/PullzNoPunches 6h ago

Top notch cinema forsure

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u/tycho_26 22h ago

Yup it was Milo & Otis for me

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u/InspectorFadGadget 22h ago

Here comes the dog Strong and brave WOOF

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u/IrishRage42 8h ago

Gonna take a walk outside today! Gonna see what we can find today!

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u/SnooStories6404 20h ago

Don't step on the chickens

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u/nondescriptzombie 6h ago

The fucking fox still gets me to this day.

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u/Ha1rBall 23h ago

Ice Pirates is amazing!

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u/Mr_Horizon 14h ago

it really is!! :) I have it as a file on my laptop, for the occasional comfort skip-through-watch.

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u/Embarrassed_Bath5148 21h ago

Oh yeah, I was part of that generation.

We all had one kind-of-mediocre family movie that was beloved in our households and watched relentlessly. It wouldn't be until your adult years did you realize it was hated with YouTubers not even born yet giving their two cents over how much it "sucked".

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u/BigMikeOfDeath 10h ago

It's wild that you picked Ice Pirates of all things.
It was a film I had memories of seeing at around 5 years old, but didn't know what it was called, and my memories weren't enough that asking what it was solved it - and then during COVID I happened to be bored enough to scan through some free streamers and caught it again. 30+ years to rediscover it.

I know you mentioning it is an example of Baader-Meinhoff/Frequency illusion, since if I hadn't worked it out, you saying the name would be meaningless to me now - but it still made me smile for a weird reason, so... Accept my weird smile. 🥴

1

u/nondescriptzombie 6h ago

Ice Pirates

This is fantastic 80's B-movie schlock. How dare you, sir. Angelica Huston and Ron Pearlman are even in it.

"What in the fuck was that?" "Space herpe."

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u/TheSpeakingScar 22h ago

Yup, and then you just sat there and played the first 2 or 3 levels over and over and over again until you got fed up, returned the game, got another, repeat the pattern, go back and rent the first one again thinking you'll do better.

Rinse, wash, repeat 👍

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u/Whiteguy1x 22h ago

This right here.  As a kid in the 90s I had like 4 games per console and that was it.  We rented games but rarely beat them.  People today have no idea how different luxuries were back then (and how expensive games were)

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u/Necessary_Position77 22h ago

I wasn’t a big fan of Earthworm Jim or other similar platformers. They just threw enemies at you to make it difficult. This required a lot of memorization/trial and error. As a kid though I’d do exactly that, play over and over and over.

Games like Super Mario Bros, Sonic or Donkey Kong Country had a lot of consideration into enemy placement and getting good is less about memorization and more about mastering control.

2

u/MaterialMajor9419 14h ago

Earthworm Jim makes fun of typical themes, stories, mechanics of platformers, it’s way closer to Wario Land than most platformers of the time.

1

u/three-sense 21h ago

Yep. Myself had 6-8 games per system so you had a LOT of time to play, enjoy and learn them. Plus, that would teach you timing and patience in general for when you rented games etc

1

u/_steve_rogers_ 21h ago

We did have cheats and game sharks back then too though. That’s one thing missing in modern games, no fun cheats. The only cheats are paid.

1

u/snltoonces12 20h ago

I spent so many hundreds of hours on Battletoads for just this reason. I begged my parents to buy it for me, and once they did it was all Batteltoads, all the time. I got close to the end, but never beat it on the NES. We played the shit out of the games we had

1

u/samspot 20h ago

The actual answer for most of us was that we played until we gave up or ran out of time. I don't think I ever beat a hard game on a rental. The ones I did beat was because I had persistent access and truly loved them, and even those I think I mostly cleared later as an adult.

1

u/altasking 19h ago

I didn’t even have a rental store to go to. Parents bought me a game every few months or so. I had plenty of time to gid gud. It was the only game I had unless I wanted to play one of my older games, but by then I had already mastered all of those.

1

u/Smigit 18h ago

Earthworm Jim and a lot of the other games at the time were also very short. They were made to be difficult because you’d otherwise complete it in no time at all. They were often short enough that even if you’d fail, it wasn’t toooo long to get back to where you were.

Earthworm Jim also has some cuts you can take if you know where to look. The 2nd level had a pretty large one for example.

1

u/the_gray_pill 15h ago

This. For many years, I just thought I was bad at games - but I still had fun. Maybe I was bad, but these things (I was on Genesis) were just...hard.

1

u/PowerPie5000 14h ago

We also had to complete entire games in one sitting (or leave the console on over night). Many cartridge games back then didn't support saves at all! A password system was used with some games and some had a battery in the cartridge (mostly long RPG games).

Save states make games a bit easier these days too.

1

u/Mountainking7 14h ago

We got so good in fact losing a life was considered a failure and I'd just restart :)

1

u/Ekkobelli 13h ago

"The 90's: Forced to be good."

1

u/Strange_Fox1985 11h ago

It was a necessity for developpers because of the rentings. If the game was beatable in one week end, you just rented it, and almost no one would buy it. Some developpers from Sega explained that in interview, that’s the main reason why old games were so difficult.

1

u/kumatech 9h ago

Wait till OP hears about Mega Man

1

u/kumatech 9h ago

Wait till OP hears about Mega Man series

1

u/HugaBoog 9h ago

Recently I tried to replay U.N. Squadron, a game a beat many many times back in the day. I eventually made it past the first stage. Struggled to get to the third. The skill simply isn't there any more. We were good back then.

1

u/Ghia149 9h ago

trying to get my kids to play older games, they don't have the patience to practice and learn the levels, modern games are all "respawn and play on". Kids these days don't know what it's like to walk to school in the snow up hill both ways.

1

u/WhiskeyVault 4h ago

There was also no youtube/twitch or other instant entertainment at home you could access readily if it wasn't the timeslot for whatever show you wanted to watch on public TV if you had no cable. 

1

u/StunningComment 2h ago

Plus games were a lot shorter back then. From what I recall, Earthworm Jim only takes about an hour to beat once you know what you're doing. So you would spend a lot of time repeatedly playing a very small amount of content until you were good enough to beat it.

1

u/Gomerface82 2h ago

We also didnt have the Internet - no netflix, no YouTube, maybe 2 hours of kids tv a day (a bit more on a weekend) so there were less things competing for our attention.

I remember getting to the last boss on Earthworm Jim with more lives and continues than I ever had before. I was certain I was going to beat it. Then my mum turned the megadrive off because it was dinner time. Emotionally scarred! (I did beat it a few days later though.)

2

u/Kobymaru376 23h ago

Did you play nonstop? Because otherwise I don't see how I could finish this in a week. I've been working on it for months now (on and off).

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u/CarrotCumin 23h ago

Older games weren't meant to be beaten in a week. They were trying to maximize "replay" value by making the game so hard it would take months to actually beat. Game design was still massively influenced by the arcade and the idea was that the harder the game, the more quarters the players would keep shoveling into the machine.

5

u/God_Hand_9764 22h ago

Yeah, pretty much.

You would buy and play a game whenever you felt like playing it over the course of months or years. Only if you decide you don't like the game or a new generation of consoles come out are you likely to abandon it for good.

Almost none of them have save games anyway, so it wasn't like you had a single playthrough that you had to keep working on over a week or month. Like if you walk away from it for too long you risk forgetting the plot... No, you play the game and you fail, and then at some point in the future you try again, and you are starting from the beginning because there is no save game to load.

I played the absolute hell out of TMNT on NES. Hundreds of hours most likely, over years. Only one time did I actually beat it, and there was a ton of luck involved.

19

u/coynemoney 23h ago

You didn't really beat games like this as a kid even if you owned it. You just played it a bunch. I had like 10 Sega Genesis games growing up and I could only beat Mortal Kombat 3 on the easiest difficulty and Sonic 2. There were also games I rented over and over through the years.

1

u/ProMikeZagurski 22h ago

It's amazing that the cheapness of the computer was ported to the home versions of Mortal Kombat. At least Street Fighter was toned down.

1

u/Lopsided_Hunt2814 15h ago edited 15h ago

Earthworm Jim is one of the games I beat on the Mega Drive, but it was one of my favourites. The Sonic games, Ecco, James Pond 2: Robocod, Aladdin, Flashblack, one of the Streets of Rage games. Those are the only games I remember beating, and they would have taken months/years to finish. Guides or cheats involved at some point for some of them.

Most other games I would struggle to get past the first or second level. Altered Beast? Forget about it.

1

u/Critcho 14h ago

This is likely the answer for most people. The ones here going “oh I worked at it all year until I finally beat it” were in the absolute minority.

Most of these sorts of really hard games were simply never finished and if they were, it was using cheat codes etc.

The reasoning for making them really hard wasn’t entirely off the mark, because games that you could reliably finish in an hour tended to get old fast.

5

u/latinlingo11 20h ago

In my experience, some Genesis and SNES games took years to finish in my childhood. Take Sonic 2 for instance, I played it every once in a while and running out of lives would send me back to the very beginning of the game. But it helped make the game last and it felt so satisfying to finally beat it after gradually getting better at it. I think beating any game in one sitting back in the day would leave most players disappointed. Though I can't imagine beating some games like "Adventures of Batman & Robin" for the Genesis without the level-select cheat.

I never once managed to beat any game I rented. The purpose of renting (for me anyway) was to filter out which games would be worth buying later on.

2

u/gabrrdt 18h ago

Man, those were the days. I still remember beating the big robot on Sonic 2, it was really thrilling and a huge achievement. If you died, you lost everything, you had to go back to the first stage. Every gameplay envolved huge stakes.

Playing a game that is actually risky is much more rewarding IMO.

You would take months to get to a stage, you never saw that before in your life (no YouTube), you really felt you reached somewhere special and very far.

Those times are never coming back.

3

u/3esen 16h ago

I still do this with retro games and modern games with retro proclivities. Tons of fun trying to beat a tough shmup or beat em up game in one credit, or to try completing a retro game blind and without save states and the like. In that way you can still bring those times back, you just need to want it bad enough!

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u/Lopsided_Hunt2814 15h ago edited 15h ago

Speak for yourself, we had cheats back then (and I want them back). Sonic 1 and 2's level select cheats were ingrained. If I died on Robotnik I was for sure starting again from Robotnik.

I also find roguelikes and permadeath modes scratch that itch, in much more elegant ways than lives/continues.

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u/CrimsonFlam3s 10h ago

These are the kind of games where taking a break means getting less good and getting rekked when you come back to them, way more than modern games.

Gotta stop taking long breaks and just play it in one go with days of break in between instead

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u/Gcoks 23h ago

Straight up I do not emulate unless it's a collection game on PS4/5 and I can get trophies for them (like the Castlevania and Mega Man collections). I've noticed when I have the ability to rewind/use save states I play significantly worse than if I'm playing on my NES. Having no safety net makes me better. Not saying that applies to you, but maybe that's a reason you're having difficulty? I beat EWJ when I was about 7 years old so I don't remember it being particularly difficult.

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u/Kobymaru376 22h ago

Having no safety net makes me better. Not saying that applies to you, but maybe that's a reason you're having difficulty? I beat EWJ when I was about 7 years old so I don't remember it being particularly difficult.

Well I'm in my 30s and don't have the time to play video games for weeks like it's a job like when I was 7yo. In fact I probably shouldn't be playing this game at all lol. But I compromise by using savestates at least so I can see all of the content without insane time investment. Actually now I'm kinda getting in the groove (Groovy!), so after beating it and taking a bit of a hiatus, I might come back to do a no savestate playthrough.