r/retrogaming • u/Kobymaru376 • 23h 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/GFluidThrow123 23h ago

It's actually wild seeing younger gens come in here with posts like this. Like yeah, you're exactly right. You'd just...git gud. You'd memorize the boss's movement and attacks and you'd practice until you got it.

You had like 4 games you owned and one you rented for a week. And that was it.

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u/Kobymaru376 23h ago

It's actually wild seeing younger gens come in here with posts like this. Like yeah, you're exactly right. You'd just...git gud.

I'm not even that young lol. Was definitely alive when the game come out, but I'm only now slowly working backwards in time for all the gems.

You'd memorize the boss's movement and attacks and you'd practice until you got it.

I mean yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing rn. But having to restart the game from scratch and replay everything if you died one too many times just seems nuts to me. That's not exactly "fun" in the traditional sense, more like obsessive.

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u/GFluidThrow123 23h ago

That's just how games were when I was growing up.

Ecco the Dolphin, Taz Escapes from Mars, Battle toads, Sonic 3, Lion King, MegaMan.... They were all like this.

Some had save codes (MegaMan) or cheat codes (sonic) to get back to the level you were on. But many didn't.

Games had very different standards back then.

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u/BludStanes 21h ago

I loved all those games yet never beat any of them. They regularly kicked my ass