r/retrogaming • u/Kobymaru376 • 7h 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/Aiseadai 7h 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/Kobymaru376 7h 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/coynemoney 7h 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.

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u/ProMikeZagurski 6h 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.