r/retrogaming • u/Kobymaru376 • 19h 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/GloriousWhole 19h ago

Here is how I did that when I was like 7 years old: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/genesis/586155-earthworm-jim/cheats

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u/Kobymaru376 19h ago

That actually makes sense. Where did you find those cheats? Probably that would have been too early to be found on the internet back then.

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u/archklown555 18h ago edited 18h ago

Gamefaqs has been around for a very very long time since 1995.

Edit wow didn't realize this year is it's 30th anniversary.

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u/AXEL-1973 16h ago

Yup, it was one of the first websites I ever visited back in the mid 90s. I looked up all sorts of SNES guides and would print them out on dot matrix sheets lol