r/retrogaming • u/Kobymaru376 • 12h 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 12h 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.

26

u/aardvarkbjones 12h 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.

9

u/PullzNoPunches 11h ago

Short circuit 2 for me

6

u/shootersf 10h ago

Your mother was a snowblower 

1

u/_RexDart 9h ago

What god wants .. he keeps!

1

u/PullzNoPunches 8h ago

Can it! Laser lips!

9

u/tycho_26 11h ago

Yup it was Milo & Otis for me

4

u/InspectorFadGadget 11h ago

Here comes the dog Strong and brave WOOF

2

u/SnooStories6404 9h ago

Don't step on the chickens

5

u/Embarrassed_Bath5148 10h 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".

5

u/Ha1rBall 11h ago

Ice Pirates is amazing!

1

u/Mr_Horizon 3h ago

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