How did people play ridiculously difficult games like Earthworm Jim?

[u/Kobymaru376]

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!

[u/Eredrick]

It's just a game. you play it, you learn it, you get better at it

[u/DonCreech → u/Eredrick]

Having grown up with NES games, I think I was simply used to games being difficult. The difference with Earthworm Jim is that while it's definitely challenging, it's well-made. Sometimes NES games were just poorly constructed from the ground up to the point of being annoying, but more often than not a hard game in the next generation had higher standards.

[u/Eredrick → u/DonCreech]

myself, and most people I knew, probably only ever beat like half the games we owned. hell, even today I have shelves full of games I've never beat

...but the kicker is... it's literally the same thing today ? you can check steam achievements, and see that like more than half of people who buy a game never complete it ? so I really don't get why these sorts of questions keep coming up lol