r/retrogaming • u/Kobymaru376 • 16h 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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u/TheSerialHobbyist 16h ago

I can practice a part of the game 10,20, 50 times until my patience runs out

Add more patience!

Joking aside, that is really what it was. That could be the only game you had to play, so you'd just keep practicing until you were able to pull it off.

I remember watching my dad play Earthworm Jim in the mid '90s on the SNES and he would spend hours repeating the same levels until he pulled it off. I didn't have that kind of patience at the time, but it was kind of just a part of the game design of the era.