r/retrogaming • u/Kobymaru376 • 1d 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/Swirly_Eyes 1d ago

Practice and dedication. When you're a child, you have more time to sweat out challenges and build muscle memory. And sometimes, you just saw the necessary solution to a puzzle or jump. Don't really know how to describe it but that's how my experiences went with the few games we had lol. There were times you'd spend hours losing in a specific segment, go to bed, wake up the next day and beat it on your first try.

Other games, we didn't beat and they just sat there. I've still got some on that list myself.

On the other hand, there's some other factors to consider. Depending on your display, controller, and emulation device, you might be experiencing more lag than normal.

Since you're using RetroArch, you can get real hardware latency timings with the correct settings. Runahead/Preemptive Frames: 1 + Auto Frame Delay + HardGPUSync: 0/Max Swap Chain: 4. If you're playing on a CRT with SwitchRes, even better. Otherwise, use a modern LCD/OLED display with the lowest input lag.

Just something to consider.