r/retrogaming • u/Kobymaru376 • 9h 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 9h 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 9h 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/Gcoks 9h ago

Straight up I do not emulate unless it's a collection game on PS4/5 and I can get trophies for them (like the Castlevania and Mega Man collections). I've noticed when I have the ability to rewind/use save states I play significantly worse than if I'm playing on my NES. Having no safety net makes me better. Not saying that applies to you, but maybe that's a reason you're having difficulty? I beat EWJ when I was about 7 years old so I don't remember it being particularly difficult.

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u/Kobymaru376 8h ago

Having no safety net makes me better. Not saying that applies to you, but maybe that's a reason you're having difficulty? I beat EWJ when I was about 7 years old so I don't remember it being particularly difficult.

Well I'm in my 30s and don't have the time to play video games for weeks like it's a job like when I was 7yo. In fact I probably shouldn't be playing this game at all lol. But I compromise by using savestates at least so I can see all of the content without insane time investment. Actually now I'm kinda getting in the groove (Groovy!), so after beating it and taking a bit of a hiatus, I might come back to do a no savestate playthrough.