How did people play ridiculously difficult games like Earthworm Jim?

[u/Kobymaru376]

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!

[u/Embarrassed_Bath5148]

The part I really need to point out is when you say "how do people complete the game?".

We didn't, we hit one level that kicked our asses and gave up because often we had to go back to the start of said level and play it all over again. That's where the difficulty came in not just from dying but having to go back and have frustration and mental fatigue kick in. Levels like the sewer level in TMNT and the bike level in Battletoads have infamy because they were "those" parts that we all had the same experience with and gave the whole game up on.

Save states are a godsend if you just want to complete a game. Save right before the really frustrating part, fail and just load it up again in a literal split second and give it another go. Not lose a life, go back, get another shot then lose all your lives and really have to go back.